Joe Avati named Comedian of the Year but there is private pain for funnyman
Comedian Joe Avati beat out other popular comedians to be presented with Comedian of the Year at the Annual Australian Club Entertainment Awards.
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Comedian Joe Avati was cemented as the Russell Crowe of Australian Comedy this week after he was presented with Comedian of the Year at the Annual Australian Club Entertainment Awards.
Avati beat out other popular comedians such as Carl Barron and Akmal Saleh to take home the gong, which serves as a career milestone.
Off the back of the win, Avati has announced his eighth worldwide tour, kicking off in the Motherland to a somewhat questionable reaction by some.
“I had a rather mixed reaction when I announced my Italian tour,” Avati said.
“Some were looking at my posts asking when I was coming to Italy and others were abusive.
“Fans in Italy don’t think I’m actually Italian, but I’m 100% legit Italian. How can I not when “I do the grocery shopping in socks and slippers, I had an oil stain at the bottom of my school bag from all the salami sandwiches my Mother made me when I was young, and even though I shop at Aldi to get all the discounts, I still negotiate a cheaper price.
“I had one guy Soprano me by saying if I performed in Italy, he’d hang me from the Vatican. “I’m not phased though, having grown up the culture myself, I’m used to a little crazy!”.
Avati’s career spans 26 years, both here and overseas, making him one of Australia’s most successful comedy exports – but not many know the private pain of the Italian funnyman.
Last month marked five years since the death of his younger brother Anthony, affectionately known as Nino, so he and his parents did what they do every year on March 4. They drove across Sydney Harbour Bridge – the place their Nino took his last breath.
His brother’s kidney illness saw him have three kidney transplants over his 42 years, and caring for him through his final weeks was the hardest of times for the Avati family. For Joe, that meant being by his bedside all day, leaving at night to do his shows and make people laugh.
“Towards the end of my brother’s life, I would sleep with him in the hospital, and I’d say ‘Nino, I got to go to work’, and he’d say ‘knock ‘em dead bro, knock ‘em dead’,” a solemn Avati tells Sydney Weekend.
“So here I am watching him living his last months out – and then having to go and make a thousand people laugh and then come back and sleep with him through the night, My dad was sleeping with him during the day, I would do the night shift.
“And not many people know that.
“But that gives you strength of character.
“And that’s what we had to do, so that’s what we did.”
That’s what family does. And that’s why his comedy resonates, because anyone who has grown up in Australia with an ethnic heritage knows the pull of tradition – and there’s no bigger tradition than being there when your family needs you.”
He has a three-year-old son – lovingly called Antonio after his brother – and is married to a ‘millennial’ who is a corporate lawyer and a “really good mum”.
“She was the library captain, head of debating. I don’t know how I ended up with my wife, we are the complete opposite,” he laughs.
But although modest, he’s just as smart himself. His brother Nino had a Mensa IQ and was brilliantly smart. Avati, while he’s never been tested, is pretty smart himself, and could have done anything, and his work ethic has meant he has. At one point he had three jobs – including help develop Magnums for Streets Ice-cream.
“This is the way I look at it. It’s a process ... so I didn’t do physics and chemistry at school, but then I got into food science and I topped the course, and then I went on to develop Magnum for Streets ice-cream,” he explains.
“I didn’t do acting at school and I was very shy as a kid. I started doing comedy and, within three years, I was touring Australia.
“Within four years, I was touring the world.
“I’ve never built a house, but the last house I built got the fourth coolest home in Australia and broke the record for the suburb.
“I’ve never gone to a piano lesson, but I’ve written piano sonatas.
“It’s just okay, what next? What are we going to do? What’s the next project?
“To me, it’s about an attitude towards whatever you’re doing.
“I made it happen, and I’ve always made it happen.
“I’d have three jobs – I was working at Streets Monday to Friday; Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights I’d deliver pizzas for Arthurs at Paddington; and Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights I’d be at the Comedy Store, learning my craft.
“I’m just like that. It’s my work ethic.”
That’s a work ethic learned, again, from his family.
“My dad’s got a flair of entrepreneurialship and both grandfathers were workhorses, but in different ways. They were very different people with the same outlook of ‘I need to get things done’.”
Avati grew up in Burwood and Strathfield, and because his family moved around a lot, he went to four different primary schools and three different high schools, ending up in Windsor and Richmond, at the base of the Blue Mountains.
“It was hard but, in retrospect, it taught me to easily be able to move on.
“So I can now go to different places all the time, and just move on and keep on moving on, and I’ve learned to make friends really quickly.
“I’ve been able to figure out who I can trust, who I can’t trust, and then move on.
“And, as a result, I’ve got thousands of friends from all over the world, over my 28 years doing what I do.
“So if you were to say today, am I going to put my kid through this? Probably not, it’s so unstable.
“But it didn’t affect me, and I actually learned from it and gained a lot from it.”
So what made him uproot again and leave his native Sydney for the comedy scene in Melbourne?
“I had more friends in Melbourne – and everything in Melbourne happens in Melbourne, in the CBD. In Sydney I was a small fish in a big pond. In Melbourne I was a medium fish in a big pond.”
At the end of the day, he felt more accepted in Melbourne, and it’s been his home ever since.
“When you’re going out as a single guy who looked like me, Melbourne was my playground,” he says.
“In Sydney you have to be a supermodel to have any chance at anything in that scene.
“In Sydney, girls wouldn’t talk to you, you wouldn’t get into clubs.
“Unless you were a supermodel in Sydney, you were just B-grade or C-grade. In Melbourne, I was king of the castle, so it was nice. I can’t deny that.
“I would love to get back to Sydney because I love Sydney for the kids, the beaches, but my wife is from Melbourne and she’s really close with her family and you can’t take that away. Yes, I’d love to be back to Sydney, but I can live anywhere, and I’ve adapted to that.
“So whatever is more important for my wife, and will make her feel comfortable and happy.”
His mum and dad are still in Sydney – in Five Dock – and, between gigs, he gets back to see them as often as he can. Like he did last week for Nino’s anniversary.
“We spent 37 years in and out of hospitals with him,” he continues.
“I’ve seen him die twice.
“My mum gave him the first kidney, he was eight and that lasted eight years.
“Then he got a second kidney from a road accident victim that lasted four years. Then he went on dialysis for 11 years.
“Then he got another kidney which was only supposed to last two or three years – it lasted 11.
“But he didn’t want to die in hospital ... and you know where he died? On the Harbour Bridge.
“He was going to the hospital to do his dialysis in the morning. My dad was driving him through peak hour, and he looked out, and then just took his last breath, and was gone.
“He was just non-responsive and my dad’s driving on the other side of the road trying to get to the hospital ...
“That’s what my son is called Nino.
“And that’s why we drive every year on the Harbour Bridge and we throw a rose where it happened.”
In a world of ‘yes men’, Nino was his person.
“We talked a lot, and my brother was the one who would always put me in my place,” he explains.
“He would just tell me the way it was. There was no ‘yes person’ with him.
“He’d say ‘what are you doing bro, what are you wearing? You look like a dickhead’.
“He and I went to Christian Brothers at Burwood. The church there – called St Marys – with a capacity for 250 people.”
When the brothers talked about where Nino’s funeral should be, he said “St Mary’s”.
“But he said not where we went to school, the St Mary’s in the city,” Avati recalls.
“I was like ‘but do you know how big it is?’. He said ’yeah’ And do you know what I said? I said ‘who do you think you are bro – me?’,” he jokes.
“And he goes ‘yeah bro’.
“His funeral was at St Mary’s Cathedral – and there was standing room only.”
Through his grief, he then organised the service for his brother, including a poem he wrote just for Nino. A poem Avati lovingly reads to Sydney Weekend. And it’s beautiful.
It’s perhaps his grasp of reality and ability to connect that has seen the longevity in his career – helped along by social media, of course.
“I’ve been doing this for a very, very long time,” he says.
“Now because of social media, people see other acts that are out there. The Sooshi Mango guys are out there. I’ve been doing this since 2001, overseas.
“And I’ve kept it going, and now it’s grown even more into countries I never thought I’d go – like Italy.
“Now people know, because of social media, people go ‘oh there’s Joe doing a show in Toronto’ – but I’ve been doing shows in Toronto since 2001.
“I had No.1 and No.3 comedy album on HMV North America comedy charts for 18 months. It was me, Bill Cosby and then me – and Dennis Leary was No.4, Seinfeld was five.
“What I’m saying is not just the artist bullshitting to the journalist to try and create some sort of story – I am fairdinkum when I say I’m the only Australian artist ever to have two albums charting in the top five anywhere in the world simultaneously.
“No other Australian artist has done that.
“AC/DC has never done that. INXS hasn’t done that.”
The way he became famous in the beginning, almost three decades ago now, was on Napster, the first file sharing program in the world of audio.
“Metallica took them to court because, back in those days, people wouldn’t buy DVDs or CDs, they would download audio, so I decided to say ‘I don’t care if I don’t sell DVDs or CDs, but I’m going to put my clips on Napster’.
“And that launched my career within six months all over the world.
“But Napster was only audio – there wasn’t visual.
“Then came YouTube ... and now, obviously, you’ve got all these other platforms. But back in the day when I started, the only way you could be known was if you’re doing The Midday Show, Hey! Hey! It’s Saturday!, or maybe The Footy Show. That was it.
“So if I gave you a CD, you would have to burn that CD 10 times and hand it to one of your friends.
“Now, I’ve got Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. I’ve got LinkedIn. That’s why these people are selling out massive arenas, because of the springboard. There are a lot of them, and they really move.”
But the real reason he resonates is because he’s given people somewhere to belong.
“So you’ve grown up in this Italian household and you didn’t feel entirely Australian, you didn’t feel entirely Italian. You were that middle ground,” he says.
“Along came this guy who defined what that middle ground was.
“And when you can get somebody who can make you feel that you belong, and make you feel ‘that’s who I am’, you have an affinity to that person for a very, very long time.
“I mean, look at why Taylor Swift is this big. Why was George Michael the way that he was? It was just the words he used, the way he made people feel – with his songs, his words, his voice.
“A lot of people say to me, ‘we used to do what you do, with our cousins at home’, but
you were the only one to package it up and put it on stage and make money from it.
“It gives people a sense of belonging.”
So why is he bigger now than ever?
“Firstly, Covid. Let’s say you get up in the morning, you’ve got to go to work, so you look on your phone. You might see a comedian, and you might look for five or 10 minutes, because then you’ve got to get in the shower, get dressed, in the car and off to work,” he says.
“Because people were stuck at home, that five minutes on the phone became 40 minutes or an hour – so you would go down rabbit holes which you’ve never been able to go down.
“And, all of a sudden, I was discovered by people who didn’t know I existed – even though, by that time, I’d been around for 24 years.
“The other thing was, because of Covid, I learned how to edit my clips, which I’ve never done before.
“By editing, I learned that TikTok is 8-30 seconds, Instagram was a minute to a minute and a half, Facebook four or five minutes.
“So I then went through all my back catalogue, and edited all my work and started putting it out even more on all these platforms – and it made it concise – and so, because of that, people started to consume, and in the way that they do consume it on those platforms.”
It’s a lot to manage. Last year he did a month in North America and did 15 major cities in a month – as well as Toronto and Europe.
“The tours are planned so that I spend the least amount of time away, but the family come when I have a base,” he says.
“So last year I did a month in North America were I had 15 major cities in a month and they came when I started having my base in Toronto and New York, and in Europe, or else it would have been too much because one night I was in Boston, and another night, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, the next day in Montreal. It’s too much for the little guy.
“I love having them there. Antonio will come out on stage, and he does meet and greets – so, if he’s awake, I’ll bring him out because I talk about them and people see him on Instagram and stuff, so they become sort of part of the show.
“It’s exciting but North America is hard. I’m not gonna lie – it’s a grind, a lot of movement and airports.”
He also has a daughter who lives with her mum, and he turns 50 this year. They’re all going to Mykonos in July to celebrate. But between now and the end of June, he won’t stop. He’s doing shows all over NSW, as well as Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Victoria.
“This is the second run. Last year was the biggest tour ever that I did and, because a lot of people didn’t get a chance to see it and they said ‘I’ve got to bring my kids to this, they’ve got to see it’ – because it’s clean,” he says.
“I work clean.
“There’s no swearing, but I don’t hold back in terms of political correctness, and people really want to see that.
“Because of the renewed interest now, of people who have never seen the show, that’s probably given me life that I can probably extend it for another 10 years.
“The young kids look at what I do, and they call it ‘boomer humour’.
“My audience is 35 to 70, so if a 25-year-old now – if I don’t adapt to them – in 10 years I won’t have a career.
“I kept on reinventing myself, and it stayed.
“I’ve been here for 28 years and it still sells out and it’s bigger and stronger than ever.
“So if I keep on doing that, I’ll be here doing this in 10 or 15 years, don’t you worry.”
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