‘Cerebral palsy and doing drugs and alcohol probably wasn’t the best idea’
He was a fixture of Aussie television but behind the laughter lay a spiralling battle.
It’s the ’90s and in a bar somewhere Chris Widdows is on stage cracking jokes.
The comic, known as Steady Eddy, is making people laugh at things they never thought they would, or should. He has their attention. He has the nation’s attention.
Widdows, who was born with cerebral palsy, rewrote the rules of comedy when he burst on to the scene in the early ’90s as a stand-up comedian.
He called himself The Bent Man of Comedy (and still does), disarming his audience with personal jokes about his life and disability. He touched on topics few dared to.
His rise was hard and fast with television appearances on The Midday Show and Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, which Widdows says boosted his popularity.
He went on to perform at Just for Laughs in Montreal, Edinburgh Fringe and across Europe and the US. In 1994, a live recording from his Ready Steady Go! tour earned him an Aria for Best Comedy release and multiple Australian entertainment awards for his live performances.
He changed the way people saw comedians. He shifted perceptions on disabilities. Thirty years on, and as Widdows prepares for his first national comedy tour in over a decade, the comedian reflects on why he never set out to break barriers. He just wanted to be himself.
“Everyone was telling me that the best comedy is about yourself,” he says.
“You perform what you know.
“And I did enjoy taking the piss out of things, you know, so I put that into a routine.”
He begins to fire off some of his old material – and a warning, it’s not for the easily offended.
“When I go to the bar, I order a schooner so I have a midi when I get back to the table,” he says, poking fun at his unsteadiness on his feet.
He continues, “One night at the pub, I won a dance competition, funny thing was hadn’t entered, I was just walking back from the bar.”
He knows it was polarising, and still is, but he’s not in the business of caring about opinions.
“I’ve got a mix of reactions from ‘good on you’ to ‘that’s absolutely disgusting and you shouldn’t be doing it’,” he says.
“I still get that now.”
And what does Widdows have to say to the haters?
“I think they should have a gold medal in whinging,” he laughs.
“There’s people out there that will complain about anything no matter what you do or who it is, you can’t make everyone happy.”
Widdows knew he wanted to make people happy from a young age.
He spent his childhood growing up in Clovelly in the eastern suburbs of Sydney with his parents and two big sisters. It was Lee, also a comedian, who inspired him to take up comedy at 21 after he watched her perform. Widdows wanted in.
“I asked my sister and her friend to help me with a routine and a week later I was up on stage doing my first five minutes at an open mic night in Sydney,” he says.
He thrived off the laughs and the buzz and went on to perform across the country.
But just as Widdows was breaking ground on stage, his life off it was unravelling.
For most of his early career, Widdows battled with a drug and alcohol addiction.
There are years he can’t remember at all, entire chapters lost to his addiction.
“Robin Williams said a quote that you know you’re famous when people give you a kilo of cocaine for free and that’s what was happening to me, not to that extent of course, but free drinks and free drugs,” says Widdows.
“There’s a period of time I don’t have any memories of.”
Widdows saw the cruelties of addiction early in his life when his father died from alcohol abuse when he was just 45. He didn’t want his life to end the same and when he hit rock bottom in 2004, he got help. Widdows is now 21 years sober but acknowledges the lasting impact of his addiction on his body.
“Cerebral Palsy and doing drugs and alcohol probably wasn’t the best idea,” he says.
“It’s put me in a wheelchair a lot sooner than I thought and it’s impacted my life a bit more because there are certain areas I need a little bit of extra help.
“It’s the simple stuff you never think about until you can’t do it.
“I can’t go shopping by myself anymore because I can’t push the trolley, I can’t change a light bulb or if I go to a petrol station and have to fill up and go in and pay for it, I have to think about it more.”
Yet when he’s on stage, there’s no thinking, there’s no noise, there’s just a man who loves to tell jokes.
Widdows has kept performing through the years, many of them spent doing comedy on P & O Cruises until Covid hit in 2020. In more recent years, however, he has prioritised his health with his days spent going to the gym and doing aqua aerobics.
It’s been ten years since Widdows took his comedy on a national tour and he’s thrilled to be coming back to stages around the country with his show, Return of the Stedi.
Widdows returns a little older, with a fresh perspective and the same irreverent humour, insisting the politically correct world hasn’t dulled his edge.
“I just wanted to get off the disability pension,” he laughs.
“But honestly, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been missing the stage and performing. I love it.”
“If you love someone who says it straight, a good time and a larrikin, come for a laugh.”
Steady Eddy Live at the Koala Tavern Capalaba, Dec 5, oztix.com.au
More Coverage
Originally published as ‘Cerebral palsy and doing drugs and alcohol probably wasn’t the best idea’
