Gossip Queen: Comedy king Dave Hughes tells how quitting booze, drugs led to finding real laughs
Comedy king Dave Hughes has made an art out of making people laugh, but the road to the top had a rocky start with the comic having to beat booze, drugs, feral cats and the share house from hell before finding his true career calling.
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Dave Hughes has made an art out of making people laugh. He is one of Australia’s most successful and popular comedians, is a radio powerhouse with his longtime on-partner Kate Langbroek and is a TV fixture thanks to Rove, The Glasshouse, Before The Game, The Project, The Footy Show and Hughesy, We Have a Problem. His new stand up show Hairy is one of the must see shows of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. But it hasn’t all been laughs for Hughesy, 48, who had to beat booze, drugs, feral cats and the share house from hell to find his true calling.
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FIONA BYRNE: Hughesy, what did you want to be when you were growing up in Warrnambool?
DAVE HUGHES: I was good at school, I was at the top of my class or near the top of my class academically, but I just wanted to be a hero sports person really. Like many young boys I wanted to be a hero in sport and a hero with the ladies as well. I wasn’t really either. I loved sport and I loved the ladies too.
FB: Like many you discovered booze and drugs in your teens.
DH: I started drinking when I was probably 15. I know I was a bad drunk. That did not help me mentally for a number of years until I stopped. I discovered (pot) at the age of 18. The paranoia that came along with the marijuana was intense. I can see how it can take over people’s lives really quickly. I have mates who have been stoned for 20 years. I have no idea how people operate in society stoned. I could not leave the house, really.
FB: Do you remember the day you quit drinking?
DH: It was just before my 22nd birthday. I was getting locked up. I was never a violent drunk but I was getting locked up for falling asleep on the road or climbing a Norfolk pine and getting stuck at the top of it, just ridiculous things, and it was depressing me. I was always a hopeless drunk. Just before Christmas I thought, ‘I will stop for two months,’ but then I got to Christmas Eve and I really did have an epiphany, like, ‘I have had a pretty good couple of months and if I start again tonight I imagine I will go back to exactly how I was before,’ so I just made a decision on Christmas Eve 1992 to never drink again. I have not had a drink since November 1992. I have never done AA or anything like that. I just decided to stop. (Quitting) was about many things, part of it was ego where I thought I had a good brain and every time I blacked out from drinking I knew I was destroying part of my good brain, and also I just wanted to take control of my emotions.
FB: The dole, depression, dropping out of uni and doing odd jobs, that was your life for a few years in your late teens and early 20s.
DH: I dropped out of an IT course at Swinburne Institute of Technology. I got a scholarship to study IT in 1989 …. but, oh god, sitting in those classes learning how to code, I was drinking and smoking at the time, and I could not focus so I quit that. I went back to Warrnambool and worked in an abattoir for a year then I went back to Deakin Uni in Warrnambool and did a business course for a couple of years and lived in a share house with some mates and was stoned the whole time basically and was drinking too much.
FB: Share houses are almost a rite of passage. Any stories you want to share?
DH: The house we were in was nicknamed the Mad House by all our friends. A lot of them would live at home with their parents and come around to our house and party. I remember nights were everyone would think it was a good idea to smash their stubbies against the lounge room walls. They would all go home and then the four of us living there would be walking around on broken glass all week just bleeding, trying to pick broken glass out of our feet. My room was called the cave. It had no windows. The ceiling used to crumble on me every night. We had feral cats infest our house at one stage, that was the low point I think. Feral cats are mean. You would walk into the kitchen and there would be cats eating the bread, really vicious cats. It was disgusting. We moved into another house where the landlord lived next door, and one Christmas Eve one of my mates went down to the abattoir and stole a heap of sheep and brought them back. He dressed the sheep in football jumpers and some of the sheep ended up in the landlord’s backyard and in the house. We got evicted from that house. Then I moved home and then I got really depressed and quit uni. In 1992 I was on the dole for the whole year. That is when I started giving stuff up. I went marijuana, cigarettes and then alcohol and I have not touched any of them, or any drugs, since.
FB: You started your comedy career in Perth in 1993.
DH: A mate of mind was moving to Perth and I was at a loose end. My comedy dream was bubbling away, but I had not told anyone about it. I thought if I tried out in Perth I was so far away from home it would not be so embarrassing if I failed. So me and Rat, (Rat Day), drove a panel van to Perth, got a share house over there and I started doing stand-up comedy. I had always enjoyed comedy. As a young kid if I found a comedy series that was funny I would show my friends, I loved laughing with them. The first gig I did was terrible, the second gig was the next week and it was a bit better, I kept my dignity. The third gig was when I walked on stage and realised, ‘you are a winner just for walking up here, you have nothing to lose,’ and that gig just took off. That was probably the moment I knew, ‘I have got a career here’. It was bumpy for a while but that was the moment when I thought, ‘I am not deluded, there is something here.’
FB: You are 26 years into a hugely successful comedy career with a full TV, radio and touring schedule. What drives you?
DH: A love of comedy is what drives me. It is just about having an audience. It is ridiculous but I love an audience. My overriding motto is life is ridiculous and we spend all our time taking it seriously, including me. I enjoy nothing more than making a room full of people of people laugh. I was at school today (doing the school drop off) and one of the mothers said to me, ‘I hope you don’t find this offensive, but have you got some recommendations for me at the comedy festival’. I said, ‘have you ever seen me do stand up?’ She said, ‘No’. I said, ‘Well, I recommend me’. I love getting people into a stand up comedy room. I would say to any readers who have a mildly ambivalent opinion of me, or in fact hate me, just come to me after you have been to a stand up show. And if you still hate me, I can’t help that, but come and see a show.
FB: How do you cope with criticism of your work?
DH: I don’t think anyone copes well with criticism. I think I have got better over the years. I am certainly not holding grudges anymore. If you hold a grudge you are not living in the moment. Anyone who holds a grudge, they are living in the past.
FB: Are you addicted to finding stuff to give up?
DH: I have been accused of that. I think I am hooked on giving stuff up. I have another vow. Social media, I am vowing off it. On social media I am either bragging or getting jealous. I am off it. I am going to make it stick.
FB: Was there a point where you had too much on the go with TV, radio, stand up tours, corporate gigs and guest appearances?
DH: Yes. At one point for almost five years I was doing breakfast radio on Nova and was then doing The Project and then we (he his wife Holly) had three children in that time, so that was too much. Doing morning radio and nightly TV and then throw in stand-up comedy on top of that and on Saturday’s I would be doing Before The Game as well, that was too much. We had a year off in 2014 and travelled around (Australia) as a family. I don’t think the balance is too bad now that I am doing the radio (the Hit Network’s national Drive show Hughesy & Kate) in the afternoons. I am still not getting a lot of sleep. My wife is going back to full-time work (as a teacher) in a couple of weeks and my job every morning is going to be to pack those lunches and get those kids to school.
FB: You often use your family as content for your shows. Have the kids started telling you to stop it yet?
DH: We had the kids (Rafferty, Sadie and Tess) on Hughesy, We Have A Problem recently. My problem was the kids don’t clean up around the house. We all flew up to Sydney. We had the three of them, 9, 7 and 6, in the green room and one of the jokes I did in my monologue involved my 6-year-old. Unbeknown to me she was watching a monitor and had a diva moment and was like, ‘I am not going on, he cannot say that about me’. Six-year old Tess was storming the corridors of 10 with people trying to calm her down, but when it came to filming, she put her game face on and walked out there and you would not have known. Very professional.
FB: What has been your favourite TV experience?
DH: You love the show you are with. I have enjoyed hosting Hughesy, We Have A Problem (Channel 10). I have enjoyed being in the hosting role where you can set up other people and allow them to be funny. I have enjoyed everything I have done, all of them. There is nothing I have done on TV that I sit back now and go ‘I should not have done that’.
FB: How did you find your time as part The Footy Show?
DH: I was on The Footy Show for three years (2015-2017), it was not like I was there for three days. It was generally a very positive experience. Some people watching The Footy Show treat it like they are watching football, so if you mock their team they will campaign you on the internet. If you hang sh*t on James Hird you will have Essendon supporters campaigning you and wanting you dead. The vitriol you get from people who think they are at the MCG yelling at ‘Razor’ Ray Chamberlain because you have done a joke they don’t like is a bit much, there is no doubt about that. Everyone on the show was always good to me.
FB: Is it easy to make people laugh?
DH: It needs to look easy, that is what you want. And that is a double edged sword where people cannot see the work that is done underneath. For (hosting) the Logies for example, when I put those monologues together hopefully it looks like it is easy, but what people aren’t seeing is the thought and practise that has gone into it.
FB: What is the secret to your radio success with Kate Langbroek?
DH: I think we are similar in many ways, but can come at things from different angles and hopefully are not too predictable, as in we can still surprise each other. Kate is a rare talent, there is absolutely no doubt about that, and it has just worked for us. We get along well and we on the same page. When she was going to Italy it was like, ‘Of course she can still do the show from there’. It is such an easy on-air relationship. The great thing radio has been for me is that it gives me a creative outlet everyday. It is taking the silliness of every day and being able to broadcast that; it is a real privilege. I feel lucky to be able to do it still.
FB: Who in comedy inspires you?
DH: Sam Kinison (US comedian) was an early influence. I saw him on a VHS tape back in the late ‘80s. He used to get really angry about his life and it was just so funny and it probably did inspire me to go down that track of mining your own failings. I used to love watching the D-Gen guys and they did The Late Show and all their ongoing success that was a big inspiration. There is a guy called Luke Heggie who I watched the other night. He is was really funny, he inspired me as the younger comedian. You can be inspired by any comedian you see on stage, don’t steal off them that is the worst thing, but they can inspire you to find an angle in your comedy.
FB: What advice would you give aspiring comedians?
DH: Just get on stage as much as possible and keep trying new material. Keep finding things that are funny and be as honest as you can. The funniest thing is when you can see the comedy is coming from a place of honesty, I love that.
FB: If your comedy career had not taken off what would you be doing?
DH: I might be a real estate agent lamenting the down turn of the market. Practically with my hands I was hopeless, so it would have had to be something to do with my voice, it would have had to be something to do with my personality. Thank god, we did not hit a kangaroo at the Nullarbor.
Tickets for Dave Hughes Hairy at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival are available at comedyfestival.com.au
Hughesy & Kate, Hit Network/Fox FM 4.30pm-6.30pm weekdays.
Hughesy, We Have A Problem, Channel 10, 9pm Sunday.
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