Sam Campbell never gives interviews. Now, he’s finally relented

Sam Campbell is killing it. Pacing the stage of a sold-out venue near London’s cavernous 02 Arena, the Queensland-born stand-up juggles the mic between his palms and begins to riff about an uncle who drank six coffees a day. “Coffee breath? He had TERRIBLE coffee breath,” he yells. “We went camping and he blew up my mattress. It was like sleeping on a TIRAMISU!”

The laughter has barely died out when he changes tack. “I don’t know if you can tell, but I recently lost my debit card ...”

The manic energy Campbell exudes on stage is dialled right down when we meet in his dressing room. Dressed in a jumper, black jeans and sneakers, the baby-faced 32-year-old with the mop of hair is self-effacing, shy even. He could be mistaken for one of the uni students who make up a sizable portion of his audience.

From the outset he makes it clear he doesn’t enjoy interviews and does his best to avoid them. Why? He mentions the remorse he’d feel if he said the “wrong” thing and a morbid fear of being asked questions about topics he knows nothing about. “I don’t know much about food or clothes or music,” he says from his end of the sofa. “I just get nervous I’ll be asked a question like, ‘What’s the capital of ... something that should be really obvious’.”

His discomfort appears genuine. Maybe, I suggest, interviews are just a necessary evil, an inevitable part of a performer’s life. “I don’t think they’re evil,” he shoots back. “It’s just not where I’m at. I’m doing this because my Australian manager, Craig, said you guys really want to do it.”

The 32-year-old has become a popular fixture on UK panel TV, and in the US is being courted by Netflix.Credit: Raphael Neal

He’s right about that. Campbell is that rare thing: a fast rising star whose story hasn’t been worn thin by endless retelling. He’s won the top awards at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has become a familiar face on British TV since moving to London on a Global Talent visa in 2020.

When he was announced as a contestant on the UK edition of the comedy panel game Taskmaster in June last year, he was the least known member of a line-up that included comedian Julian Clary and Great British Bake Off host Sue Perkins. But Campbell, who wore an all-grey outfit for every appearance, soon emerged as the show’s breakout star. Deploying a guileless Aussie charm and a seductively offbeat way of looking at the world, he won the series to general acclaim.

Despite this, Samuel George Campbell’s Wikipedia page is notably light on detail. It fails to explain how a dreamy kid from the Atherton Tablelands conquered the twin capitals of comedy and became the kind of stand-up other stand-ups admire. There is no mention of his time studying animation at Queensland University of Technology – his live show makes extensive use of his homemade slides and animations – or his very first gig at Brisbane’s Sit Down Comedy Club in 2010.

In short, the man who is now being courted by Netflix and counts Jimmy Carr, one of the big beasts of UK comedy, as a close friend and mentor, is a little bit of a mystery.

‘I don’t think [interviews] are evil… I’m doing this ’cause my manager, Craig, said you guys really want to do it.’

Seeking to fill in some of those blanks, I ask him about his childhood. The slight figure at the other end of the sofa vibrates with discomfort. He grew up in a place called Bandicoot’s Pocket, he says after some prompting, somewhere between Atherton and Yungaburra. I couldn’t find it on Google, but he assures me it had a gas station and little else.

Family? He looks uncomfortable. “Aw, they’re pretty private guys. You might have to talk to them. But they want to stop fracking and they like folk festivals. My dad loves [former Greens leader] Bob Brown … He’s really interested in him.”

So, what was your childhood like? “Yeah. I wouldn’t say it was electric. I didn’t wear shoes until we moved nearer to Brisbane. Shoes just weren’t part of your life. I loved the rainforest.”

A nature lover, then?

“Yeah, you can say that. I used to walk around on a bunch of rocks near my house just thinking about things. That was my hobby. There were a lot of worlds I created back then that I still think about to get to sleep. You know how Charles Dickens would publish a bit of his novels each week in a newspaper? That’s how I go to sleep … just imagining those storylines in my head.”

He attended high school in Bundaberg. Recollections of a school trip to the city’s rum distillery quickly segue into a story about an upmarket Sydney health club and spa near Hyde Park once owned by Kerry Packer. “I love that place,” he says. “There’s a cold plunge pool and I said they should have a Bundaberg polar bear in the plunge pool. A fibreglass polar bear you could sit next to. But everyone was like, ‘Nah, this is a really classy place’.”

Did he acquire a taste for rum? “Oh no, I don’t drink. I mean I have drunk, but at the moment I’m trying to stay really focused. Modern life is too overwhelming for me, so I’m trying to be really sensible.”

Is he a vegetarian as some have suggested? “Yeah, but I don’t want to be seen as gloating. You need to be vegan to gloat.” Food, it turns out, is one of the topics he knows nothing about. But he’s interested in opening a restaurant because he’s fascinated by “lighting and design”. “I do have some ideas for a restaurant franchise. Have you seen [the hit 1990s sitcom] The Nanny? All the waitresses could be dressed as the Nanny and all the chefs would be dressed as Mr Sheffield.”

OK, then.

The way his mind ricochets between ideas and renders quotidian objects fantastical is a big part of his appeal. It has also led some to assume he’s neurodivergent, a suggestion he dealt with in The Trough, the show that won him the top prize at the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve got autism,” he told his audience. “I don’t know, never been tested. Too busy reading the train timetable.”

His wandering mind isn’t always an asset when he performs live, he insists. “I was talking about lighthouse keepers recently and how people think they love their lighthouse, but really they love ships and want to keep ships safe. It was interesting, but not funny. I just get things stuck in my head and it feels good to get them out.”

I ask him if he feels vulnerable when he’s alone on stage. “No one can get to me,” he says with the exaggerated bravado he uses to get laughs. “If you made a bike from my skin, it would win the Tour de France.” Then he adds, “I don’t want people to read this and think they can get to me. I get confused a lot. But then, who isn’t? Maybe I need to hide it more? Maybe I should keep some of these cards closer to my chest?”

Possibly. I prefer the unfiltered Sam Campbell, the one who insists The Trough was performed in a “horrible little room” and was often “a total disaster”. The guy who pours scorn on comedy awards – “I find all that stuff a little bit creepy, if I’m honest” – and seems to revel in his screw-ups.

Recalling the Melbourne shows, for example, he says, “I was always getting in trouble for things. I had a knife in the show I didn’t tell them about. There was a plant in the audience – a feminist who wanted to cut my penis off – but I didn’t tell the safety manager about the knife and he called me a … Can I say this word?” He types it into his laptop and turns the screen in my direction. No, Sam. Best not.

His enthusiasm for pushing boundaries might explain his love of Rodney Rude, the blue Australian stand-up whose profanity-soaked routines made him a star for decades. Campbell and his tour manager have been listening to Rude’s routines on the road. “There’s some pretty dicey stuff in there, but he’s got an incredible flow,” says Campbell. “And he’s got some great lines like, ‘They should shoot the stork that brought you for carrying dope’.”

He also speaks admiringly about the Australian comedy duos Lano and Woodley and Los Trios Ringbarkus, but is less complimentary about stand-ups in his adopted home. “I don’t really like British comedians much,” he says. “Their acts, I mean. They’re not bad people. I just don’t know what’s going on …”

He’s also not enamoured of some of the Aussies he’s met in London. “I love Australia and Australians, but I don’t like the Australians who live in England. For some reason, I think they’re really perverse. They all hang out with other Australians and get up to no good.

“You know that thing people say, ‘Everyone loves Australians overseas’ … Don’t tell yourself that! You’ve got to be polite. You can’t just walk around thinking people love you.”

Sam Campbell in 2018, accepting his Barry Award for the most outstanding comedy act at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.Credit: Paul Jeffers

He has made friends, however. One of them is Carr, a certified British comedy superstar and host of panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats. He has taken the young Australian under his wing by all accounts. “Jimmy’s become one of my closest friends – he’s sort of a mentor figure to me. We text most days. I’ll often go over to Primrose Hill [one of London’s most exclusive districts] where he lives. It’s just lunch, but it feels almost like a private masterclass. He’s talked about what to wear on stage and microphone technique. He does that for a lot of younger comics.”

The move to London was something of an accident, he insists – “I just followed the work” – and he doesn’t expect to stay long term. He’s been invited to appear at the giant Netflix is a Joke festival in Los Angeles this year, so an even bigger world seems his for the taking.

His friend Aaron Chen – another Australian comedian on the rise – already lives in New York, so it’s not completely unfamiliar territory. “Aaron was my protégé, but now I’m his protégé. He’s got an amazing constitution and a really low centre of gravity, so he cannot be toppled. I fall very easily, but I’d swap lives with him in a second.”

And if comedy doesn’t work out? Well, he has done other jobs. There was the time he planted trees outside the women’s jail in Brisbane and a short spell working for an electrician in Sydney. “He told me to go under the house to look for something. I remember being under the house for most of the day… I think he just didn’t want me around.”

On balance, it seems unlikely he’ll need a day job anytime soon. As well as the trip to LA, he’s been booked to appear on the ABC comedy Fisk. Extra dates have been added to Wobservations, his first UK tour, and he’ll bring his show Scallop-toucher to Sydney and Melbourne in April.

What’s left for the boy from Bandicoot’s Pocket? “I wouldn’t mind doing a big corporate gig for a prince or a sheikh or something,” he says. “I knew a guy who played the oud [a Middle Eastern lute] for Russell Crowe once. He was playing behind a screen and then they said, ‘We’re gonna pull back the screen’. It was Russell Crowe, Shane Warne and Eddie McGuire all dressed as kings eating a banquet. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t mind doing something like that.”

Sam Campbell will be performing in Melbourne at the Athenaeum Theatre from April 9 to 21; in Sydney at the Enmore Theatre on April 24, and at the State Theatre on April 25; and in Brisbane at the Powerhouse Theatre on April 27 and 28.

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