Q&A: Frank Woodley, comedian, 51

Comedian Frank Woodley on the perils of doing stand-up in 2020, and how he accidentally zip-tied himself to a roof.

On the road again: Frank Woodley. Picture: Julian Kingma

When did you first realise you were funny? My first conscious memory is when I was running the fourth part of a relay race in grade 2. I was going to lose and I thought, “Well, I can try as hard as I can and lose with dignity – or I could just skip down the track playing the baton like a flute…” I went for the flute option and got a bit of a laugh, and that sealed my life. I didn’t win the race, but nobody was talking about the winner afterwards.

Were you a clown at school? I was always a bit of a clown. For the most part I managed to judge it on the side of being socially uplifting, where it was working for me and it was working for others as well. There are two ways of being a comedian: you’re either being superior and laughing at someone or something else, or you’re being self-effacing and you’re laughing at your own foolishness. And I’ve always felt that I’ve got such a proliferation of foolishness that it was easier for me to make a mockery of myself.

What makes you laugh? I can really enjoy political humour. I can enjoy stand-up comedians like Dave Hughes and Cal Wilson. But I have to say the funniest thing in recent times, where tears were rolling down my face, was when I went to see my daughter’s ballet class. She’s 12 now and the girls who are about 12, they’re delightful. But there’s always a gaggle of littlies, aged about three or four, who do a performance, and they’re just vaguely aware that they’re doing ballet.

You started out as one half of the comic duo Lano and Woodley. You then performed for 12 years without Colin Lane. Then you were back together for two years. Now you’re on your own again on a national tour. What’s going on? It’s really enjoyable for me doing Lano and Woodley, and when we got back together I had such a good time. And now that we’ve broken the ice I think me and Col will definitely do more shows together in the future. But we didn’t just want to get back on the treadmill of thinking every show we did needed to be together.

Is it any different being a comedian today than, say, 10 years ago? It’s very different, especially with social media. In the past, if a comedian made a joke in a club that somebody perceived as being beyond the pale, there wasn’t really an opportunity for an all-in. Whereas now on social media, a whole lot of people can galvanise and give that comedian a lot of grief. In the past people would be offended but it was very rare that it would gather any steam. There’s definitely a difference now in terms of that whole call-out culture. People think it’s really important, if they think they see someone who is being offensive, that that person should be held to account.

You’ve done a lot of physical theatre. Are you actually clumsy? I’m that weird combination of being quite co-ordinated and very absent-minded. Once I was on a chair in the garage trying to zip-tie a power lead to a beam across the roof and somehow I managed to zip-tie my own thumb to the beam. I had to wait for an hour and a half until my wife came home and say to her, “Can you pass me those scissors?”

Frank Woodley is touring *@#!KING CLOWN nationally until the end of April