Q&A: Shaun Micallef, comedian, 59

Comedian Shaun Micallef meditates on Mad As Hell, his new memoir and his new quiz show for Year 11 students.

Shaun Micallef. Picture: Cameron Grayson

I Googled the motto for your new quiz show Brain Eisteddfod and my computer melted. What does it mean? I can’t even remember what it is now. Have you got it written down there?

In Hoc Dei Dono Cerebri Nostri Confidano. So it’s not your secret message to the audience? No, it’s an inadvertent message that I am not as clever as people might think I am. I don’t know what that means.

It’s a University Challenge style show, but with Year 11 students. Why now? It was a “Covid time” idea to do a show that was about something other than football or dancing or singing or, you know, whatever The Bachelor is about. Perhaps something a little more edifying. And while there’s found humour in it there’s not much comedy, which is a nice relief for me from the very, very written show of Mad As Hell. It’s a small, very familiar group of people making something small and worthwhile that we like.

How do you think people will rate the students’ general knowledge? It’s fun to see where the gaps are. For some reason the only Australian prime minister they all seem to know from history is Harold Holt [laughs]. We show a picture of a prime minister, they think it’s Harold Holt. But by and large they were smart, they were funny, they were confident... I think [as a nation] we’re going to be in safe hands.

Growing up in Adelaide, what sort of student were you? I wasn’t great. It’s Academic was on TV and I was barely qualified to watch it, let alone be on it. I was a C average student, I think, but by my final year I’d realised I’d better pull my finger out. I managed to squeak into a law course at Adelaide University, which I probably wasted completely.

Your Mum revealed in a Mother’s Day interview that a primary school teacher said you had “no imagination whatsoever and a preoccupation with death”. That’s a very damning assessment, isn’t it? And I would have thought imagination and death went hand in hand, like Dante… I think that makes me a very fascinating and interesting child, far more than I am as an adult.

A new series of Mad As Hell also kicks off next week. How hard is it to satirise a new government? Well, when we started in 2012 it was the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, before Labor lost the 2013 election; I don’t know how funny I thought that time was for the country but it was certainly good fodder. And it helped us [define] the show – we thought “OK, it’ll be political, there seems to be quite a lot going on”. And that’s been its bread and butter ever since. I must say the nine years that followed have been a golden opportunity for us. The new government is so fresh, they haven’t quite fallen short of anyone’s expectations yet. I’m sure it’ll happen, but we might have to wait until the second or third week of the show before we start getting some decent material out of them.

If all the good material is coming from one side, how do you avoid looking partisan? Oh, I don’t think we bother trying to look balanced at all, we just go where the joke is. If someone’s in charge and is ineffective or wrongheaded, that’s more likely to be more interesting [than what the Opposition does] because there are real-life consequences. But in the 10 years we’ve been doing Mad As Hell we’ve never had anybody say to us “I think you need to make a joke about the other side of politics”.

What’s the plan for your Significant Birthday next week? I’m not going to go out, good lord... but my wife and I decided that whichever child [of three adult boys] happens to be visiting, we’ll have dinner at home. I would much rather spend it with my family than make a big deal about turning 60. I don’t feel threatened by it either.

Your memoir comes out later this year. What’s the elevator pitch? It’s called Tripping Over Myself and most of the stories are kind of on me, as the fall guy. If you’re interested in comedy, as I was as a kid, it’s a bit of a primer on other people’s comedy as well as my own. People are always asking me, especially younger people, for career advice: “How do I get from A to B to C to D?” So for what it’s worth, here’s my version.

What are you doing on that sofa? Meditating? I don’t think it comes from life. I haven’t come up with any form of relaxation that would take me out of reality. I reckon this is it and you’ve got to make the best of it. So if I can distract some people on the way and make them forget about what they’re supposed to be doing by having a laugh, that’s not a bad objective in life for me.

Shaun Micallef’s Brain Eisteddfod premieres July 20 at 7.30pm on 10 and 10play, followed by Mad As Hell (Season 15 premiere) at 8.40pm on ABC and ABC iview