It’s like Frankenstein’s monster: Sammy J’s wildly ambitious project

Diaries from Sammy J’s childhood are full of notes to his future self. “They are littered with messages trying to engage with my future self, going, ‘Hey, how old are you now, what are you doing?’”

As a young kid, he was obsessed with the idea of time. He still is, so the idea behind his 50 Year Show for the Melbourne Fringe Festival is that sometimes you have to wait up to 15 years for a joke to pay off. And the audience does.

Sammy J on the Trades Hall rooftop ahead of his 50 Year Show for Melbourne Fringe.Credit: Justin McManus

As its name suggests, the show has a lifespan of five decades. This year sees its fourth instalment, complete with a cast of top-tier comedy talent returning, including Charlie Pickering and, he hopes, Celia Pacquola.

Dancers who were five in the first show – when Sammy was 25 – and are now 20 will perform, together with comedian friends, singers and even a teenager who was in utero in the original. Footage from previous shows will run behind the live acts. He describes it as a series of sketches, “and trying to give Father Time a wedgie, playing with the idea of linear time”.

“When I first started it, I was bumbling along trying to make a career out of comedy. I’d had a few wins and losses but I was still figuring out what I do,” says the comedian turned ABC broadcaster. “It’s always been looking forward and now it’s the fourth one, 15 years worth of shows, for the first time properly reckoning with looking back, watching hours of footage. I’ve been watching myself as this young, nervous, ambitious 25-year-old and that’s way more confronting than I expected it to be.”

Who doesn’t love a sparkly lycra suit?Credit: Justin McManus

His sense of humour has always been based around commitment to an idea and drilling down as far as you can in that world, he says. “This was such a stupid concept that made me laugh at the time, what if I genuinely started this and I figured out I’d be 75 by the time it finished.”

“You basically use a different piece of canvas for every work, so in comedy if I’m writing a song, music is the canvas or doing a sketch then the character is the canvas and with this one, time is the canvas and time is the punchline as well, it’s a totally different way of engaging because I’m setting up jokes and themes and ideas and the whole point is you have to come back in five years or 15 years for that to pay off. Which is not a financially viable move but deeply rewarding.”

This time round, it almost feels like a school reunion, where he gathers the usual suspects. “Everyone gravitates together and has this little reunion,” he says.“Things are starting to get real as far as people’s lives go. It’s sort of like Frankenstein’s monster now, I’ve created it and I will see it through. I genuinely don’t know where it’s going to take me now.”

Does his work with the ABC conflict with his work as a comedian? In short, no. “I don’t feel constrained at all, and I guess the day may come when I’m called into Ita Buttrose’s office because I’ve said something ... I think I started the radio trying to combine the two, and that was neither needed nor successful because then we had the pandemic... in my mind now they are very different hats to wear.”

“I treat radio as very much a community setting, positive and joyous and to start the day with a smile, which is a world away from political satire. It’s an interesting line to walk,” he says. “Like John Howard would say, ‘Like me or loathe me, you know where I stand.’”

‘I’ve created it and I will see it through. I genuinely don’t know where it’s going to take me now.’

Sammy J

It has to be said: given he is a high-profile broadcaster known for his work on both radio and television, can Sammy J still be considered Fringe? Very much so, he says. “Because this show started in 2008 when I was nobody. I had to beg and cajole and invite everybody I could think of,” he says. “It has the Fringe in its DNA, it was an experimental show from an unknown artist – now I’m better known but it’s very much connecting with that spirit. The whole notion of the show is me connecting with my past self, so I’m going to get a free pass on that one.”

Besides, says Sammy J, Fringe is about experimenting and pushing boundaries. “I don’t think profile should be a barrier, it’s about ideas.”

Sammy J - The 50 Year Show is at the Melbourne Town Hall on October 6. The Melbourne Fringe Festival runs from October 3-22.

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