Teen acne, too tall, too loud: I was that weird kid who wanted to make people laugh

The time: summer of 2000. The furniture: neon and inflatable. The place: Wagga Wagga, teen pregnancy capital of Australia. I’m sporting thongs, board shorts and two-layered spaghetti-string tank tops. I’ve got a blue Sony discman playing Britney’s album and I’m sharing headphones and minimum chips with my friend in the 40 degree sun.

“It’s a shame we won’t be friends next year,” tumbles clumsily out of his mouth.

I pick at some melted tar from the road on the bottom of my thong. I don’t know what he means. “But we’re going to the same high school?”

A frequent collaborator with sketch comedy group Aunty Donna, Michelle Brasier has won awards at both the Sydney and Melbourne comedy festivals.Credit: Paul Jeffers

He considers this and replies: “Yeah, but I don’t think people will like you at high school.”

My first othering. The first time I considered maybe there was something wrong with me. That’s an achievement in itself. To reach 12 years of age and not be acutely aware of your flaws is impressive, and I have thanked my parents for that.

I was 163cm tall. I am still 163cm tall. I have been this tall since I was nine, when Ms Holly got her entire class to weigh and measure ourselves (oh, those gorgeous ’90s!).

I’ve worn the same bra size since year 2. I got my first period in year 4. I came to kindergarten almost a fully formed woman. Jessica Rabbit with the hair of Doc from Back to the Future and hormonal acne. I should have felt like a freak, but I felt like a perfectly acceptable person. Until I didn’t.

I think every comedian, maybe every performer, has someone in their past they are trying to prove something to. Most of us are weird kids who figured out how to make people laugh so we could distract them from whatever we believed was monstrous about ourselves.

Maybe our parents had tough lives and we were able to distract them with silliness, or we were ugly and we had to think of something of value to bring to the table. Making up for what we lacked.

I don’t know how it happened to me, but I know that that sunny afternoon walking back from “the pit” (god, country kids know how to entertain themselves) was a catalyst for everything I have done since. It is a canon event for me.

At home, I put on my So Fresh CD and looked myself up and down in the mirror, trying to figure out what was wrong. I wrote a long list of all the things that might be wrong with me. Nose too big. Hair too curly. Too loud. I was a theatre kid (surprise) and I definitely talked too much. I belted out harmonies to every song, even the national anthem, and I was always desperate to know everybody’s deepest secrets. I collected people’s stories and secrets like jewels. Maybe I was too desperate in general. But I felt confident. Up until now, obviously. Now I felt ashamed. Gross!

I was raised Catholic but went to public school, so shame didn’t come naturally but she was a close personal family friend I had easy access to. I was just about to make my Confirmation. I went to Confession for the first time and when the priest asked me what sins I might have committed, I took his emphasis on the word “might” literally and instead of listing the sins I had committed, like calling my sister names, I listed all the sins I knew about like adultery, stealing from Priceline, wearing a robe made from two different fabrics (the big three). He let me off with a few Hail Marys and upon reflection, maybe that explains a lot about the Catholic Church’s dealings with insider sinning.

Brasier’s memoir, My Brother’s Ashes Are in a Sandwich Bag, contains musings on family, sex, being a teenager in the 2000s, love and loss. Credit:

When it came time for the ceremony, I didn’t realise that it is custom for the priest to give you a gentle slap on the face, and I slapped him back. Quick reflexes.

I didn’t stay in the church (again with the surprises!) and I didn’t sit in shame for long. But I never forgot the way those words hit my ribs. I’ve tracked that little boy down and even though he couldn’t remember saying it, he apologised so beautifully. He remembers being jealous of my confidence. Of the fact that I seemed to like myself. That I wasn’t even worried about Y2K. He was ashamed that he had hurt me, but I am glad he did or I might never have found comedy as a defence mechanism and then later in life as a career.

I sometimes wonder why I worked so hard to get on TV, to reach “success”, but I believe now it is probably all just to prove to this one little boy that people do like me. That I am worth being friends with next year. Maybe there’s some value to a little bit of shame. So long as you can figure out how to monetise it.

Michelle Brasier is a multiple award-winning sketch comedian, singer-songwriter and author. Michelle will tour her new show, It’s a Shame We Won’t Be Friends Next Year, across Australia from February. Tickets from michellebrasier.com

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