Life Uncut - GAGS, GUNS AND GRENADES - Uncut with Urzila Carlson

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Step right up and into the circus Lifers because today we have a gift for you, and that gift is Urzila Carlson.She most certainly hasn't had what you'd call a 'normal' life; she grew up poor, like "proper poor" as she says, in South Africa, before moving to New Zealand and becoming a comic.In this interview, we talk about her early life, her career shift, cancel culture in comedy and her very much not accidental pregnancies with her wife that led to her two children.Today's episode will be a bit of comedic relief!You can find Urzila here: https://urzilacarlson.com/Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love love!xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. hey guys and welcome back to another episode of life uncut i'm britney and i'm laura and brit's getting me into trouble at the moment well do you know what we do this thing where we try and like producer keisha's filming it we do this thing okay don't look cute oh i put down

the uh porn that i have open on my laptop sorry no uh we do this thing where we try and psych ourselves up a little bit more like in those seconds before we start the record like just that first few seconds sometimes we slap ourselves on the face sometimes it's like a professional athlete before they jump off the blocks or go off the starting line and they're doing like a little jump brit and i do a little jump we do a little face slapping or sometimes she'll sing something you just actually i was not even going to say this i forgot about it but you've just reminded me guys i was right last week we spoke about i'm going to brag i had a lot of you write into me actually and say that you were right.

I called it. I said, Ash Barty is quitting tennis and I can guarantee we're going to see her in the golfing world. I just knew we would. Anyway, she's already won a tournament. The week after she quit tennis, she went into a golf tournament a week later and she won. Oracle Brittany over here.

Maybe if you're really good. If only you could apply the same sort of logic to your dating life. To anything else in my life. That's fucking too soon. That was mean. Wow, I was all over the show. Why don't you kick me one down, Laura? I'm sorry, I love you.

Come back here and cuddle me. Okay, this is a good segue as well. Whoa, we're segueing like there's no tomorrow. I have a dating story. Oh, and I love to hear it. She's back, baby. This is the Brittany I have missed. Okay, I'm not back, but I tried to be back.

Did you put your oracle to good use? This is what I need to know. His oracle code for vagina? No, as in like looking into the future, your crystal ball, the things that you could foresee where Ash Barty was going to be in her sporting career and now this is you with your very athletic dating career okay no that is absolutely not what I did what I did do was I was trying to ease I haven't felt ready to get back into the dating world it has made me sick I think I told you guys a few weeks ago that Laura Mitch

and Keisha Mitch being our radio co-host we were all having a chat and they were trying to get me online dating and I started crying I was like I was not there it's been very it's just been too much for me and I get that it's been a little while since the breakup and I'm supposed to get back out there, but it just hasn't felt right. No, no, no. Before you go into saying like you're supposed to get back out there, there is no timeline for this. Depending on how hard the breakup hits you is indicative of how long it takes you to get over it. And I don't think that you should be just forcing yourself to get it back out there and start dating unless you feel ready. So I tried. Wait, are you ready now? I don't know. I still don't think so.

The story I'm going to tell you is just, I just felt really good about myself. It wasn't me, but I went out this week with a girlfriend. She looked banging. She's single as well. We're out at a bar in the city and we're sitting at a table alone, exactly like this Laura, and she looks behind me and she clocks this really cute guy. She's like two tables back.

She's like, that guy's really cute. And I turn around. I'm like, oh, yeah, he's pretty your type. I could only see his profile. He was with a group of people that were obvious that they were all a bunch of work colleagues. You know how you can just tell they'd finished work, they'd gone out for a drink.

Like Friday night after work drink. It wasn't like all their besties or anything. Anyway, they all went outside to have a smoke or a drink or do lines of coke. Who knows? It's Sydney. They were doing lines of cocaine out in the balcony. They definitely went outside except for this one.

At the establishment. It was the establishment. Of course it was. They were definitely doing cocaine. I didn't even tell you that. That wasn't even planned. And that's the first time I've been to the establishment in like a year.

They all disappeared and this guy was sitting alone. And she's like, he's alone. And I'm like, now's your time. She's like, what do I do? And I'm like, well, just get eye contact. so just like when he looks at you hold eye contact for that second longer and because in my head that's how you know if you're looking across the room and someone and someone holds that eye contact for a little bit long not in a creepy way gives a smirk you're like oh there's we just have

a moment absolutely that is like that's like 101 for flirting that's what they do in the movies anyway and it always works so I was like just hold his eye contact she's like I can't he won't look up he's like looking on his phone so obviously he's the only one at the table you know you're just out of comfort and I was like he has to look up eventually you've got to come up for air anyway he didn't look up and she's like well that's it what do I do and I was like well you get up and you go and talk to him she's like I could never what would I say and I was like I've got it I have got your pickup line and if this doesn't work the whole night's on me like I will you everything I was like because I was so sure of it she's like what do I say I said you go up to

him and you just say oh are you looking for my number amazing but very corny yeah but like corny wins. And she looked hot. So in my head, I was like, she could go up and say anything. And he's going to be, I knew I wasn't going to be buying her drinks. So she goes up and she's like, fuck it. I'm going to do it. So she goes up and I'm like peering, watching this whole thing unfold. And it was the best thing I've, I felt alive. You know, I felt like I was living vicariously through it. So she goes up to him and I can see them talking and then he starts laughing and then she starts laughing and then it's on. And that was it. So a long story short, I'm going to cut to the chase. He came to our table. We had a great night all together. They swapped numbers.

they're going on date like it's a thing I said did it work and she goes yeah but I panicked and I was like what do you mean you panicked she's like instead of being smooth and getting up there and just delivering the line saying oh you're looking for my number you lost my number she goes I got up there and I said my best friend bet me that I wouldn't come up to you and say are you looking for my number I was like bro we're not 12 years old anymore that is like one step down from getting your friend to go and ask someone out at a bar for you that's what it was that's what it was anyway I felt alive at work she got on a date and then it made me feel like wait I just want to say this isn't a dating story you like set this up as though that this was you

getting back into the dating world this is a dating story about how somebody else got into the dating world yes so this led me to be like well maybe I'll use my own pickup line because I'm feeling I felt so I tried a one on my of my own wait you used to have one back in the day pre-Jordan I remember you talking about it you had like a a one-liner pickup line well I had the dog I had the dog yeah you put a puppy you put like a dog in someone's dms or something and then you write oh sorry Freddie ran away again he's always doing that anyway it's so popular now every second person uses that you can't do that anymore okay so this is this is me easing back into it I felt very confident after like setting her up with her line there was this guy on instagram super hot and

i had seen him on the explore page and then i had seen him in the news for something and then i saw him on a dating app so i felt like this is the universe throwing him to me i saw him in all these different places so when he popped up on my instagram again i did the old like a photo go back a week like a photo follow right so i did the like right yes yes you know you can't go back too far you've only got to go back far enough I went back to 2012 is that you're in bed but not like so far that you're crazy that's like the he had just come out of his mum's womb is that too much I don't know play cool broody no so I went like like follow and then about an hour later I got a like like like follow so I got the same thing back so I took that as my opportunity so I dm'd him

and I said are we going steady now oh strong straight in to set are we going steady now question mark you're like we're not going to be friends now this has been a problem for me historically speaking that my humor doesn't land via text or dms like it just doesn't but when i try and put it on paper doesn't land i thought that was a pretty solid like i think that's a that's reason to come back with some banter you know like we're going you would know you'd be like yeah i'm pretty sure let's plan the wedding that's what i would have expected back if he didn't return that serve with some funny banter then maybe he's just not a funny person well he He just wrote back and he said, I don't get it.

Anyway, I was like, oh, I was trying. I said to him, it's so embarrassing. I was like, I'm trying to flirt with you. Oh, fuck. Stop. No. No. He thought it was hilarious.

He goes, oh, I think I'm a bit out of practice. I don't know. And this is, I'm talking, this is like someone that should know what they're doing. They were very, very hot. Anyway, we had a banter. We've been talking for a week. We swapped numbers and everything. So it got there eventually.

But I was like, fuck. I literally was like, bro, I'm trying to flirt with you. I don't know what else. You're like, I also don't know what I'm doing anymore, so please don't make this more uncomfortable or awkward than it needs to be. Yeah, then you don't want to know what he did. Oh, God.

Yeah, he sent me, and this is after talking for a couple of days, he goes, I've just figured something out. A dick pic. Worse. He sent me a photo from a few years back of himself and Jordan at a tennis match. Oh. Just pretend like you don't know each other.

Oh, I know. I know. And I was like, oh, are you guys friends? And he's like, nah, I just met him once. We just played. And I was like, fine, cool, great. why does he need to send that to you there is never a time in life where someone you're dating now needs to send you a photo of your ex-boyfriend anyway this is my intro there's there's no point

to any of these stories this is my intro that this is me putting my feels back out mate but I think there's something endearing about being a bit of a loser like being a bit of a geek and like and I wasn't trying to pretend to be cool I just was like oh I'm sorry I'm trying to flirt I'm out of practice like just owning to what it is I was like you know this isn't landing and then I said to him this is what happened I forgot to tell you I said to him okay what would you have done if it was your opening line I was like because I just butchered it obviously because I tried something didn't land you didn't get it I was like let's pretend that didn't happen give me your opening line do you know what he did what he put a dog in my dm okay well I personally and maybe it's

for very selfish reasons but I am one very happy that you're inching closer towards the world of dating not only because I want to meet your soulmate not only because I want you to meet your soulmate and like you know live a happily coupled up life which is also not necessary you can be very happy in your own and very happy single but also because I far could want the content for the podcast yes well it'll come back I'm not there yet I haven't actually been on a physical date the first year of us like recording this and the amount of just absolute not that they were all bad but there were some real doozies in there as well yeah I'm ready to meet raffle on the weekend and sit on my face guy oh my god classic iconic sit on my face guy was iconic

sit on my face guy was like og life uncut if you guys if you guys do not know who either of the above are sit on my face guy or meet raffle guy you need to go back to the start because you're missing some solid solid volcanoes but laura i will i mean at the moment it's just a lot of lurking around dms but i will you'll be the first person to thank you please please don't let me out of the loop but i mean speaking of being like left out i was about to say i was about to say we kicked laura out we gave her a last thursday off it was her birthday that was her birthday we got her some shoes too but her birthday present was she could have one episode off the podcast she could enjoy it with a family. Producer Keisha filled in, but welcome back. How do you feel

that you got replaced? That was actually my birthday present, being able to just like have a couple of days away. Well, okay. So producer Keisha filled in on our Ask Uncut episode. Fantastic episode, guys. I was back for radio on Saturday, but it still kind of feels like when we do radio together and then we package up that, it still feels like I've had so much time away from the podcast. So this is me rearing him back. We went to Byron. I know that we were recording from Byron for Tuesday's episode last week and the rest of the holiday was amazing and then on the last day of the holiday was the fucking flash floods and it was overnight it was like we went to sleep and everything was fine it was sunny and then we woke up and the whole hotel was being

washed away totally you were like I don't think I can get back I did well we didn't and we we ended up being able to get home but we had to go instead of flying out of Ballin airport which was closed and completely flooded as I'm sure so many of you guys saw all the footage that came out of Byron Bay but we ended up having to drive north and then fly out of Brisbane it was Laura's like insane I can't get back I'm absolutely stuck Brit checks the weather it's like sunny 35 degrees she's like I just can't make it to the end it wasn't it was like a seven hour commute day to get home from Byron which do you know what like in terms of what so many other people are dealing with ours was inconsequential but it was just such a wild end to a holiday because I know that

there was warnings around severe weather but the flash flood was insane and it truly came out of nowhere but i guess that's the whole point of a flash flood isn't it it comes out of nowhere comes out of nowhere which is it's scary because you don't have time to prepare and we've and we've seen that but like climate change isn't real no well thank god uh scott morrison has removed 35 percent of the budget over the next three years to environment and climate change but you know what i'm going to talk about since scott morrison on this what we are going to talk about is what today's episode is about since we're already 20 minutes deep on this episode and you don't fucking no but you're gonna want to fucking know we have such a banger of an episode today it is

not one you want to miss it had me I think I need to change my undies because I wet my pants like it was I because she had extreme discharge no um no Laura it was really really funny so we have Ursula Carlson on the podcast today now that name might ring a bell you might have seen her on your screens on shows like have you been paying attention the project she's here for the Melbourne Comedy Festival. She has sold out tours all over the world. I'm talking the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth. She's a South African Kiwi, but she's lived in New Zealand for a very, very long time. She did spend the first 30 so years of her life living in South Africa and just her story. I mean, like obviously Ursula is a fucking funny woman, but

her story around her upbringing, her story around the poverty that she lived in as a child, how that was resilience building, but also then how she immigrated to New Zealand. she has a really incredible story and she also speaks about how she went on to parent two beautiful children with her wife before we get into the chat with ursula we are going to do our favorite segment of every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered now i have possibly the most fucked up accidentally unfiltered that has ever been sent in okay did she send this into your private dm yes okay she sent it to my private dm and i reckon it's the same one and you know what the funny thing is i was like this is too cooked for the podcast and you're gonna bring it

i can tell what's happened i walked out of the bedroom i was sitting in my bed the kids had just gone to sleep matt was on the couch and i received this accidentally unfiltered and my mouth was on the floor i had to physically drag it into the lounge room to read it out to matt and then matt said to me he's like i think that that's too fucked for the podcast and i was like no it's not like britney also thought yeah but i'm gonna do it anyway okay this is it's a bit yeah it's a bit how's your going? It's the most cooked thing you're going to hear this week. Okay. Let's just, yep. RIP. When I was a little girl, about five years old, I had the cutest elderly couple as neighbors. Their names were Colin and Bella. My sister and I would always visit them and watch

TV. They'd always have poppers and snacks in the fridge for us. We could just let ourselves in. They were absolutely awesome. Colin had unfortunately passed away. So one day dad said, why don't you go around and visit Bella and make sure she's okay. So off I go next door and I walk through the front door. Hi, Bella! I yell out as I walk past her while she's watching the TV, straight to the kitchen and I help myself to a popper and a bag of lollies and an apple and I plonk myself down on the couch next to her. I can still remember that Ready Steady Cook was on the TV. I was chatting away to her about school, friends, etc. And about two hours later, I left to go home. I said, bye, Bella. She hadn't been very chatty at all that day. She'd just been

sitting there watching the tv i said goodbye and i gave her a hug and i went home that night at dinner mom and dad asked me how bella was and i told my parents that raw she really just sat there and didn't say anything to me the whole time turns out she had actually passed away the day before so i sat and had afternoon tea with my dead neighbor and also gave her a hug when i left fucking hell r.i.p bella and colin yes r.i.p is right and this is why laura i was like this is too cooked but how do you i mean it wasn't shouldn't have been a bit of a red like a red flag that bella her eyes were rolled back and was not responsive was probably cold was not like i mean i don't know to me to me that's a bit of a red flag i just think she would have

been sitting there still watching tv it's very morbid it's very macabre but i just find it so funny that she's like as a now 30 year old woman looking back on her life as a five-year-old and going oh yeah that was pretty messed up i wonder if she actually properly remembers it or if it's like a bit of a traumatic event that she's blocked out of all the things we've been sent from accidentally unfiltered this is by far the most messed up it is to the point that matt and britney were like let's britney myself third person matt and myself were like barely let's not do this i love it and i just like i was like i better just put that to the side laura's like i've got the Yes, accidentally I failed it.

RIP Colin and Bella. All right, let's get into a chat with Ursula Carlson. Ursula Carlson is a South African New Zealand comedian and actress and you probably have seen her on shows like The Masked Singer, Have You Been Paying Attention, which I don't want to brag, but Laura and I have both appeared on Have You Been Paying Attention in our past life. Oh, yeah, co-hosted for one tiny little segment.

But you might have also seen her on her Netflix special Overqualified Loser. Ursula Carlson, welcome to Life Uncut. G'day, ladies. Yeah, thanks for having me on. So did you know, you probably didn't know that about us, it probably makes you just like respect us a lot more. Oh, yeah, we were on Have You Been Paying Attention

for a total of about five minutes combined. As guest hosts. Yeah. I mean, was it via Zoom or in person? In person, come on. Oh, my God. Yeah, because it does shave some of the beauty off it if it was via zoom well this was pre-covid days it was going back like five years weirdly they

never asked us back it was a one-time wonder we start every single episode with a segment called accidentally unfiltered so do you have an embarrassing story you can kick start with i have so many so when you say come ready with an embarrassing story i was like uh fuck where do i start like that's my whole life yeah yeah basically just take out the two moments that made me proud but there was one you know when you have that one moment in your life during your formative years that embarrass you so much that you go doesn't matter what happens from this point on I'll be okay okay yeah because it can't get worse it can't it just cannot I mean I think in a way it has but this is one of the ones that so as a teenager I went to boarding

school it was a very strict board so it's like a military school so we wear full uniform uh blazer tie you know with a windsor not the whole thing even our belt was a knitted belt with a windsor and then in winter the girls had to wear tights you know stockings black thick school stocking it was disgusting you got the knitted ones or the like they were just real hard out but then of course so so they don't ride down you know because you're at school you're like running around and walking everywhere you sort of you put knickers on over the stockings to keep them up right and we had a school issue undies that we had to wear these big green undies that would come come up to your navel and like just absolutely shapeless they basically ensured that you walked

around with your finger up your ass the whole day because you had to keep digging them out of your butt crap so i'm thinking bridget jones undies but green 100 but not like just as thick like south african boarding school fabric like just the hardest cotton that you can think yeah so anyway wearing those and then on this day I wore just these bright blue knickers over my pantyhose to keep it hot then we had to walk on the left as you do like and in Australia too and if you in your country if you drive on the left you should walk on the left so we walk on the left your suitcase had to be in your hand on your right hand walk up the steps no talking like it's very very strict there was this one teacher Mr Morgan and everyone loved him he taught English he only

spoke english to us and we thought he was so you know like because it's african school so we're like oh my god this foreign guy you know and everyone was so in love with him he was so hot and everything so we walked up and as we started walking up the steps he would stand and keep an eye on us and make sure we don't talk and then we stay sort of in our classes and on the left and i could feel something go wrong horribly wrong with the undies situation and i didn't know and you can't stop there's like 50 other kids right behind you going up these stairs and my neck is holding up my thighs dropped and I could feel it like I was walking my way out of these bright blue undies and I I just kind of stepped out of it like the elastic just went and I just kind of I

knew what was happening of course you know what's happening it's like when you accidentally spin on someone while you're talking you know what's happening they know what's happening you know like you can see the droplet they can see the droplet and no one moves for it it was that but with bright blue undies and I just kind of stepped out of it and I could hear a few snickers behind but of course because it's so strict and this was in the 80s where they would still cane us you know and no one said anything everyone just walked over the undies I nearly died like I was bright red I knew my undies were on the stairs I walked past Mr Morgan and then I had him for english too like two hours later and when i walked in he walked past inspector

homework and he just he put my knickers down he brought them to you it was in his hand like he had it in his hand and i was like fuck i can't find it i'm like what's happening here and he just he had it in his hand and he sort of just held his hand on my desk while he was talking and he's just gonna go leaned in and he goes um you dropped something on the stairs and then i took it out of his hand and I put it in my inside blazer pocket and to this day I will never forget and I'm not saying that's what made me a lesbian but to this day I think that's the thing that's like I'm too ashamed to ever be with a man we just sort of locked eyes and I just had this moment where I'm like oh dear god and I put it in my pocket but of course everyone's that was behind

me knew it was mine because you know you don't it doesn't just drop it sort of runs its way down on these bright blue knickers. I'm dying on the inside for you. But my question is, I mean, firstly, lucky that you wore the undies on the outside so there are no skitties because you imagine if he handed you back undies that had skitties in them because lucky those thick cotton tights would have held them up. Mate, I know how to wipe my arse.

I was like 13. I know how to wipe my arse at 13. I feel like you just revealed something here to us. Oh, sure. You don't know how to keep your undies on when you're 13, so who bloody knows? but why would a boarding school i mean your boarding school sounds like a lot of fun sounds like the place to be but why do they make you and how do they check that you're wearing the

right undies that's what concerns me oh we had inspection every morning okay because that's pretty problematic yeah undie inspection yeah no so we would have inspection they would only do like spot checks you know sort of make sure but even when we had like a physical education they have to sort of you know you have to get undressed and the teacher's there and then they make sure that you're wearing the right clothes like it was very strict. That is absolutely wild isn't it I mean like look a lot has changed but you have such an interesting childhood such an interesting past you grew up in South Africa and then you immigrated to New Zealand can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and sort of the formative years before you moved to New Zealand? Well I mean I

only moved when I was 31 so it's like you know I was a fully formed settled adult you know it's not even at like as an OE where I just came over and settled I grew up extremely poor in South Africa and I always say like when you say to people I grew up poor people are like oh yeah we were broke too I'm like no no you don't understand we were poor like no one ever as a child asked me what I was going to be as an adult you know no one ever what do you want to be when you grow up it's like people you know that wasn't a question you ask that for people who have the luxury of hopes and dreams when you grow up so poor it's like we're gonna fucking get through today that's our goal yeah we're not worried about what we're gonna be one day because we're doing day by day by day

dad was an abusive drunk and stuff but my mom and him divorced when I was six years old and then we moved to a town called Benoni where Charlize Theron is from too yeah so I had a I had a nice like you know we were always outside we were always causing shit but it was a happy childhood it was just really poor and then you know i went to boarding school because we couldn't get you know like that was the most manageable thing for my mom at that time and as a young lesbian you know when you hit your teenage years and you sort of start realizing hang on uh i'm more attracted to girls than i am to boys that was a great place for me to be i thoroughly enjoyed it i lived my best life in boarding school I'm sure you did yeah mate I had a good time and then I started working as a

I did an apprenticeship as a typesetter so I worked for the newspaper for like 12 years in that time I would also go overseas like I lived in the US for a bit and I lived in Wales for a bit and then moved back to South Africa and I really wanted to stay and I always say if it wasn't for the high crime rate in South Africa you probably wouldn't know any South Africans outside of it because it's a great country and it's a great country to live in and it's beautiful and it's got everything, but it's also got the dark underbelly, you know, the crime and the, I don't want to raise kids here.

And that was my big motivator. That's why I left because I got to 31 and I'm like, I want to have kids, but I don't want to raise them here. And this would have been all during the time of apartheid as well. Like this was a very volatile time in South Africa. Is this a rumour? This is something that I read and I'm very intrigued about it. You just mentioned that you spent a lot of time like outside playing

in your childhood. I heard a rumour that you once stole a grenade from a family member's drawer and then. Oh, no, it was a gun. Oh, that's not a video. It's totally fine. Mate, who's got a grenade in a sock drawer? That's what I was wondering.

I was like, is this woman crazy? Do we need her on the podcast? So, yeah, you stole a gun. Who, A, who does that? B, what did you do with it? What was the purpose of stealing the gun? So, I mean, I have an older brother. Well, I've got an older brother and an older sister.

I'm the baby of three. And my brother and I are extremely close. He's three years older than me and we're still extremely close. He lives one suburb over. So when my parents just got divorced, we sort of had to flee from my dad. So my uncle, who I guess I had met at that point, but I was six, so I couldn't remember him or anything. So he drove through the night, came and picked us up from these people

that I didn't know, that our neighbour drove us to their house. it was like this whole you know CSI scenario is this like you were trying to escape yeah we literally escaped so we were living with my uncle and he was just this old bachelor he's not blood related to us because my mom grew up in foster care so he's her foster brother so we lived with him for about a year but he's a real weird cat so in his jaw like because he just lived by himself you know and he had all these guns and stuff just in the sock jaw with the bullets and everything so my brother and i would because right across the road was the mine dump so on the east end where i grew up it's about half an hour east of johannesburg there's all these gold mines and

then they would just dump all the sand that they had you know come out of the mine and that had been processed and washed with cyanide and all this shit it's just sitting there in these it It looks like a mountain, but it's just the sand from the gold mine. I say, sorry, I don't know what it's washed with, but definitely something that you shouldn't be playing. I'm like, that's pretty hectic. And so we would go play in it all the time, but we weren't supposed to go in the mine dumps,

but that was our favourite. We would go there every day. Then we would take either the 38 or the 9 mil and go shoot. And just like we would pack cans and, you know, because I'm sick, so he would stand behind me and hold me up with his body and cover my ears with his hands because it's quite loud and then the gun of course ricochets and so I would then hold shoot and he would hold me so one day we did that we took the 38 and we were shooting just you know cans on the horizon but that's very dangerous that's why when you go

to a shooting range there's like the you know wall with the sandbags behind as you two will well know yes obviously we spend a lot of time every second weekend yeah that's what I like I could I could just tell but if you just shoot like that bullet can go for ages like into the it needs a stop but you don't think about that when you're six and nine years old shooting a 38 on the wind up you know so as i'm shooting the next minute these three guys on bicycles come through and they're very pale and especially the middle guy was almost see-through and he's like why are you shooting on the mind and there was a bullet into the the bike frame right by his where his legs would go you nearly killed someone well i would have shot him in the leg but anyway they were

off-duty police officers but of course so because my brother and i were there all the time we just legged it down the mine dump and you have to be very careful because there's just these sinkholes that'll open so we knew where to run to get down and then we jumped on the roof of the shed and we just lay there for about four hours till the you know the dust settled then we cleaned everything off because everything was then full of you know mind up sand I put it back in the sock drawer and we never did that again but yeah it was frightening and so many things now when I look back at my childhood I go that day could have changed the trajectory of my life that day could have fucked everything for forever you know so many things that I go oh my god if that had gone half a

millimeter the other way I would not be here today it's just insane well what would happen if you shot a police an undercover policeman i mean a policeman dead at six years old in south africa because obviously a anywhere else it would be an accident and you're underage there'd be some repercussions but what would have happened then in that place and time who knows i probably would have gone to like a place of safety you know for because i i just know there was this thing called a children's place of safety because when we eventually left there we moved my mom got bought this house that was like a government initiative you know to get low-income people into housing so she bought this house and right next to us was a place of safety for children you know like that

like criminal children would go there so I probably probably would have lived next to my family at least they could have come they could have come and visit you've got the most interesting already you're only six and your childhood is so interesting so you immigrated to New Zealand when you're in your 30s but this was also around the time that you started comedy so did you practice comedy or did you start comedy when you were living in South Africa or so I mean then like in my 30s I was just working I was I could show you on my wall here I was just a designer I was crushing it in the design game in graphic design and I worked long hours and I I won all these awards and you know I was just like doing really well as a designer and that's how I moved over to

New Zealand then I saw I saw an ad in the paper do you want to move to New Zealand and I thought I do I went to this information night that they have and and they were talking about skill shortage and what you and then I saw on there they were looking for photo retouchers and graphic designers was skill shortage and I was like oh my god and so I applied and I that's how I got in to New Zealand on that I was doing photo retouching you know still crushing it I was working for Ogilvy I was like this is great you know I'm literally living my best life and then one of the guys that sat across from me uh who's also a photo retoucher at the time he said to me mate you are so funny he's from the uk and he goes you should go do stand-up he says he used to go to stand up all

the time he talked about it all the time he would send me links to stand up i'm like i've never even been to a stand-up show in my life now i'm not interested in any of this shit i'm crushing it as a designer here like i'm doing really well i was here for two months and they made me studio manager mate like on your bike I am doing really well and then I left Ogilvy to go over to a different agency and they or he then was in charge of my living gift you know as you do so he did a quick whip around and got me one of those Italian coffee maker things and uh and a fake contract to go to an open mic night at the comedy club and I was like oh but because I'd only been in the country for like 18 months at this point I was like 32 and some change and and I thought you

know what I'm gonna sign it because he had booked it in he had booked in the spot for me and he had done a group email excluding me and he had gotten most people at the agency to sign up so 70 people from the agency were also going on the night they'd already booked seats you know booked everything I was like I'm gonna have to go and so I said yeah sure I'll go do it I signed the contract we did this whole thing had a few beers and then this was the Friday the Monday I went around I did uh so it was a five minute spot I wrote four minutes of comedy left one minute so they can laugh you know breathing space yeah yeah like even now if I have an hour show I write an hour and a half just in case but back then my first gig I'm like I'll give him some time also that's pretty

optimistic to leave one fifth of the time for laughter yeah like I didn't know and a minute is a very long time like if you don't think a minute is a long time like those people who go i'd left the baby for a minute start the timer on your whatever device you have and then do stuff actual stuff like switch on the kettle start the shower go open so you know like do activities and you'll be amazed how much shit you get done in a minute it'll blow your mind so when you're on stage take that minute and make it feel like 10 minutes because it's even longer but anyway so when I did the open mic night it was the most frightening thing I'd ever done in my life my leg wouldn't stop shaking just involuntary my leg was shaking I could not make it stop I did my

five minutes afterwards I had a few beers I was just uh you know like everyone had a good time of course they did we'd all been working together for long hours six days a week you know we would have had a good time at a company picnic but then the next day I get a call from the owner of the club and he goes hi mate uh you're through to the next round like what it's like a competition he said it's a competition it was at the start of the comedy festival and melbourne has it everywhere has it where they call it raw quest where they look for new talent so they have all these competitions and then they get a new you know new people interested in comedy and i said oh no no i did it as a work thing i said i'm not gonna i'm not interested in comedy i'm crushing

it as a designer so i'm going to stay with a design situation i said you give that to someone who's interested in comedy you know give it to the next in line he said you're very funny everyone was laughing i said mate i knew 70 people in your audience that's why that's why everyone was laughing i said i said um the odds were stacked in my favor and he goes i was in the audience i laughed i don't know you and it's like oh and then he goes you should come this is a great opportunity and because i don't believe in missing opportunities because i don't believe in living with regret so i thought oh okay i'm gonna go back he goes come back try it again he says don't bring those people let's see how you're going so i didn't tell anyone i didn't even tell

leon the guy that got me into it i just went back wrote a new five minutes proper five minutes this time went back did it by then it didn't matter if it went well or not i was hooked after that second time it was just that adrenaline hit was just amazing and then when I walked the stage I knew I wanted to do this but then I won best newcomer that year like after three or four gigs and I was like this is great I've nailed comedy what a story I also love because I feel like so many people when they're in their 30s and especially when you're not just doing another career that you've studied when you're actually crushing it at another career that you've studied to then decide that you're going to have this complete pivot 180 and pursue an entirely

different career. I think a lot of people think like I'm too old or it's too late, or, you know, there's limitations around being able to go out there and try something new, especially when you've done so much study and so much prep to get to a place of success. What advice would you have for someone who's kind of in that stage? Do I go down this way or do I stick with what I know is safe yeah well see that's the thing i i think so many people get bogged down with the every day you know like i can't just quit my job i've got bills or i've got commitment you know i can't we've got this house we've got this and i just got to a point where i'm like i would rather be ecstatically happy in my life and live in a studio flat than be miserable and stay in a four-bedroom house

and then i you know what you can't ride two horses with one ass as long as you're still sucking in air i had to think that through i saw your faces with one i think that's in the bible yeah but like you just gotta knuckle down you're still breathing you don't want to get to 65 and go thank god i'm retiring i'm already getting panicky to think fuck i'm gonna have to retire in 15 years that's a retirement i'm like i'm not doing it i'm actually it's 14 i'm not doing it like i i don't want to do it i just want to whereas i think if i i mean i really enjoy design and i still do it like nothing says you you have to give up what you've done before i'm still designing shit for people i'm still doing my own designs i but owe it to yourself to at least even

if you then go okay i'll take six months or a year unpaid leave at my job and i'm gonna go and knuckle down and see if this is a thing you know or scale down your job go down to the bare bones you know just because you're comfortable now and you really want the tesla just stick it out with your 2008 jeep for another year see how you go money isn't everything you know i know heaps of people who drive teslas and they're absolutely fucking miserable oh totally money's not everything you can still make your own fun with grenades and guns as you did when you were a child yeah so okay i have this fear of we've spoken to a few comedians you know in our time in our 200 episodes I'm a public speaker that's fine but comedy I would have this innate fear of getting on stage

and being heckled or no one laughing or having that one minute of dead space being booed off stage yeah has that ever happened to you in your career shit yeah oh look I have a very open like I believe in full honesty with my audience in the saying that honesty that I think they can cope with so every comic on earth will die at some point on stage you will it's just like that's a given like not everyone has the best day at work every time they go to work we all have a day you go fuck did i was a waste i shouldn't have bothered but you hope that it happens early in your career you know so not on when you're recording a netflix special not when you're recording something for just for love you're hoping it happens when you're in a bar and most of them

i'm drunk anyway i won't remember your name tomorrow that's what you're hoping but yeah it's happened where i've gone out even my first one is like i couldn't remember anything i just went blank because i get really bad stage fright so sometimes i get out there and i all i can hear is my own blood in my ears you know like it's just insane but then i just go i'll say to them i go holy shit this is pretty full-on isn't it look at you look at me what are we doing you know and then it's like in that honesty it all it comes back to me but I think it has to scare you if you just rock out there and you're just comfortable as shit it means you're not as invested as you can be because then you're not petrified of losing it as if you go out there and you're like you know

this could go tits up at any moment like you're scared you don't want to lose it like that's I think that's a healthy approach to it and what's it like working in because comedy is we're seeing a big shift now in the last couple of years or last 10 years I guess but comedies it is heavily a male-dominated industry what's been your experience in it have you ever had a hard time with it have you ever found that you've had to fight harder or you know for a spot or for money or anything like that and I guess how have you seen it evolve to where it is now because there are so many funny women that we're seeing now that I feel like it wasn't that long ago we just weren't exposed to yeah I mean even like you know how long have I been doing it now 12 13 years

no longer 14 years and it just blows my mind uh the amount of women that's in it now and i always say to people when they go why aren't there more women i go because women don't want to take as much shit as men honestly like you're dealing with drunk people day in and day out you get her hassled online and i think most women go it's not fucking worth the hassle you know just to get through that shit and i totally get that but now it's getting more where women will stand up for themselves and stand up for other women you know just go I will have a sister's back but it has changed like and I think things can only change when when we make the change like I've been in situations where I've realized like say after five years of working in a situation where I've been

with the same team for five years and I thought we were all on the same pay and it's all dudes I'm the only woman and then I find out I get paid not even a quarter what they get paid and so immediately I go this is bullshit you need to fix this and they go no this is how it is then I walked away from that situation and I will never go back I was very disappointed when they then got two other women for the same money that they had me on so now they those ladies were getting half and they still are of what I used to get and I'm like why are you underselling like we can only fix a broken system if we all go no this is horseshit yeah that's the only way things change you know yeah it's an upward battle in that sense though because i get it like i get that as

women we're like fuck this we deserve the same amount but then there are so many situations and so many women where they're like yeah we do but at the end of the day i got bills to pay and this is the only job i can get we're all pushing this big you know truck uphill see but that's the same thing is people go I can't follow my dream of becoming a stand-up because I have bills to pay you know what they're always looking for people in retail they are always looking for like I will go pick fruit like it's only when you go I'm not doing that fucking job then you're in deep shit yeah but I also think in the instance of what you just described it's the lack of transparency like if two women have taken the role not knowing what other people are earning and there's that

lack of transparency there it's not that it's not really an opt-in situation it's that they don't know what they're being compared to or that they're not even aware of the inequality that's happening or taking place yeah well maybe in other situations but not in this one because i was really fucking vocal everyone knew that is good oh they still know we're still talking about it five years down the track so actually you have a netflix special which is overqualified loser So, like, we have a joke here that we often say we're underqualified but super enthusiastic and that's what – Also just have a lot of experience, as in, like, we live the lessons

so then tell the stories more so than being qualified. But what does it take for someone to become an overqualified loser? Well, I mean, initially the show was just called Loser, but the Americans said – Oh, that sounds like it's punching down. Yeah, that's exactly what the Americans said. They go, we can't call a global show Loser because the Americans won't watch it.

It's too negative. So I said, okay, make it overqualified. I think it's like if you know, it's basically knowing your strengths. I always say if you own your shit, you can't get bullied. Like even now, people will go, someone said to me yesterday, well, you don't fucking run yourself to the salad bar. No, I don't. Those are two things.

You just said two things I don't like, salad and running. So, no, I don't. You know, you cannot hurt someone if you own your shit. Like I always say, if you have a tail and you spend 90% of your life hiding that tail fucking embrace it show people go oh my god you want to believe i've got a tail and it wags when i'm happy like embrace it because then if someone goes oh fuck you've got a tail yeah i do i've showed everyone you've already you put it out there and you're embracing it i'm not saying be proud of all your shit but you go this is it like you know good bad ugly i own

my shit now let's let's discover your shit then if you if you're happy to climb into and that's what i say in the show too like the reason i wrote that show was 100 during the olympics the last not this last one before pre-covid there was an australian woman who won a gold medal and they did a story on her and just all her struggles to get to that point and i read the article and i thought fuck man you know the shit that athletes have to go through it's just phenomenal like i just have to push myself mentally to do stuff athletes do the mental the physical like everything thing they have to and i just thought that's amazing and they have all this outside shit going on and then i don't know why because i never do it but i i clicked on the comment section

and then all of these men were talking about how unattractive this woman was and this one guy nathan said he goes you're good on her but fuck what a dog fucking nathan and i looked at his photos and he was the ugliest motherfucker i'd seen in my life they always are they always are if you're gonna comment yeah it's always i always get these guys with the double chins with the fighter underneath commenting on my weight i'm like dude you look like you're going for a wank championship because no one would fuck you and then yes the only thing he's going to the olympics for yeah but now this guy nice is like what a dog and i looked at his photos and i thought if you're gonna comment on someone's

looks you better be smoking fucking hot so when people look at your photo they go oh yeah no I get it you're an expert uh I am a dog I also think it's a reflection of other people's own insecurities like you know when somebody's insecure about something in themselves that's why they punch down I think sometimes we do see it in comedy people using themselves like being super self-deprecating or punching down on themselves as a way of getting a laugh like what's your views on that because I think there's owning your shit but then there's also like using yourself as the butt of a joke well I mean in the beginning of my comedy career I did I I was the punchline and also because I don't pick on my audience so I always feel like and I tell them

if I do a solo show I go I will not pick on you I will still line up shows a bit different I might because lineup shows they're not just there for me I feel like if they're coming to my show those people are invested in seeing me and I'm there for them like it's a it's a very intimate thing it's like going on a date with someone but when it's a lineup show it's like you know they might be there to see the first or second guy on the bill they're not really invested in so you might get drunk people yelling shit out there's like a bachelor party in the back and and so then I need to work that muscle you know that's sort of putting a fuckhead back in his place you know just in case i get one but usually my solo shows i i don't get that kind of thing but so in the

beginning i used to use myself as a punching bag quite a lot but then something happened where people would contact me all the time like i get messages all the time emails and in my dms and stuff and people go as a fat woman i appreciate you being out there as a lesbian i appreciate you being out there as an immigrant i appreciate you being out there as a woman i appreciate you being out there then it started changing a bit and it's like uh i've never heard of you before but uh i work with this guy and he used one of your punchlines on me and i had to look you up and i like most of your stuff and then i look up their profile and they'd be you know plus size model like myself and then i realized not only like i'm using it as punchlines on me but i'm

giving them bullies amazing material to use on fat people at work so i'm giving them like better material then oh you don't run to a salad bar because that's not very smart and I didn't want to give someone else you know put my words in someone else's mouth so I'm like oh I'm going to stop doing that so I don't think there's anything wrong with it if you punch into yourself like do it that's your own shit you know like I know there's been a lot of discussion since Nanette came out should you shouldn't you and you know what if that is what is funny to you and what people find funny then do it as long as you're not punching other people you know as long as you're punching into your own gut good on you but don't punch into other people's guts and try

not to give ammunition if i had to subscribe to what is attractive to people i don't know what size i would choose i just had a friend who had gastric surgery and she lost a lot of weight i'm like that doesn't sit well with me i honestly don't think my spirit wants to fit in that i don't see myself in it and also it's sort of a safety thing for me so it's like i cannot explain that to people but if that is their knee jerk it's the same people who would tell an immigrant to fuck off back to where you came from do you know what i mean like you will not fix those people or people that go women aren't funny you're not going to get it out of their system that is their view and it's like those people the same people go fat people are lazy okay cool like you have there's

no basis for your argument and in fact there's been a study done to say the opposite you know because we're not going out fucking we're not we're not in clubs you're working hard we're at home working i think there's actually a study that i read somewhere that said women are funnier so let's just go with that also how can you say women aren't funny well like when i grew up you had the golden girls you know like there's so many fucking shows where women are just absolutely crushing it and you're like how can you possibly say women aren't funny where do you think it comes from um being a fucking dumbass yeah sexism it's always women and never have never been as smart women have never been as funny they've never been as yeah we're not we weren't even allowed to vote

or drive but it's so funny like those people who go i usually don't find women funny because they always come up to me and the order will compare other people they go i normally don't find you know uh julia morris i'm like actually she's a close friend of mine so what should you fucking say you know like they don't think we know each other it's like we're basically sharing an office she's my office wife but then if I can be bothered I go in your family who's the funny people like do you have does your mom crack you up oh my mom's very funny okay and your aunties and that because like my family back in the day when because my grandmother was a chef my auntie's a chef everything was always around the kitchen and you know my dad was one of eight my mom's got

like 11 plus siblings so there's a lot of aunties you know and they were all in the kitchen baking and chatting and the biggest laughs in my life was heard in the kitchen with all the aunties and I know it's the same for my brother because he was next to me and I know it's the same for my sister and then you know like my uncles would come in and they would laugh their asses off and then go like women are just funny like around the house it's your mom that's cracking you up when your dad's confusing you. Yes, exactly. Have you found it more difficult?

We've heard a lot of comedians come out and talk about this. Over the years, have you found it more difficult to safely present a comedy show and not be called out for something? Because there's a lot of things that comedians used to thrive on. If we look back in the day, it was a lot of racist jokes, a lot of sexist jokes. Oh, yeah, the PC gone mad thing. Yeah.

How do you find comedy's changed now? Is it a real challenge for you? Have you ever been called out for something? No, I think it's fucking brilliant. I honestly think it's fucking brilliant. When people, at the minute, this is the same, tell me you're a fuckwit without telling me you're a fuckwit. People go, that's a busy guy, man.

They're just trying to silence us. I'm like, why? Not allowing racist shit. Not allowing sexist shit. Not allowing to punch down on trans kids. Yeah, you're not supposed to say that shit. You know, you're not supposed to go for immigrants. You're not supposed to go for women.

You're not supposed to just stay in your lane. there's heaps of funny shit out there without having to tramp on someone else's head what do you think for you personally is too personal for you to share like what stuff do you kind of go because we I guess when you're a comedian you mine your own personal life for content yeah what sort of stuff and where do you draw the line on that well I mean I keep my family life very private like I always say I kind of go by what people google about me like if you type in your name it'll autocomplete to the stuff that people ask most i i get age husband kids names stuff like that i'm like why do you want to know this shit i get net worth and i'm like people want to know

what i'm making that's not enough i can tell you it's not what google says yeah i reckon that too i've also seen that net worth i'm like who's asking who wants it it's other people in our industry who wants to know mine said 26 million i was like i was like cute guys i was like not the worst rumor to be out there but I was like definitely not 26 million dollars okay so speaking of family life Eshel you do have two little kiddies is my understanding yes did you grow up I mean you said you knew quite early on you were gay did you also always know that you wanted children and did that ever were you ever like how is that going to happen I'll do it on my own what if I don't meet someone I'll get a sperm donor I mean like there are so many ways to have kids

these days i actually read the best thing i can't remember where it came up but you're pregnant like you're having your first baby and somebody in your family had said oh was it planned yeah yeah that's that was my that's my wife's sister who lives in brisbane and to this day we argue whether she said it or not but i swear to god i swear it on my left tit she said it we We put it on speakerphone and we phoned the whole family. And when we told her sister, she was like the fifth person we phoned, I swear to God, she goes, oh, my God, was it a planned pregnancy? And I remember just looking at each other and I just,

I couldn't believe she had said the words. And I was like, oh, no, the dildo exploded. Like, what the fuck do you think happened here? It was so funny. You literally fell on a ditch. The wife had the kids. I was saving my vagina for something better. so okay okay fuck okay so with kids I always knew I wanted to have kids and even during my

because I only came out when I was 26 so up until then I was like um you know even when I was 16 my best friend at school got pregnant and I was like oh my god what a great idea you're so smart but then I was like oh I really want to have kids and I thought I was gonna give myself a husband but then I came out and I'm like no but I'm still gonna have kids and then my first like proper serious relationship the woman that I moved over to New Zealand with she had a little boy so when I met him he was three well when I met her he was three uh I didn't meet him and then tell me about your mom yeah anyway they still live here we're still really close I actually just went past this morning she made me a little emergency kit for Australia in case I get COVID

and then you know like he's a grown-ass man now he's like 22 and I was like oh this is it this is you know all I needed but then later I was like no when we split up and I was like I really want to have kids and then I met my wife and we were like should we have kids should we and then we started doing comedy because I met her you know as I started with a comedy journey and we started traveling a lot and I'm like should we shouldn't we we need to make a call now and I was getting older too I was like 36 and then we just she said no we're gonna we're gonna do it and then you know like i said there's so many different ways you can go ivf sperm donor you know a random guy few drinks you know but yeah we just went with a sperm donor and artificial insemination initially

we decided she'll do one first because i was so busy with work so she'll have the first one i'll have the second one but then when it came around to the second one i was like 40 years old i said you know what i look at our daughter and i can't imagine i could love a child more just because they came out of my body I said we know this recipe works and she's younger than me I go let's just do that one again and that's all we did and that you know I'm very glad because they're quite attractive children I you wouldn't you wouldn't want to make the second one and then they're not as attractive as the other one and you're gonna go I and then you're at fault yeah because the only difference then is you yeah exactly or what if that one's not as smart like because my wife's

super smart. And here comes my kid walking into door frames and shit. And I'm like, no, the dumb one is mine. Your kid will be the funny one. That's not always hot or smart. Always. There's always a, you know, you can compensate with the funny. It's fine. But Ursula, you said like you travel so much and you're always on the road with work. Like how do you manage motherhood around that? Well, back in the day when we could still travel, both my kids, so they're five and eight now, but by the time the covid hit my son was had just turned three and they'd both been around the world twice that's insane because we just traveled together like they've been to right through

scotland the uk africa canada the us you name it they've been there they've been so many places in australia that most australians have never been to you know and even now like i always book a house or an apartment so that they can come with me because for the last two years i've still been going to Australia I've just had to jump through a lot more hoops to get there but I don't want to expose them to COVID because New Zealand's had a real low key and and we sort of then they have a very small school that they go to this little farm school so trying to protect them so what I do now because they don't really travel with me at the moment I will fly back and forth because it's only a three to four hour flight depending on the you know tailwind then I fly back to New Zealand

I'll be here for three or four days then fly back to Australia carry on with the tour you know so it's sort of to me like in the beginning it really bothered me you know that I would spend time away from my kids but then a technology makes it a lot easier and be a friend of mine whose dad like she's the same age as me and her dad was a commercial fisherman she said and he would be at sea for three four months of the year then come home be home for a month and then go back three four months and then come back she just thought everyone's dads did that and when she went to middle school she was talking to a friend of hers and she was talking about and when dad comes back with the surprises he's like what what do you mean she goes you know when he comes back from work and

he brings like a suitcase and then she said because he would bring collect all these surprises wherever they would stop and then open the suitcase and her and her brother would just dive in and get all these surprises out of the bag you know and then she realized not everyone's dads did that she says and my immediate gut feeling to that was pity for them that they didn't get a cool upbringing like I did she goes not thinking I'm missing out on months with my dad she goes because when he was home for that month he was just full-on dad for a month and then that made me think you know like when I used to work in advertising I would easy work 10 to 15 hour days six days a week you know because there's always deadlines and

pictures and you name it and i would usually bring work home so if i still worked in advertising i would probably see my kids less than i do now because i'd leave like 6 30 7 o'clock in the morning and then i'd get back eight o'clock at night when they were already in bed so i would only see them basically on a sunday and i'd be exhausted and still have to clean the house whereas now when i'm home if i'm home for a week i do everything wake up bath school every you name at every meal I cook for them and then I go away for a week and then I'm back for a week but then it's full on again so I think if you collate all the hours I spend more time with them now and definitely more quality time and this is their life like they talk about me going to work like

you know I used to talk about my mum going to work when she was an accountant going mum's going to work and this is how they're just like oh yeah you're going to Melbourne for work and they understand that just life and that becomes normal how do you think I mean obviously your kids are a little bit older now but how do you think that motherhood has changed you I'm definitely a lot calmer and a lot more tolerant I sort of approach things from a what would my kids do in this situation or what would I want like if I'm somewhere and I'm getting frustrated because someone's kids are out of control or something then I always picture okay if I'm not home right now but my wife and kids could be somewhere and they could be running amok in in like a

bunning somewhere and I wouldn't want someone to get frustrated with that I'm also a lot more helpful with like I've always been helpful like but now if I see a parent traveling alone with a child or you know if they've got two or three kids with them I will always help them get this stuff out because I know like getting out of a plane with kid is it's annoyed me you know and like you don't have enough hands and it's awful like you know it's the fucking worst day of your life yeah and we put so much stress on ourselves you know and I've flown long haul where a kid just will not stop crying and like i will take that baby and walk around with it just so the mom can chill out for a bit you know just stuff like that like i do think it's made me a lot calmer and a

lot more tolerant of other people's shit whereas in the past i'm like no not a fucking baby you know your new show actually is called it's personal i mean you're not going to share too much about it but give us a little synopsis little little light sprinkling what's it about besides personal things all the personal things you kind of i'm assuming i'm assuming yeah well I mean, it is. It's just all the personal stuff. I just think during this pandemic, because we couldn't travel, the only way we could stay in touch with each other was via social media

and people started oversharing. And now we have TikTok too, which that came in in full steam during lockdown, you know, and people are just flopping all of their shit out. They're not just, you know, in the past you could just write on Facebook some, well, you know, it's nice to know when a friend will have your back and when they won't, dot, dot, dot, you know, And then everyone would sort of jump on, what's wrong, hun?

I've sent you a message. Passive aggressive. They're like, DM me, babe, DM me. I've DMed you, babe. Yeah, yeah. It's always that, like, give me a call if you need me, hun. I hate those people. But now, now that we have TikTok, it's no longer passive aggressive.

They're like, all right, I wasn't going to share this, but story time. And you're like, then they go out with the most personal shit you've ever heard in your life. every I'm like holy I haven't shared stuff with my therapist like some of these people are sharing on social media and I just think it's so crazy and then I thought more and more now because I during lockdowns I would make this thing called the locumentary where every day I would try and load a funny video for people but that just really got these thirst up for finding shit out about me and they would they would ask me directly if you would go can you tell me more about yourself or

what about this and you know and I just thought it's so crazy so I thought a lot of things have happened to me in the last you know three years and that I've not shared and I thought I'm going to share it but one-on-one with my audience because I always feel it's like it's like a conversation that I have with the audience yeah and because I get really bad stage fright I think of the audience as just one person that I'm talking to like it's one entity and I also think because they sort of bond as an audience you don't realize that when you sit in a room but you do bond with the audience if something goes bad that's why the whole audience go or you know one person laughs loud or everyone laughs at that person because that's sort of our approach and and

so I'm just going to flop out some personal stuff and I got a personal trainer during lockdown and I've never had one of those I've never joined a gym before so that was an experience too you know just having this personal trainer so I want to talk a bit about that and and just stuff that it happened during all our multitude of lockdowns because I spent so much time in quarantine that I thought this is a good idea I should share some personal shit with people it's brilliant it's absolutely brilliant not not on TikTok and not crying about showing your vulnerabilities it's interesting you said this because we were literally talking about this yesterday about how vulnerability has become a commodity like people use it now not as a way of like sharing or

connecting but people use it as a way of getting comments and getting likes it's transformed and you know now I think that even you see influencers doing it and they'll post a photo of themselves you know upset or at a time in their life where you shouldn't be taking fucking content you should be just being sad and then maybe reflect on it afterwards but I can't even imagine being in a state of like complete anxiety or true trauma or going through a real life event and then thinking I should take a photo of this or a video of this so I can share this with my audience because they'll relate to it it's very lucky that we have people doing that otherwise where she wouldn't have a content but it's so it's so funny though when you look at those people

on tiktok and you're like number one get out of your car why are you sitting in your car crying it's always in a car yeah it's always like them in a car talking and then checking themselves a bit it's like i think it's because the lighting's better the lighting's really good in a car like if i ever take a selfie fuck and it's so much better in the car yeah but that's okay you're still young when you're given another 15 years you're gonna be plucking your fucking eyebrows in that car or your chin hairs that's what it is yeah your nipple hairs let's be real not in a car they do those ones in the bathroom no you will be able to do it in 15 years because your tits will be on your knees exactly well fucking play actually you are just an absolute dream we can't

thank you enough for coming on i feel like i mean you probably don't feel the same i feel like we're best friends maybe we'll hang out sometime we are we are yeah mate you've got 26 mil in the bank we'll be straight of course yeah we definitely are now tell people where they can see when the show is starting how they can get tickets and where people can find you people can go to either my website ashleycoulson.com or livenation.com.au or just google it instead of googling my net worth or what my kids names are or my husband's name um just go ahead and google it yeah what's your what's the old instagram handle it's just ashley carlson i'm the only one in the world except for that poet lady with a weird smile ashley thanks so much for coming on and putting up with us today

you really you really you've you've put me in such a good mood which i'm here for say thank you saying thank you thank you thank you that's great all right my love so you know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every week and Brittany, you can kick it off. What was your suck? My suck was yesterday. So the sun came out finally. I felt like it was our first day. I thought the sun was dead to be honest. Yeah. RIP the sun. The sun came out. I went to the local, this local shop. Oh, well I can just tell you it's a place called the health emporium. It wasn't a secret. It's a place called the health emporium to get myself some lunch. Got Delilah, got a picnic blanket and I was going down to the

a good dog park. I was going to lay in the sun for a little while and just have some bliss and eat my sausage roll. Did you just say for a little Lyle? A little lie down. For a little Lyle. I think you said, I think you meant to say little lie down or a little while, and it turned into a little Lyle. I mean, trademark what's called Lyle. So I get down to the dog park. I've got this delicious gourmet, very, very healthy sausage roll in my bag. And I start to throw the ball for Delilah. And then I turn around and there's literally a dog running away with my whole sausage roll in his mouth he went into my bag took my sausage roll that's fucked that was so good the whole thing is running i mean like what a day to be alive for that but also what yes that

very happy dog what is the um what's the etiquette when that happens do you give it back you don't have it do you go to the dog owner and say excuse me can you please give me seven dollars fifty for my sausage roll or do you just let that dog take it i'm in hindsight i took don't blame yourself i took a sausage roll for that dog's bad behavior britney don't let that dog gaslight you into thinking that you're in the wrong he gaslit me it's not just men you have to worry about fucking dogs out there my sweet i just okay can i have two no okay yeah go on thank you i'm having two number one but this may feel really good and if you're listening to this i just want to tell you that you made my day yesterday and this is gonna make me sound like a wanker but i'm gonna

say anyway because you know i've been super depresso because i've had been in a breakup i've really have not been can i just say how well you're doing for someone who i know has had their ups and down through this period like you show up every day to work like everything's fine and I know underneath the water it's like it's a swamp it's like I'm bogged it's like you step it's a dirty swamp full of so much bacteria think of stepping into a swamp with gumboots and you can't get your feet out that's what I have been like but on the gram and on the podcast you guys would think I was probably doing really great which is great that's you know fake social media living your best life not your real life. No, I've been feeling so shitty about myself. And, um, I was just going,

I think it was on the way. Oh my God. It was on the way to get the sausage roll yesterday. It was when I was walking down to get the sausage roll. So from the highest to the lowest. Yep. In within 10 minutes, this girl, this car of girls drove past me and they started screaming at me from the car. And they're like, as the car, the car was going past, like, we love you. We love life on cut. And I was like, yes, this is amazing. Like, so that itself made my day. Then I get to the park which is 10 minutes later and i have a dm from the girl and she's like i just wanted to i was a girl that just drove past in the car and she goes i didn't think it was possible to look better in real life than your instagram but i just want to tell you look really cute today

oh r.i.p i was like maybe i need why does no one slide into my dms and say shit like that well i mean no one else says it to me except a girl that flies past in a car like no one else but i mean like usually when people see me they're like oh that girl looks like she's having a mental breakdown but it goes to show you that like a compliment to a stranger or to anyone goes a long way so and you never know what anyone else is going through and I think this is where it comes back full circle like you don't know what anyone in this life is experiencing at that time and one little act of kindness can really make a difference on the flip side of that one little asshole comment can be the unraveling of someone as well we can have a lot more impact than what

we think all right my suck for the week is well I mean my suck for the week was definitely how the holiday from Byron ended and how it just went from being the most wonderful relaxing like wholesome time with family a really great 36th birthday I had such a good time to then 36 I know don't tell anyone to then being like quite chaotic and also just so devastating for the people in the northern rivers region like the fact that they've gone through it a second time and it's just hit that area so bad I just can't catch a break it's fucking horrible it truly is so that is my suck for the week. Yeah. Being up there and seeing how much people were affected and just how frantic it is when that's happening to try and figure out is my home under, is my business under and

seeing that kind of just permeate throughout the whole community. I was like, this is a truly horrible thing. My suite for the week, which is completely separate. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a business goal kicking moment. We launched a new product for Tony May and it was a necklace that I'm really sentimental about. I'm wearing it. It's a mama necklace. Did you bring me one? I've got Delilah now. You can be a mama. So it's a little necklace that we made. It's for Mother's Day and it's for motherhood

and it was something that meant a lot to me. And I thought, we did this really cute photo shoot and the kids were all involved and it makes it look like they're so much more well-behaved than they are and fake news, such fake news. But actually we do have an episode coming up soon. We are going to be doing an episode in line with Mother's Day around what a transformative

and just life-changing experience it is to enter the scary-ass hood of motherhood. But that is coming up in a couple of weeks' time. And in the interim, we will be going on holidays next week. Yep, we're going on holidays next week. We'll talk about that on Thursday's Ask Uncut. So that is it. Please keep your questions for Ask Uncut coming in

to the Instagram, Life Uncut Podcast. And if you loved today's episode, please jump on Apple Review, leave us a review. Five stars would be great. You can also join Life Uncut Podcast on Instagram or you can join the Life Uncut discussion group on Facebook, which is where all the down and dirty conversations go down. And if you didn't like today's episode,

something's got to be wrong with you because it is so funny. Not us, Ursula. We're not us. I mean, sometimes we can be funny. But Ursula, she's... That's why we get comedians on. See you guys all on Thursday. Don't forget to tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog,

tell your friends and share the love because we love love! We'll be right back.