The Joe Walker Podcast - The Craft Of Comedy And The Art Of A Lasting Partnership — Andy Lee

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

Andy Lee is one half of iconic Australian comedy duo Hamish & Andy.Full transcript available at: josephnoelwalker.com/andy-leeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ladies and gentlemen, this episode is brought to you by none other than my weekend email. Yes, that's right. Every weekend I send out a few interesting links, articles and sources that I've been reading. Last weekend, for example, I shared five links, including a blog post by Greg Mankiw, which answers the same question I asked Lord Skidelski last week, that is, why did Keynes use the letter Y to denote income? And Pericles' funeral oration, the speech, or more likely a roughly similar version, was given by Athenian statesman and general Pericles at a public funeral for all those who had been killed at the end of the first year

of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE. Here's the best bit taken from Richard Crawley's translation of Thucydides. It sums up the Athenians' spirit of community and sense of the common good. Quote, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact, but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters. For, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties, not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events, even if we cannot originate. And instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary

to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises, we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point and both united in the same persons, end quote. But I digress. To join my mailing list and get access to my weekend emails, head to thejspod.com now and sign up. That's all. Back to the show. You're listening to the Jolly Swagman podcast. Here's your host, Joe Walker. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, swagmen and swagettes, welcome back to the show. It is great to have you back and what a fantastic conversation we have in store. This was my first face-to-face interview of the year, so I was very fortunate that it was with a great bloke and a funny man. My guest is one half of the iconic Australian comedy duo Hamish and Andy, most likely the

Andy half. Along with his best mate Hamish, Andy Lee is most known for their successful drive time radio show, The Hamish and Andy Show, and its various incarnations. The show is the highest rated radio series in Australian history, with a national audience of more than 2 million listeners. The pair also have successful TV careers and are increasingly branching out to pursue solo work while maintaining their podcast show Hamish and Andy, which is probably Australia's most popular podcast. I caught up with Andy in Richmond, Melbourne to chat about life lessons, the rules of radio, the craft of comedy and the art of a lasting partnership. Ladies and gentlemen,

without much further ado, please enjoy this conversation with the great Andy Lee. Andy Lee, welcome to the Jolly Swagman podcast. Joe, it's good to finally be here. Your persistence is fantastic. And it's not that i was ducking and weaving this this uh this chance to catch up but um timing was always the issue but we found the window i sort of feel like the kalahari bushman of podcast hosts just patiently slowly grinding you down you must be exhausted no i was always excited and enthused just um well i was going away the first time around and then we had another show coming out. Yeah.

But you did really well. It's like not a weekly. It's like checking in kind of biannually. I was very calculated. So the first and last time we met, as we were discussing before, was at the Postie in Richmond with our mutual friend Aseem in late 2017.

And then I think every six months since then, I've invited you onto the podcast. I like it. It's like Hamish and I have a standing invite for Tom Cruise on our podcast. He doesn't know there's a standing invite, but we just like to mention it every time that, of course, standing invite to Tom Cruise to come on. If he ever does come on, I'm not sure what we'd say actually

because we don't really have guests anymore, but we'd have to accept him. Tom, if you're listening. Yes, I'm sure he would. So I got you a gift, not the bottle opener, another gift. Wow. But you can't have it because it's not here. Can I have it eventually or just can't have it eventually i think okay let's see how i perform have you read born standing up steve martin's

autobiography no okay so i bought you born standing up oh it's one of the best books i read last year yeah top two or three gorgeous book i love steve martin so yeah that'll be really really good so it's got quite short and i don't normally find myself laughing out loud at a book yep and it was genuinely funny but the two key like themes were be so good they can't ignore you yep and the importance of belonging to like a scene yeah and the creativity that sort of bubbles up from that interesting really cool book. Yeah. I thought you'd like it.

But what's interesting about that book is the first two sentences. So it opens with, I spent 18 years as a stand-up comedian. The first 10 years were spent learning. The next four years were spent refining. And then the final four years were spent in wild success. Wow. And I feel like for you and hamish it's almost precisely backwards like 2001 to 2005 a sort of learning and refining yeah then 2006 onwards

great success is that your sense as well um we i mean i don't think you stop learning and refining, particularly for anything creative because tastes change. Yeah. And you kind of want to, A, we want to evolve our own game a little bit because it's fun too. But also you cannot be doing the same stuff as you were doing 10 years ago for a lot of reasons. The most obvious one at the moment is times have changed for what you can and can't say. So you can see a lot of people getting cancelled now from 10, 20 years ago. Hamish and I never

really were in that realm, but that's the obvious one. Moods change, words change. So you have to kind of update your game. And then taste change. At the moment, just how people consume media or anything you're making is the big one. We have to think about that a little bit. So what's an example of how that's changed? Well, just having Instagram. When we started, we didn't have to worry about any social media yeah and now it's such a big part of everyone's platform uh and so you know i was

probably a reluctant joiner of that stuff like i wasn't particularly good i'm very late to Instagram my personal profiles. But we weren't focusing on that. We were focusing on doing the best radio show or TV show we could. But it turns out that those other channels is probably the way a lot of people will see or find you. So it's important to keep those channels, you know, just as pumping. Yeah. So I'd like to cover that early period and then and then the later period yeah but i want to add something onto the beginning which is sort of your your background and upbringing where were you born born in melbourne um my mom and dad were from the

country both primary school teachers they had my older brother in wangaratta which is kind of central victoria yeah and then traveled down to have me i don't know why they already had the instinct that i couldn't hack it in the in on a farm or or couldn't hack a rural life but they were probably pretty accurate um and so yeah i was born um in the eastern suburbs of melbourne which is look it's very expensive to live there now but at the time my dad bought the house for fifty one thousand dollars i think and he's my mom's dad my grandpa went through him was he was so angry with him for the purchase and you'll never be able to pay it off and what are you doing how could anyone pay this much for a house but it was a 30 year loan at at 17.5%, I think, was the interest rates back then.

Yeah. That would have been the 80s? Yep, 81, maybe 1980. But it turns out for a fellow like my dad who's not really interested in finances at all, he's extremely cautious in that. But it turns out to be easily the best investment he's ever made. That's why I keep telling him to sell it to say he can actually realize obviously he's like no no i'm very happy

where are they still in the family home but um yeah it's uh it was it was great it was a great spot to grow up um very much suburban life and and the schools that i went to just within walking distance we we like a jock a nerd something? On a Venn diagram I was probably in the middle of both of those circles and they did they connected um I uh was captain of music as well as being captain of sport for the school which never happened well hadn't happened so yeah if i should have been at one end you know probably bullying the other but but i'm hugely into my music and uh and so you know played in all the orchestras bands etc um and then yeah hugely in my sport as well so it was a good good chance to be across both back at school can you tell me about the experience of learning your mum had cerebral vasculitis?

Yeah, that's a strange thing to happen. And I'm sure so many people listening have close ones that, you know, have contracted disease. But this one was particularly confusing because no one knew what it was. Not even doctors knew what it was for a very, very long time. But yeah, mum forgot how to kind of talk, walk, who we all were for a long time. At least three to six months. I can't really remember now.

So it just happened really gradually. Apparently they, well, gradually over like five days. She started, uh, my mum's pretty proper. Um, I've never heard her swear. You know, it was all about manners when we were growing up. And, um, I was watching, uh, the Australian Open tennis. We were backing up in the country. And I would have been 15.

And my mum walked past a tennis player called Mary Pearce playing, a French woman who was quite buxom and my mum said, that lady's got big boobs. I turned around and looked at my mum and went, that's a really odd thing to say and then she said, and you're not allowed to touch them, and walked off. I was like, okay, no. Hadn't planned that. Wasn't sure if I'd be allowed to anyway. But she started saying strange things, and then she was in a lot of pain at night,

and then she couldn't walk all of a sudden. And so that was when Dad was like, my dad's like the last person to take anyone to hospital yeah if you have any injury it's kind of like rub it better it's like it's pretty much what so um probably he'd gone through those steps as mum and then uh we were in a car heading back to melbourne to kind of find out what was going on and and it went pretty pretty downhill pretty quickly from there um so i don't yeah mum went into hospital she was um we can actually see it from this building up at the epworth there um and uh and then went into st vincent's uh and was there for a long time as they

tried to work out what was going on took a biopsy of her brain, which is pretty intrusive. They kind of cut out the part of your skull and take the biopsy. But they thought it was MS for a while, started treating her for that and it nearly killed her. The doctors kind of told us about two weeks to live, which again, I'm not sure if I ever believed because I don't remember that ever being a shock. Although you kind of compartmentalize some of these things but I don't remember it ever being really a shock I was kind of like oh well there's been a pretty drastic downward spiral that probably seemed to be the conclusion but we just kind of want to work out what's happening. And so, yeah, from there, she leveled.

Still didn't know who we were, so kind of go in every day like Groundhog Day and say, hi, my name's Andy, I play the trumpet with my dad. And she, yeah, one day just kind of snapped out of it. Wow. Wow. Yeah. It was a bit weird. Well, it's actually very weird.

But she was the first, I think I'm right in saying she's the first to survive it in Melbourne. But it's extremely rare disease. And so if anyone's listening to this, please reach out if you haven't. I did another podcast years and years ago, or even might have been on a radio show, and there was a 20-year-old girl in Frankston that had it, which is so sad to have it so young.

And I'd gone through a similar thing and reached out. Because it's so rare, it was easy. It was nice for someone to actually chat to someone else about it that has gone through it in the family situation. your mom keep her memories from before it happened or did she need to relearn everything no she did and she's like a savant with stuff which is really strange like i'll say hey we went on that camping trip like where it rained i can't remember where it was because i'll be cape connor and it was august 1987 you know yeah we drove up there on a sunday she knows all that stuff but then like basic maths and

those type of things she struggles with so like real-time um cognitive stuff she still struggles with i think she just gives up because she thinks she can't do it but she did have to learn a lot of that stuff again she had to learn speech again and then occupational therapy just to try and you know get through everyday life um but she's in great shape now that's great it's obviously impossible to run the experiment of your life again but do you think that experience had an impact on your personality? Oh, yeah. Both positively and negatively. So the positives, I would say our family is so close because of it.

We hang out every week. We talk every day. And not just to mum, but like the the whole group my siblings and my brother sister and my dad and i so that is just i don't think would have happened unless we'd been brought together for that reason and a central person to care for and i've talked about that with mum before i said hey if there's a silver lining and i know you have to had to go through all this and you're in you know you have have a have a pusher and you have to sleep kind of 16 hours a day at the moment. But the silver lining, we're all really happy

and we all get along really, really well. And she's kind of proud of that, which is good. But the negative at the time, and I've tried to kind of improve in this department was I kind of didn't really consider anyone's problems real like when you've kind of when your mum's sick and doesn't remember you or she's been told two weeks to live when a friend of mine saying I'm worried this girl doesn't like me I was kind of very dismissive of people's issues not Not in a way where I'd

say, hey mate, get the hell over it. More just like not listening, not taking it in, not really trying to fix it. Just judging people's problems on a scale that I've invented. And that's something that I had to improve on and have, just because, you know, the smallest things can emotionally mean a lot to someone, even more so because we all deal with emotions differently and can be just as important for someone's mindfulness than something that's drastic is someone, you know, terminally ill. So you've got to really take the time,

and I've improved in that way, take the time to listen and actually take in and help rather than kind of judge and dismiss. When you finished high school, what were your aspirations? I wanted to be a musician mainly. Yeah, I still love playing music. I was performing but didn't necessarily see myself going down that path. It was funny enough but never really thought I'll be a comedian or anything.

And then I was on my way to Melbourne Union and actually wanted to be an accountant was the first thing that I thought I'd do because I was pretty good with numbers. And I kind of like things being in order and accounted for. So yeah, it was kind of a mixed bag but mainly playing music. I was playing gigs four or five nights a week with my brother. And we were writing a lot and that was that's kind of still where I get giddy and fanboy in fact last night was Michael Gudinski's memorial at Rod Laver Arena and I went to the Corner Hotel which is around the corner from here which is a great band venue the Rolling Stones played there back in the day, but I've seen Saint Josier there and Amy Shark more recently

and, you know, back in the day, Living End and Xavier Ard, Jack Johnson, they're like, they're just, it was the great venue for bands that are on their way up or on their way down and you get this like little kind of 700-person room where you can actually get up close and personal to them yeah so i went back there because michael uh gavinsky and molly meldrum used to kind of run the night back there and check out bands and um it turns out most people at rod laverina had the same idea so uh there was a lot of artists last night and um i went up and fanboyed over paul dempsey who you're probably too young to remember pa Dempsey but something for Kate was the name of his

band and and he was in the band with his wife and I went and just when I was just you know I still love the band etc etc and I think he's like alright Andy thanks very much so I walked back to my girlfriend and she goes how'd that go I was like not pretty not very good I don't think so that go? I was like, not very good, I don't think. That's cool. I still like getting excited over tunes. Was it Zoo Fight? You're on your brother's band?

Yeah. Is that how I pronounce it? Yeah. Or I think it's not even the way you're meant to pronounce the word, but yeah. Which was fun because we played a gig. We decided to stop playing covers. We were playing some covers.

We used to play some original. We said, let's just play our own music. And we went and played a gig in decided to stop playing covers or playing some covers we used to play some original we said let's just play our own music and we went and played a gig uh in brunswick and we didn't have a band name and um on on the chalkboard up front they're like tonight playing zoo fight i'm like oh okay cool who i wonder who's playing with us we get in in there and we're like, who else is playing? They go, just you guys. I said, what's that on the chalkboard at the front? And the guy goes, oh, the chef said, he always puts the name out at the front and you guys didn't have one so he just made one up.

We're like, well, that's good enough for us. That's how it started. But yeah, it was really fun. We never had a song that was good enough to have that huge or sustained success on the radio how it started but yeah it was really fun we never had a song that was like good enough to have that huge or sustained success on the radio but we were fun band to watch live so we ended up playing a lot of festivals and with a lot of you know fun people like cat empire and um uh pete murray um wow end of fashion we end of fashion was a big band we played with at New Year's Eve one year.

More recently, our band supported InXS on their last East Coast tour. So yeah, there's been some cool bands to play with. How did you meet Hamish Blake? At university, which was strange because neither of us went very often. Year 2000, 2001? 2001. Yeah. Hayne went to New South Wales for a year.

Kind of a gap year, but I think his mum was working up there. And so he went up there and then kind of studied for a year and then came back down to Melbourne. It was a... One of his mates that went to his high school came up to me and said, hey, that was quite funny, after a tutorial and said that was quite funny, you should meet my mate Hamish. And I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of weird, but yeah.

And then I said, oh, where is he? He said, oh, he doesn't get here until next year. And I thought, well, that's even weirder that you've just come out and said that. And sure enough, like in March next year, this guy Pete Cowan said, hey, this is the guy I was telling you about, and kind of match made us, like, as far as a good eye for, I mean, radio station managers would die for Pete's eye to be able to match two people and put them together and it work.

There are so many program directors across the country have tried that normally an ex-big brother star and something someone to put on a radio show so what did you do in the tutorial that pete liked so much i was it was the only tutorial i'd gone to for the whole semester but i it was for quantitative methods and i knew i needed you got one percent per tutorial you went to um and i realized i needed every percent i could get because i wasn't going to pass this thing and um yeah i uh i went in and they the guy was doing the role and kind of glided by my name again and i was no no i'm here I'm here and can I can I quickly address the class and the guy's like um yeah okay it was pretty cool uh tutor I got up in front of the

class and just explained that I didn't come for the good of their learning I'm a very distracting person to be around and it was like pretty much a selfless act to not come for the entire year. And I think you should consider giving me the full 10%. And everyone kind of laughed and then the tutor gave me 10% and I got 51 for the subject. Well played. Yeah. Yeah. So it was good.

Hayman and I in the second year and third year of my uni often have classes next door to each other. And there was one which was I was in consumer behaviour, which is like a marketing kind of advertising type subject. And Haim was in computer science in the next door. And we'd walk in, cut it together, and I'd go, good luck with your gig, and he goes, good luck with yours.

And we'd try and make everyone laugh in the shoot. But people were really trying to concentrate in computer science and people were really open to shenanigans in mine and every time we walked out he'd always go, I heard what was going on in your class, great gig and I was like, didn't you hear any laughs coming from yours? That was pretty

fun. You guys were kind of part of an ecosystem even at that stage you know, Ryan shelton yep whipper might have entered the picture yeah so i went to high school with whipper who's in our fitzy and whipper and nova breakfast in sydney on the radio yeah so rye was best mates with hame at school um and uh whipper was a couple years older than, but I'd see out mainly at gigs actually playing music. He wanted to play music as well.

So sometimes I'd get him to support my shows on guitar, although he was not particularly good. Not saying I was good, but yeah. But he always would bring a big crowd. He had a lot of friends. I was like, this is kind of good. And so, yeah, when we're all talking about, I say to him, we should get on the radio. bring a big crowd he had a lot of friends i was like this is kind of good um and so yeah when we're all talking about i say to him we should get on the radio and kind of knew the way in from

uh what someone had told me at the pub i was working at haim said oh well my friend ryan i always said i'd kind of do some stuff with him i'll say let's bring him along and and same with whipper i said oh my mate whip is kind of keen keen to jump on and so he kind of jumped on. So yeah, we're just kind of working it out and jumping on SynFM, which is a student youth network out of RMIT. So two things that I'm curious about. One is, how did you get the idea

that you should be doing radio? Mainly when Hamish and I met and we were making each other laugh a lot and then everyone around us laugh a lot. We just started writing down things. I showed Ham some of the comedy stuff that I'm really into. It was on VHS tapes, which is hilarious. And we kind of bonded over working out what we thought

was funny and and and styles etc and um so yeah it was a uh it was it was kind of like all that stuff was happening when we realized hey this is there's something here. We should actually film something or do it. And so I was working at the Village Bell Hotel in St Kilda, which is now, like most of the pubs in Melbourne, turned into a beautiful gastropub. But at the time, it was pretty rough. I was behind the bar with a guy called Angus Sampson, who's a fantastic actor.

He's in season two of Fargo. behind the bar with a guy called Angus Sampson, who's a fantastic actor. He's in season two of Fargo. And, you know, he's got an amazing voice. And we used to talk about different performing and different things we want to do. And it was just, there was regulars that came in and sat and drank. And one of them was just hey if i heard overheard that you're interested in radio you should go up and check out cnfm student youth

network and then and then um and similarly you know i can get you a link into channel 31 so that was kind of where i was like okay well i should go check it out so went in had a chat to them and they said hand in your demo and and that's kind of how it went and why wasn't it like why didn't it become hamish and ryan or andy and whipper like what about you and haim sort of clicked the i think that was tough for us all kind of to recognize like well haim and i just clicked and had a can't they had a chemistry and that's you know that is the weird thing about chemistry it's like you don't really know if you could if you did know that it'd be very easy to put different duos together um or performing partners together but you know haim and i just had this instant

friendship and uh and obviously we still work with r and Whipper. But for our sensibilities, I think we just gelled the kind of joint willingness for risk-taking and shenanigans. Haym and I are pretty level-pegging on that. And I often think about that to go, we're kind of just willing to to try anything and you know if it was if it was up for a laugh um and that's why a lot of the hidden camera stuff was it came kind of easy to us because weren't too worried about embarrassing ourselves so maybe the fact that we were kind of both happy to play in that realm was meant it kind of was the natural fit what was the moment when you realized that a laugh for either of you was a laugh for the team and what what did it take to get to that point yeah i mean

it's it was thing where you know when you're kind of working out your own voice you kind of like you know the funny one is is a fun thing to be and we're both funny. But like, I kind of realised by the end of year one on the radio that the importance really was if either of us got a laugh and continued it. And Haym probably realised the same thing. It's just like, that was going to be better for our show.

And it's kind of freeing. I listen to a lot of, definitely comedians get put together on the radio and they do just kind of not listen to each other. They're sort of competing. They compete and just try and tag each other's jokes the whole time and it just kind of turns into this snowball of, you know, the one theme with as many jokes on top of as possible

which kind of becomes exhausting for my ears anyway. So it was kind of freeing to kind of sit back and know that. And it's not necessarily this straight man and funny man, but you do have to assume some kind of roles from time to time, I think. And we kind of naturally fell into those slots as well. Yeah, it's very like mature realization it's all well it is but it's also like it's became heaps more fun yeah so it wasn't like oh i don't want to do that you know um it was just it made it made everything heaps more fun because we're

just it's just for the good of the show and if the show's flying yeah um uh that was that was just gonna make it better so yeah it was a pretty pretty easy thing so i want to talk about the rules of radio and then the craft of comedy we've got the alliteration for both of them yes rules of radio what was the process of learning the idiosyncrasies of that medium and what are some of the conventions of radio that are obvious when you're in the driver's seat but might not be obvious to listeners so i guess um some examples like for a while i think at the beginning you couldn't be too specific about places in Melbourne because it had to be accessible to audiences in other cities.

So you could say, we went out to a bar last night, but you couldn't say we went to the corner. Yeah, there was a lot of rules that you get told to do when you start. And I was really keen to learn them all as quick as possible. So we made our program directors listen back, they're called air checks, but listen back to every single break of every single show with us after we did it.

And I'd sit there with a pad and pen. Haim probably didn't um and just write down just every single thing that was getting told we're doing incorrectly or had to work on what's an example well really tiny stuff like come back with the show name um when someone uh when uh someone rings up um don't say how you're going it's going to slow it down you know slick slicker ways to get straight into people's stories how to get the credit away uh for a for a brand but have it feel pretty smooth and get that business done um how to forward tees at the end of a break when you've got something great coming up,

making sure to hook people through ad breaks and stuff like that. So it's business. There's not really much to it. But I would sit down and look at that notes before the next show and just go, I'm not going to make any of those mistakes. Or pick one and next show and just go i'm not going to make any of those mistakes you know or pick one and go today's i'm just going to work on that yeah um because i was bringing us in and out of the ad breaks and etc and and the song so that became muscle memory really quickly like anyone that's working on anything tennis swing or golf swing

stuff you practice those and that becomes then set and you could go into the next bit. And it was kind of after we got that down, it was then we were like, do we agree with the rules? Like, I'm going to respect the rules and learn them. And then we kind of started going,

we don't really need to do that or this or that and started creating our own sound. But I think you had we kind of started going, ah, we don't really need to do that or this or that and started creating our own sound. But I think you had to kind of understand the game to dismantle the game. Yeah, for sure. Gus and I found that when we started the podcast. So I started it with a uni mate, Gus, who stepped back in 2019 when he moved to New York.

But I was probably always slightly more passionate, even though he kind of like bullied me into doing it in the first instance and also stitched me up with the name the jolly swag man um but um how did the name come about oh look like i think it was always going to be like an interview show yep and originally it was the jolly swag hyphen men plural ah yes and he was like we're the jolly swag men like we're jolly we've got swag and i was like oh god it's i don't love it but i hate picking names so we'll go with it and uh it's just it's just too late now but i do i get a kick out of the juxtaposition between just the stupid meaningless title and then the content is fairly serious it's

always funny when you have like an american guest on and they're just thinking what the what the fuck is this shit and then you start having a conversation they're like okay it's good questions and good research but um in the early days when we were, we had a lot of fun doing it with each other and we would make ourselves laugh, sometimes at the expense of our guest, which is probably a bit disrespectful in hindsight, but it was always in good humor.

But we would also really hold each other to account in terms of improving. And one of the things we would always really hold each other to account in terms of improving. Yep. And one of the things we would always do would be like, oh, you've got to ask open questions. Yeah. So, we'd listen back and point out when like the other had asked a closed question. Yep. Instead of saying like, you know, was that experience good for you?

Yeah. I'd say, I should ask, you know, how was that experience for you? So you can go off in any direction. Yeah. And that was an example of a convention that once we'd learned, like once we'd learned that rule, eventually we were able to innovate. Yeah.

And I eventually realized like, well, not every question has to be an open question. No. Because sometimes you just want to quickly establish a premise. Yeah. To bring the audience along. Yep. Get a yes or no answer from the guest and then you can move on to the more interesting

open question stuff. So, it reminds me of there's like this adage, boys know the rules, old men know the exceptions. Yeah. I think, but you have to learn the rules first. That's a great, well, that's a better way of saying what I said before. What did I say? You have to understand the game before you can dismantle it? No, that's good too.

So you'd learn the rules of radio. And I imagine, like, was that something you could pick up fairly quickly? Yeah. That was probably the easy part, right? Yeah. I mean, it came easy to me. It doesn't come easy to many people, like to everybody. But if you've kind of got a systematic brain, yeah.

I mean, some of the anchors out there are incredible. Like, it's so simple for them to do that stuff um and so yeah i found that came relatively easy to me and then we could kind of play around with it so moving to the craft of comedy let me summarize what i think is your name sense of humor and then you can tell me if i'm wrong so I think what you guys do so well is you create a new game or a new world with its own arbitrary set of rules and then you steadfastly follow those rules, sometimes at great personal cost. Is that a good distillation of the sense of humor?

It is pretty much, yeah. I mean, I've never analyzed what we do. I bumped into someone in the street who asked for a photo once and they said, oh, look, we're studying you. You know, what do you mean? It's like, oh, and they pulled out, it was at Swimboat, and they pulled out these notes. And the Hamish and Andy show was the study of what they were doing.

And I was reading it going, no, we haven't thought. These guys do this and this and this is why they do this and this. I'm like, just so you know, we're not thinking any of it. Yeah. So when people kind of reverse analyse what we're doing, I think you're right. We prefer to find playground rather than the actual joke itself, just for us.

And so if we find places to play, it can go anywhere, which is exciting for us. And also, there's a lot more jokes to be had. There's a lot more fun to be had. So we used to talk about the show being more fun than funny. And people kind of like watching people have fun or listening to people have fun. But yeah, absolutely absolutely you're right we we like inventing the world and then you know abiding by the rules of that world um uh which is it's it's a fun and then

our listeners come in and do the same they they okay yep we can we can agree to play in this world and they stick to it as well so it makes it fun when lots and lots of people are always playing the same game almost but you've got to be i suppose that's where we you put a little bit of thought and time into it's like it has to be foolproof the world has to stand up it has to be a construct construct that you're like yeah it makes sense to follow these rules not it's it's often nonsense but it still has some kind of grounding in in plausible yeah plausible or just it just makes sense like because if you're just being silly for no reason i think it's hard for people to grab on to it. Yeah. Where, that's why we do, take a lot of, like, you know,

say if it's launching the fragrance, like, it's ridiculous that Hamish has signed a contract without asking me, but also for a fragrance called Andy by Hamish. But then to play in the world, okay, well, let's just establish that I'm going to be a face of a fragrance. The funniness is it's the first ever reluctant ambassador for a product. But you still play with all the rules

that you would for that, the marketing campaign, all these things. And it's just, but essentially the only rule we have is, yep, you've hired a guy that doesn't want to do it but i have to that and as soon as you you establish that it kind of makes sense that could happen and then off you go and you kind of dial all those things up to 11 yeah yeah on on that with um andy by hamish were there any like legal questions raised as to whether he could do this joke in the first

instance he said to me he he was super nervous because he because he told me live on air as well and it and it must have been it took me time to kind of unpack like i'm sure we'll go back and listen to that break at one point when it comes up, maybe on our Remembering Project podcast. But I remember not loving it to begin with, like not loving the idea because I didn't get it yet. I actually felt like at the time, where am I meant to play here? Because I just don't want to have you know three months of just uh basically everyone piling on me for having a fragrance so but that that kind of you know it was almost within like

10 minutes i was like i can't get it now yeah but my brain did take a while to catch up yeah i was re-watching the bourbon style commercial that Hayme and Jack did the other day. So good. So amazing. Your daddy didn't do shit, boy. So you said that you and Hayme like to aim for fun, not funny. And then almost serendipitously, the funny kind of emerges out of that.

Which is really cool. It's like a very indirect way to create the humor and it also kind of takes pressure off the humor in a lot of respects yeah um because if the idea is naturally just fun like you've got a momentum you've got this yeah this drive and energy to it which is really really funny. What do you think it would look like if you guys aimed for funny instead? And why wouldn't it work as well? Well, I mean, funny is often punchline humour, which is awesome. And, you know, the best stand-ups in the world nail it. It's not my particular skill set, punchline humor.

Haym's pretty good at it, but like, again, it's not his natural place to want to play either. We don't love, we did some stand-up at the beginning, but we don't love saying the same thing twice. And that is what stand-up is. It is repetitive, refining the essence of the exact way you say a joke, that exact sentence with the inflection at the right time to make it funnier than it was, all that stuff,

which we probably just didn't have the patience for, to be honest. So it's not like we were going, which one should we choose? Like, well, this just comes naturally to us and we want our jobs to be fun and to enjoy it and this seemed like the fastest track to doing that so how do you thread that needle between having spontaneity and surprising each other and then not being like a totally unscripted train wreck on radio um i mean hopefully we got it right on the most part a lot of it yeah the you've got to do the discipline to create so we didn't tell each other anything i'm going to say on the radio um ever really in fact half the meeting was

planning meeting for the show with producers was i'd be outside the room playing on my phone and then we'd swap and i'd look and i'd go hey homie's doing this break this break that break and i'm going to do this break this break that break we'd leave breaks prank we we talk about what phone topics particularly if they're topical we might want to do like uh as together and there might be sketches or a prank that we're kind of not nutting out together but on the most part didn't tell each other anything in the same way we do the podcast i think it only works if you've got the discipline to kind of at least check yourself for what you're about to bring up and the playground you're hoping to create. So it's not, that's what safeguards it against being, you know, a train wreck,

I think, is because you just go, all right, I think Haim's going to love this. If he goes down this direction, maybe I'll do that. If he goes down this direction, maybe I've got this to fall back on. And in my head generally he takes it in a completely different direction I didn't even foresee which is still fun and funny and off you go but just a couple of safeguards and also how am I best going to explain or start this idea because Haym's learning for the first time, I'm learning for the first time.

And if you don't get that right, you spend the first three minutes of the break with the other guy going, just kind of look at you going, where are we going with this kind of thing? But if you can get it right from the get-go and you see the other person lean in, you're like, okay, cool, we're away.

So that's the little, I suppose, the discipline part of of of doing what is a fairly loose approach you guys are really good at reviewing and then feeding back insights into your comedy yep and i read um might have been an interview that Sam Kavanagh had done your executive producer and he was saying how you guys do post-mortems and and one example was after the Greyhound meet in Perth with Fred Bassett um I think you and Sam sat down and talked about what worked and what didn't when you're doing a post-mortem after a joke or an adventure what does that

post-mortem actually look like is it like a one-hour meeting with the team in a whiteboard do you send an individual way to do like a one pager in google docs that they share with no no never never to be honest never really written down okay um i was i'm i had to improve in this area and Sam would pull me aside because as soon as we did something, even if it went awesome, as soon as the break finished in the song, I'd walk out and go, you know what would have made it better? Every time. And one time he just pulled me aside and said,

can you fucking let the team celebrate? So I get pretty analytical pretty quickly with regards to how thing i want everything to be uh well as perfect as yeah the chaos can be um so we thought review was important not just for bad things but for good things uh and generally uh you don't want to bog down the next day if something didn't work um we kind of learned not to bring it up at the start of the next day because you're in the meeting go hey we need to just quickly review that lot they think yesterday we put a lot of eggs in one basket you suddenly are on this poor energy leading into what's meant to be the best part of the day. So we would generally try and do it straight after the show

to just go, hey, let's take five minutes. And it wouldn't be that much longer, but just to go, hey, that break didn't work. Why? How could we have safeguarded to it? And you just take a few learnings away from it um you know generally it was like think about it a little bit more you know that's but other times you can you can go i have no idea why that didn't work like i still love it we all still agree that

was great glad we shot for it um let's not be scared of those type of ideas because i think there's something there uh just so everybody in the team is kind of reconciled something that didn't quite go well on air and when we say well i mean we're talking about singular breaks or things are you like ah that felt a bit flat but rather than going who cares it was better to just have that little bit of extra thought to go, okay, well, let's not do it again. But with a pinch of who cares. Yeah. Yeah.

So after all of the reviews over the years, have you developed like a theory of what works in terms of comedy and entertainment more broadly? Do you have like a grand theory nah not really from because the other thing is comedy is so subjective so i know what i like and i think what turns out just evidently what i like is relatively broad because the stuff that we've done has had broad appeal. But, you know, there's some absurd stuff going around which I get a laugh out of and I have no idea why. And so it's kind of hard to go,

this is how comedy works and so on. But I do know for my tastes, the one thing that I appeal to and I think appeals to people is just if the joke or the area they're playing in is grounded in some kind of reality I think you know I suppose that's where it comes to relatable humour. But if there's something for people to hold on to and relate to or at least reference, I think it's easier to make it a broader, funnier bit. Yeah.

So down the opposite end of the spectrum, how do you go watching comedians like Tim and Eric? Do you like their stuff? Yeah, I do. I don't love it as much as Haym does, you know. And Ryan absolutely loves it because he's... Absurdist. Yeah, absurdist stuff.

But, you know, like, Aunty Donna's kind of in a similar realm, but I love Aunty Donna, but I feel, and I feel the reason why I love it is they do have observations. They take it to the extreme, but it's still grounded again, like I was just saying before in something that i can understand and hold on to yeah um so but we you know with our group with with ryan stuff um who's really really fantastic what he does i found at times i'd be going am i helping you with this right or am I hindering because I'm I'm trying

to drag it back to potentially a bit broader but maybe this needs to sit right in that niche spot um and so we'd have those discussions a bit because you the last thing you want is someone you can have like the the best comedian in the world but if he doesn't understand the style you're going for it's not gonna he's not gonna help if he tries to drag in his direction um and i'm far from the best comedian in the world so i was but there was times where i'd say to ryan hey have you thought about this this and this and he's like ah it's not really what i'm going for i was like i'll step out i'm not gonna push this but just want to, you know, give you the consideration for it and give you the time. Yeah.

2001 to 2005, that period of kind of finding your feet, if it's fair to describe it that way, what was the lowest low of that period? There wasn't really many. Or any. Sunshine and rainbows. Yeah. There wasn't really many. Or any. Sunshine and rainbows. Yeah, like, again, I was really lucky, got to do it with my best mate. We failed but found it funny that we failed.

We're kind of 20 years old to 24 years old. So there's no dependence. There's very little risk we never really thought it's gonna be a career anyway so it was a great kind of climate to try out and do things like we were far more through naivety we were far more willing to try and do silly stuff and because it didn't didn't matter like nothing really mattered um of course we wanted we're proud of the shows we wanted to learn some but we would be i'd be far more concerned about going for things that we went for back then now because is it going to work people expect a lot of us all that kind of stuff it's i suppose it's the

same as anyone that they get older you, you do narrow in a little bit. So at times I've got to think back to that time and go, just go with your gut, see what you think, enjoy that adventure, lean into it and it's okay to miss. But yeah, I can't really... The first TV show.

But again, we got axed. It was six episodes, got axed. But Hayman and I were kind of almost relieved it got axed like it was six episodes got axed but hayman i kind of almost relieved it got axed it wasn't really our show we learned a bit but it was like wayne's what we'd gone from being on six sorry five half hour episodes on channel 31 and then suddenly given a prime time show on channel seven they put us in suits to make us look older it had the biggest, glossiest, shiny floor you could ever imagine. Suddenly it had a theme song and weird graphics that come up with Hamish and Andy, a 300 people audience. And you're just going, wow, okay,

is this TV? But it didn't feel right for either of us. Writers remember about 12 that were trying to write jokes for us that weren't really our style, all that stuff. So awesome experience. We had the rest of the cast that didn't really like us because not for personal reasons, but just because they had signed up to a very different show and they decided to change it to call it The Hamish and Eddie Show really late in the piece and suddenly make it all about us,

which would have been annoying. Why did they decide to do that? Were you guys just so funny in the piece and suddenly make it all about us which would have been annoying why didn't they decide to do that were you guys just so funny in the team environment um i've no idea you have to ask them yeah but yeah chris lilly was part of the cast doing mr g and um kate mcclennan from the catering girls was she was one of the cast members and um yeah there was some andrew keith was in there as a as like a comedy performer and look they were all more established than us again we've just done five half hour episodes and probably been had done no stand up really and we're just kind of mucking around at university and so someone saw something in that chemistry that Hamish and I had that probably went around well definitely I say went about it the wrong way to just

suddenly make what was meant to be a group sketch show called just suddenly called the Hamish and Annie show we we came back from filming a sketch into the office and it felt really a little bit prickly and got called to the executive producers room he said hey just you know I changed the name of the show okay what are you going to call it it was called fast food oh they're going to call it Hamish and Andy's fast food I'm going to add your name to it like right have you asked the others and they're like yeah they're all cool with it like you sure because you know we don't we don't really need that or they know so the others weren't really fine with it and that's and they're that's fine that's okay i always you know at the time i was a bit miffed as to why

our fellow castmates weren't really being that helpful because it's not a great environment but i totally get why they would be you know just they signed up for something completely different and now they're an ensemble cast for two guys that are 21 um who basically sit in their own little office and write their own stuff and don't really yeah and get to do what they want um so yeah but i wouldn't say it was a lot i mean it was there was some hard moments there but it's a good one to remind me of but i kind of liked the whole experience i like those challenges i feel like we learned so much we learned about

communication particularly performers um every thing that didn't go particularly well or was hard and tough conversations and sometimes combative and confrontational, it was just a great thing to have at 21 years old, 22. We went on to do another show after that called The Friday Show, which the pilot, Steve Vizard, worked on it with us. Ted Emery, who's the great director of Full Frontal and Fast Forward and stuff. And they didn't commission it, Channel 7, which was, again, I don't even remember being that sad about it.

Maybe I was, but we didn't really work that hard on it because we were scared and we were pretty, you know, probably pretty arrogant because we were like, everything we're doing is funny, but we realised, no, you know, probably pretty arrogant because we were like, everything we're doing is funny but we realised, no, you have to work harder. We've since talked about it and kind of didn't work hard because I was scared and it was easier to go, it'll be right, it'll be right, just don't worry about it,

we're funny enough, it'll be right and then realised it's not going to be right and if either of us have any issue with what we're about to achieve or trying to achieve best straight away to go i'm not really seeing this how could it improve and then that created a much better dynamic for everything we did with the four guys tim ryan and hamish and i so again those lows you learn a lot more from the things that don't work, I reckon, than from the things you do. So it was all good stuff to kind of whack in our satchel

and take to the next project. That time we had the beer at the Posty with a seam. I remember we were sitting at those tables that are joined to the wall. Yeah. Outside and your phone slipped out of your pocket onto the ground behind you and there are a couple of girls at the table behind us and because you're kind of like stuck in your seat at those tables yeah i remember you turned around and said sorry would you mind just passing me my phone i can't get it and i was watching them watching you when they were looking at each other like that's andy lee like oh my god do you remember

when you first started getting recognized in public um not overly but i'm with the radio show it was kind of gathering momentum. And we went to... We used to have station, like, parties for the show, like, basically encouraging people to listen. Listen to the Hamish and Andy show for your way to win to this party, right? There was always an event going on. And when we first did them, we would literally come into the room with 50 other people

and just drink with them and almost introduce who we are and have fun they were really great mainly because people would just listen throughout the day and just want to go to a party they didn't really care about the show and then there was one in um south australia which is funny because the name was it was called the vi pod party when pod ipods had just come out and it was like the vi pod party we're going to play all the music off an ipod you're like whoa um terrible idea but they uh the station manager at the time had like i think had a share in this nightclub or this place and he was trying to get the vi pod parties going on a thursday night or something so anyway it was there was always an angle being run for these things so hayman i went across there we walked to the room and everyone was just really

excited to see us and like oh that's a bit strange and we went up spoke to everybody and the mc said well if anyone wants a photo you can line up over here and the whole room went and started lining up i'm like oh we normally come to these things and just no one really asks us for anything, but we just drink and have fun with people. I remember going, oh, okay, this dynamic's really changed. We didn't like it at first because we were like, oh, no, no, we don't really want to be famous. This is not the reason we do it at all. It's just a byproduct of what you do. And that night we sat there kind of for an hour as people lined up and got their photo and then they all kind of went off and we just kind of sat next to this um station logo and took

photos like ah this is change so that was the time where i realized okay people do know what we're doing um but it also meant that we changed the type of parties that we did because we're like, we're not going to do that again and try to often go smaller and or have an idea where everyone's coming. Like one of my favourite ones was Oprah Winfrey was out in Australia and she was doing a night with Oprah.

And we did a night near Oprah and we booked the venue next to her and we charged tickets and um and like very cheap but the whole joke was like because everyone's like oprah winfrey's sold out so it's like yeah well open a night near oprah's also sold out and we all came together to just, you had to dress in a power suit like Oprah from any era. And people all came and it was just a really fun, funny night of everybody. And we had different Oprah-based things that were very loose things

because neither of us really know much about Oprah, to be honest. But yeah, inventing kind of events where from the get-go people are on the in and you've got a connection and it's not just about rocking up to do a meet and greet

so 2006 was the breakout year yeah real stories that was 2004 2004 yeah right oh maybe actually 2005

would have been 2005 we filmed it and yeah you're probably right it probably went to air went to air 2006 2006 2004. Yeah. Right. Oh, maybe actually 2005 would have been. 2005, we filmed it. And yeah, you're probably right. It probably went to air. Went to air 2006. 2006. Yeah. I remember that being my favorite show on TV back then.

I was at school. Yeah. And I found you, Ryan and Hamish, hilarious. Yeah. I was re-watching some of the skits the other day. Do they stand out still? Yeah. The water wastage.

And you're like the kind of affable dorky yeah environment minister yes in new zealand so good and then the guy who get and you play a similar kind of character the guy who gets grounded for life so good yeah i really love that show. It was just so much fun to make and I think it's some of the funniest stuff we've ever done. But again, it comes back to that naivety of just happy to try anything. If no one knew who we were, we're playing heaps of characters per show. We're not amazing character actors,

but it's good enough to kind of take on these roles. We're running out of different wigs, so we started wearing wigs backwards. You know, but the writing and the ideas, again, when you talk about the construct, we'd find a place to play and then just explore all that. So, yeah, I really um really loved that show and and it didn't find a huge audience but people that loved it really really loved it yeah and so that might have aired 2006 maybe 2005 yeah i think so yeah

the big thing that happened in 2006 is the drive time radio show. Yeah. Fox. Yeah. How did Pants Off Fridays begin? The, yeah, we were arguing with the boss at the time, the program director, they didn't want us to even be on Fridays. So you were just going to do Monday to Thursday? Monday to Thursday. And they wanted to have a dance party Fridays to get everybody jazzed for the week

and have like some DJ playing music on a Friday. And we're like, well, I can't believe we can't be on for the whole week. I don't want to give anyone a chance to listen to another show on a Friday and perhaps fall in love with them. So we argued for a while and the boss ended up saying, oh, look, to be honest, we can't afford you, which is a big lie because they really could and we're getting paid nothing.

And so we said, okay, we'll do it for'll just we'll just do it for free that's the problem and then he kind of i wasn't a play we were just like okay if that's the problem we'll do it free in retrospect i realized that that's a lie from him but he also because he lied couldn't really go back on it because we said we'd do it for free so um he said okay you can do it but you have to have some theme and we're like great and we didn't think about it at all until the friday and he came in and said what's the theme and hamish just said oh it's pants off friday he's like oh yeah what's that about and i was like oh yeah it's just the easiest way to relax heading into the weekend we just do the show without pants off he's like oh love it guys love it and haim turned to me and said i guess we're doing the show with our pants off today and it turned out to be like one of the most recalled

things that um that we had on the show yeah people really like and it did have a different energy like it just started a friday was just silliness which is really fun did yeah so did you find that changed your mental space yeah didn't have pants yeah yeah it was just stupid and then guests would come in and look at us and go my god these guys now i don't think in this day and age i'm not sure how appropriate it is with female guests like natalie battingquake coming in to promote the rogue tragers and two guys there in their underwear kind of probably has the wrong connotations but it didn't for us at the time it was just like silliness and kind of at home lounge room type vibe is what we're going for

yeah yeah was there a moment when you realized that the show was something special that it would become a really significant career? No. I mean, I've always been proud of the show, but only more in retrospect do you look back and go, oh, wow, that was, people really liked that. But at the time, it didn't feel like, you know, I was wondering that last night with watching Ed Sheeran at Rod Laver.

Like, there was that period where Ed Sheeran, well, he broke the record for the amount of tickets sold in Australia I think he sold a quarter of a million tickets in Melbourne alone for his tour which I don't think will happen again for him

not to slide on Ed but you are in a moment in time where your style and what you're doing is is a thing and on the way home last night i said to becca i felt the same when i look back at the radio show now it's like didn't realize thought it was normal this is how it rolls but yeah this is what happens when you start a radio show exactly this is what happens when you start a radio show. So, which is nice. It's nice to be there and feeling that. And so, yeah, it didn't really dawn on us the radio show that's incredible so i the first podcast i ever listened to was you guys but that wasn't until 2014 i was road tripping back across australia

with two mates kip and flemo shout out to the boys and um they put you guys on and i i didn't really get i mean it it was around the time where everyone was sort of like oh you should listen to cereal yeah talking about Serial. But I didn't really get what podcasts were. And I thought, oh, this is cool. And then maybe a year later, I listened to Tim Ferriss or something and then finally got on the Serial bandwagon and then started to understand what podcasts were about.

But that was like almost 10 years after you guys had started. So do you have any memories of your earliest thoughts on podcasting as a medium? We loved Ricky Gervais. He had to show out really early. We were trying to get that to listen to, even the pods from XFM. He was on XFM with Carl and Steven. And so we just heard that they were putting it on. I was like, why can't we have ours up? And Ricky Gervais was number one in the iTunes charts

because he's Ricky Gervais, but also because nothing else was really around. So we had to tell the radio station how we'd like to put the podcast on. No, we're not really doing that. They're like, no, no, we're really passionate about it. And so they eventually went, okay, you just kind of sort it out yourself.

So we did. And again, it's kind of like being Red Bull, that first mover advantage. Because we're one of the only things on, we'd always been the top 10. And so anyone that's discovering podcasts would then, it's the same with like Instagram followers. When the platform came out,

people are getting a lot much harder to curate an audience now when people were discerning. But if you're starting to log on to Instagram first, I'm like, who do I follow? Oh, that person's got a lot of followers. That person's got a lot. So it perpetuates itself.

And that's what happened with our pod. It just kind of, it was funny. I was listening back to the pod just to see how it sounded and make sure it's all right and so on and suddenly heard an ad in it. And I was like, it was for i was listening back to the pod just to see how it sounded and make sure it's all right and so on and suddenly heard an ad in it and i was like it was for boy town for mick mulloy's film boy town with glenn robbins and wayne hope and i said i went into the boss and say what the hell are you doing why is there an ad he's like oh yeah we there's a lot of people listening to the podcast

like yeah but you've got no right to put an end to it. It's like, oh, well, can we? It was like, no. What, you know, when did you start doing this? Oh, we started doing this a couple of weeks ago. And so I was pretty angry with them, but obviously it turned into a medium on its own. And then Haim and I felt like, you know, we love radio so much and it's awesome that we can continue the podcast,

have the flexibility in life, but still scratch that itch. I originally fell in love with the medium because you can do something while you're listening. Yeah. So it gives you a lot of time back. So you cook or commute or go to the gym or run or whatever, but you can still be learning or being entertained while that's happening. Yep.

That was the original reason, but I kind of go in and out of listening now just because I don't have a lot of time. Yeah. I found someone said that the other day, what podcast are you listening to? I was like, ah,

I mean, more recently I've, I listened to last week, uh, the, uh, the sure thing. Have you heard of that one? No. I mean, more recently, I listened to last week The Shaw Thing. Have you heard of that one? No. About two kind of mid-20-year-old guys from Melbourne who got caught with the biggest inciting trading scheme

or scam of all time in Australia. Only recently. And I liked listening to that one because I was like, Hayman and I love a loophole. We love risk. I'm not suggesting that we'd try an insider trading scam. But I was listening to these two guys and going, shit, that's not far from something I think I'd try.

Not that my conscience would kick in too quickly because I was awful like that. When I ever did anything wrong when I was little, I used to go and tell Dad by 10pm because I couldn't sleep. But yeah, just listening back to these guys and them talking about it and then realising how big a mistake they'd made that had gone completely out of control for them

was pretty fascinating. So that's one that i've been pretty pumped about recently have you and hame ever had a similar sort of experience where you've you've taken a risk for the show and started to to realize we probably shouldn't have done this we've gone too far just in terms of the personal danger to your own physical health. Like watching back a lot of gap year and caravan trip, you're like, oh my God,

I can't believe we did that. Are there any that stand out? I mean, the hovercraft, we bought a secondhand hovercraft in New Zealand. Oh, sorry, a homemade one. And then tried to take it out on Melbourne Sounds, out on the water, and to deliver mail to this really remote guy.

And the hovercraft is not meant to go on waves. You need flat surfaces for a hovercraft. And so it got pretty bad and it was a little bloody cold. We're having a laugh about it and trying to rev this, this, this edge and see at this fan going to, because of things that we'd crashed a couple of times and it wasn't going so well,

but the fan exploded and went straight. I was sitting on the back, like, like a, you know, like a motorbike. I was sitting second back and a bit higher and the fan came burst through the cage that was you know it went straight past my head and we're all just in shock because absolutely would have killed me well it's like

you know centimeters away and we're in shock and then i think i just turned to the camera said were you rolling did you get it did they get it they got it yeah it's pretty full-on to watch that back in the edit and you're like oh shit that was really dangerous um but there's a number of those where you're like oh but that's what made the shows fun. And also what I loved about those travel shows is like genuinely feeling uncomfortable. There's so many shows these days, it's like you're in faux discomfort and you see people kind of hamming it up,

but it was good to feel the real emotions on all those trips and you can only do that by kind of pressing those boundaries. So that was important. Yeah. That's one thing I've always liked about you guys is that the stunts are real. Yeah. And they are pretty, many of them are pretty edgy. Yeah.

Not least of all the ball dance, obviously. It's a famous example. Well, people go, oh, like I remember someone in the States describing, oh, these guys are like jackass. And I was like, really? I didn't feel like anything like jackass. I really didn't. They sort of go out of their way to hurt themselves.

Yeah. Hospitalize themselves. Exactly. Their thing is about, you know they're going to get hurt. Yeah. Where the object for us was to never get hurt. In fact, it was to avoid getting hurt. And on the most part, we did.

So it was great. But I found that curious that someone's going, oh, yeah, these guys like jackass in Australia. hurt in fact it was to avoid getting hurt and on the most part we did so it was great but i found that curious that someone's going oh yeah these guys like jackass been a straight was like i really don't feel that but um you know i i liked jackass but never the ones where they're just like okay punch me in the dick i was like when it was a funny idea that that was when I was like, oh, that's really cool. And if someone got hurt or slipped over doing it, that's cool as well. Yeah.

Yeah, the really elaborate ideas were quite funny. Yeah. And you sort of, you can't take your eyes off the screen. Yeah. In 2010, end of 2010, you guys had U2 crash. Yeah. One of your concerts on your tour. And sometime after that, Sam Kavanagh, executive producer,

got in touch with Fran, U2's head of PR, who apparently was just like one of the most impressive people and got her to do some workshops with the team about branding and career and building an audience. Were you at any of those workshops do you remember was it one yeah um and we had the interesting discussion in that meeting about having our own personal twitter accounts i think right like because hayman i was joint accounts for everything for a very very very long time yeah including instagram and then the discussion was well should we have our own like you know and i to be honest i was like nah i think it should be you know we want to focus people back in the

show and so on um but we totally needed our own you You needed your own identity. And the fact that it's so... That's where people connect with their favourite people now. It's so personal, the way social media works. And often the group things or the show ones don't do nearly as well because they're more a, you know, polished little bit of content that's coming up opposed to, you know, real life and behind the scenes,

which is what people yearn for on social media. But it did take us a while to kind of work through that and work that out. So I think that came from one of those discussions. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any tips for growing a podcast audience? Anything kind of maybe a bit different that you wouldn't find in those generic blogs?

Yeah. On Google. I mean, look, getting people on that have a following, which they say on those blogs anyway is a great way to do it but that is that is you know

what I find it's really hard at the moment like podcasts there's so many of them it's a long tale it is a long tale

I think there was a stat Hamish was telling me there was 760,000 podcasts released in the US, maybe last year or the year before. And the median listenership was 112 listens. Wow.

So, yeah. That's a lot of people just grinding it out in silence. Isn't it? There would be 300,000 podcasts with under 100 listeners wow um so uh yeah it is a very static yeah there's a lot of static in the world yeah um so if i was going from scratch scratch one thing is people that if you reach I can reach out to your favorite pods yeah and try and get across promote and that's only gonna happen when you reach out to you know the the the people that connect with you and and you. But that's often listening to a pod and I hear someone recommend something.

I think that's the quickest way to do it. Podcasts are so word of mouth. I haven't really seen them be that effective with a big marketing billboard saying, listen to this podcast yet. Unless it's a huge star that you, you know, Barack Obama's doing this. It's like, okay, that's interesting. But it's a huge star that you you know barack obama's doing this like okay that's interesting but it's really difficult isn't it um on that one of the early

things i realized like my light bulb moment was that the unity economics of podcasting dictate that your marketing strategy essentially has to be viral growth yep but i mean i don't i'm not i'm not someone who naturally likes talking about that whole marketing aspect i hate that phrase like content is king yeah no content is everything yeah like i'm we're not doing it to be famous like fame is just so overrated we're doing it because we're interested in people yep we want to share conversations with everyone that we think are important yep like at the end of the day that's all that really matters and it's not some like hack for growing an audience like content isn't king content is everything yep i agree but yeah so i interrupted your your podcast tips any others that you would add? No, that's like we had similar things at that point.

It's not really a point of difference now, but when we started and just did the pod three and a half years ago, we were like, we know how this can sound really slick. So that was something for us to make a point of difference so like you're saying quality sake and then one thing we discussed which was again when you're talking about just nailing exactly what your product is and why it's different is like we wanted to create a momentum because most podcasts are long form and is that true yeah wow you know like at particular time people sitting down interviewing yeah and chatting like conversationally yeah we decided to invent the bell

in our podcast which is essentially like i'll hit a bell which means that topic's over and that creates momentum because no topic really goes for longer than 10 minutes um and then you know that so you tighten up your top so it's it's it's it appears like the shows are more jam-packed full um and that's not a knock on long form because you know we're doing right now it's really great great but that was one point of difference we decided on our for our product and offering to go okay what's everyone else doing maybe we can create momentum make them feel more full get to more topic in that that regard yeah the institution of the bell yeah yeah because we knew that you know we'd come from radio ad breaks and songs is your bell yeah and you tend to just

have five minutes that topic's done move on to the next one and then your show can feel full that way um and so we kind of needed that construct still to kind of continue that those theories so recently i had paul collier on the podcast who's a an oxford economist um has a couple of great books the future of capitalism and greed is dead and he's he was talking about his favorite study in social science was by a few kiwi researchers and they asked they surveyed people and asked them what their three biggest regrets were in life yeah and it was just an interesting study because it shows what really matters to humans yes they weren't oh I wish I'd invested in Amazon like 20 years ago yeah if only I hadn't flunked that interview with Goldman Sachs but they were all about breaches of obligations or

rules to other people interesting um you know i let that friend down i wish i'd spoken to my parents more yep so goes to the point that we're sort of morally load-bearing creatures we're not like selfish and individualistic that's interesting we're like both yes but i was wondering if you have any like top regrets yeah um i've mentioned it before Top regrets. Yeah. I've mentioned it before actually in print, but my sister rang and said, don't say that again because you didn't. But I wasn't particularly good, I didn't think,

to my sister when my mum was really sick. My sister was 13, kind of becoming a woman, lost the only other lady or woman in the household and i cause dad was out so often the hospital i kind of took on like house in order type roles you were 14 i was 15 15 and so yeah I just remember not really being all that considerate and, you know, pounding her to do chores or get that done or lunch and stuff. So that was kind of a regret for me to go, okay, that could have been. In everyone's deal, like, you know, it's when people, you know, I've told, when I said that to my dad, he's like, hey, we're all dealing with something really, really odd and weird and sad and et cetera, so, like, you can forgive yourself for that.

It's like, oh, yeah, it's not like I'm going to lose sleep over it. I'm 15 years old. But definitely something I look back at and go, okay, I wish I hadn't, I'd just given her a bit more consideration. So that one kind of comes to mind. But as I kind of said to you, I've got a pretty strong conscience that's instilled from my parents so hasn't been too many occasions where i've got the guts to do the wrong thing you know um yeah uh and when it comes to those things um generally i find myself in deep thought before

making those decisions. I find that people who have regrets, generally they're caught up in a moment and they make quick decisions that snowball rather than sit back and calculate to let someone down. And if they have done that, that yeah, sociopathic type approach. Yeah, exactly. It's like that concept of the banality of evil.

Yeah. Like people's goals are just misaligned. Yeah. No one's, you know, maybe like 2% of the population are actual sociopaths. Yes. But most people, when they make those sort of mistakes, they're not going out of their way to hurt others. They're just optimizing for their own instant gratification yep and i'm like i'm also super

lucky with how things went in life like i'm super grateful and but i'm really aware that like we mentioned earlier hamanitis kind of started and it went well pretty quickly and then we could ride that. And so a lot of poor decisions for people come in times of desperation. And I feel really fortunate to have been able to avoid that element of desperation, whether it's for financial reasons, all those things, or even trying to work your way up to different jobs, roles and stuff. There are times where you can step on someone

to get where you need to go. And thankfully, I haven't been presented really with any of those where I've needed to. So my conscience hasn't probably been tested fully in that regard. So, yeah, I didn't want to come across like I'm holier than thou. I just don't think it's been tested at this stage. Yeah, that's great. When are you at your happiest?

Mixture. I mean, probably doing the pod with Haim and like i mean i love it so much it's good fun but you know hanging out with my family i'm going taking my dad to the footy tonight carlton collingwood if carlton win i'll probably be at my happiest playing golf it really is a mix for me um i couldn't just be served one thing that i love for the rest of my life it's it's it's a happiness is a pie and my pie of happiness it's got um yeah family would take a big chunk um sport watching or playing takes a good chunk. Work, I get a lot of self-worth out of work. So I kind of feel like I need, yeah, all the elements for me to be happy.

And that's why when one of them finishes or moves out, even if you break up and people say to you, remember after I had a pretty public breakup back in the day, people were like, are you sad? You're like, yeah, I am, but on my pie of happiness, my partner takes up the slice of that but it's it's it being removed there's still a lot there's still a lot there that's a really important point and i think the way i think about that is like creating an ecosystem of positive emotions it's like i've got my mates i've got partner i've got family you've got your work your side projects like your health your

hobbies yeah all these different things which are hopefully moving in a positive direction and maybe at some point some of them are failing or regressing but the others can kind of prop you up yes my my my mates works in HR and has for a while and kind of moved up. But he said that when someone's underperforming, it's like there's kind of three things like friends, family, work. He said they're pretty much the three pillars. He goes, no one ever has three going at once really. Everyone's kind of either family gripe going on friendship problem or a work problem it's like there's generally one he goes it's okay to have one but we find with the

employees that struggle it's when two or four in a way he said that he said he always finds that interesting it's like as soon as someone is yeah miss like is down about two it's when they get pretty depressed and it's pretty hard for those three pillars. So I think particularly friends and family underestimate how they can prop someone up when time's tough at work. And workplaces, I think, also underestimate how much they can be a great escape

for someone that's having a tough time at home. Yeah, that's a good point because we don't often think of work as an escape no no but it's it's you know i think that i certainly in some of my tougher emotional times outside of work have relied on work to go in pick me up have fun and we've worked with a lot of people that have um you know depression and mental health issues and have offered them the opportunity to not come in and they're like no this is all only where i want to be and am i bringing the vibe down it's like no no you don't even have to chat you can just sit and take it in if this is where you want to be we'll acknowledge it to a whole group just if you're comfortable with that but just no one's going to be a downer if you if

you think this is the place you want to be come in and we'll have a great time and uh but just know we'll be all laughing we're not going to kind of treat you too differently um and it's been it's been a good good kind of policy final question i'm fascinated by partnerships yep why they work why they don't work and the idea of two brilliant people coming together and creating something that's greater than the sum of their parts yeah watson and crick lennon and mccartney yeah kahneman and versky hamish and andy what have been the essential ingredients to both the moment-to-moment chemistry you have with hame but then also the partnership that you've sustained for two decades now i think there's a pretty simple answer to this. And we have one overarching rule which we established pretty early on.

And it probably speaks to respect for each other and what each other does. But if either of us don't want to do it, we're not doing it. There's no why. You don't want to do it we're not doing it there's no why you don't have to explain it and if you go in with that mindset it's been so easy because i was like hey we should do this no i don't really want to be like all right you can't build up resentment if you've both played by that rule that you need two keys to turn because Because a lot of partners in chatting with different duos in the sporting world, and I won't name names,

but it might be doubles tennis or sporting teams, volleyball and so on, even in cricket, but obviously in large groups. The problems come when goals aren't aligned. in volleyball and so on the even in cricket but obviously a large group it's like it the problems come when goals aren't aligned and resentment builds because you're like he's not putting in or they're not why won't they want to do this this is such a good opportunity but he's holding me back those type of things and hayman i had the same thing for ideas it's like i come to sometimes or hame might come with what he thinks is the best idea and i don't get it i'll try to i always try to get it

but if i don't and vice versa if he doesn't i'm like all right we'll think of another one it's too it's too fragile the vibe to you know have a quarrel over those type of things. And similarly with work, if one of us doesn't want to take that opportunity, whatever it might be, TV show, new radio show, overseas opportunities that we've been offered, endorsement deals, all that kind of stuff, you're allowed to just say no and you don't have to explain. And the other person just goes, okay, that's cool. Well, we'll find the right one where we're both pumped to do it.

So you skip past any of that resentment and even any of those tough conversations when that's the status quo. You don't start pitching each other on the ideas? I do. Like I'll go, hey, this one might be really important to me. Can you have another look at it? And in those moments, and vice versa, I'll go, oh, shit,

yeah, actually, he really wants to do this. Yeah, we can do it. Like, it's not that big a deal for me, of course. But you don't play that card. I mean, I don't think I've played the card for years or either a time. Because you know, and you don't want to put emotional pressure on someone else. Because it's unfair. So, you know, you have the discussion.

If it's a no, you might leave it a few weeks and see how important it is to you still and yeah ring up and go hey i'm still thinking about it what if it was this or that and so on and if it's still no that's right that that's that's that's i think again the importance of the duo is like why would i ever want to go into something where he didn't want to do it or vice versa? And that's the same with ideas. I've got to perform it with Haim. It's only going to be good if we're both pumped to do it. And so, yeah, just leave it, find something else.

Andy Lee, thanks so much for joining me. Cheers, buddy. Good to the show. It means that you won't miss new episodes like this one, and it also makes it easier for other people to find us, and I would appreciate your help. The audio engineer for the Jolly Swagman podcast is Lawrence Moorfield. Our dehydrated video editor is Al Fetty. I'm Joe Walker. Until next week, thank you for listening. Ciao.