24 hours
Wil Anderson comedian

3.30am It's dark outside but 27-year-old comic Wil Anderson is up watching a tape of last night's late news in case there's something quirky he can mention on today's Triple J breakfast show. "Sometimes, there's stuff on the late news that doesn't even make the morning papers. And for brekkie radio, you've really got to be on top of it."

4.30am Leaves his Bondi home, buys newspapers at Kings Cross and spends an hour at Triple J's Ultimo studios snipping out the best stories and scrawling jokes in the margins.

6am Leans over the microphone and begins his three hours of banter and ab-libbing with co-host Adam Spencer. "If Adam says to me, 'Right, we've got a minute, can you come up with 10 funny pick-up lines that a Pope would say to a builder?', no problem, I'd do it."

7am Anderson says his whole life is material for the show. "Every single thing that happens to me gets evaluated for comic potential. The other day, my power went off and I talked for days about having no power at my house."

8.40am Discusses the HSC on air. "If there was three-unit Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I'd do well." Listeners are invited to suggest ideal exam subjects and offerings include bludgeology, four-unit procrastination and three-unit Wil Anderson for one boy's smitten girlfriend. "The theory's fine," smirks Anderson, "but the practical's very nasty."

9.05am The show over for today, he types up dialogue for a comic radio skit, The Adventures of Mathman, which he and Spencer will record in 15 minutes. Decides to do voices of a butch policeman and celebrity gardener Jamie Durie.

Noon Arrives at ABC TV studios in Gore Hill to rehearse tonight's taping of chat show, The Glass House, in which Anderson puts a funny spin on weekly news. The ex-Canberra political reporter insists he had no comedic ambition yet here he is hosting his own TV spot. After quitting journalism, he tried becoming an author, "but when you're young, you spend more time drinking tha actually writing". Then he wrote "some short, funny stuff" to pay the bills. "I just kind of fell into it."

1pm "There's more news than anthrax sightings around this week!" he follows the autocue. "But the weirdest story has got to be our friends in America, who are having what sociologists call post-disaster sex. 'Did the earth move for you?' 'No, but the building fell down'."

2pm More edgy humour. "In America, you can now buy Osama bin Laden coffee mugs and dartboards and, for $15, a roll of 'wipe-out bin Laden' toilet paper. There's also a bin Laden action figure but if you put it down, you can never find it again."
4pm Full run-through on camera. As the one-liners with fellow comedians Corinne Grant and Dave Hughes degenerate, Anderson stares square at the camera: "You can't get TV of this quality just anywhere."

5.30pm Crew break for dinner but Anderson, producer Ted Robinson and writer Ian Simmons review the script.

7.15pm Warms up the studio audience with jokes. His first taste of live comedy was a five-minute try-out six years ago at a St Kilda hotel: he's since become an acclaimed performer at comedy festivals around Australia. "I'd give up the other stuff tomorrow if I could make a full-time living from stand-up and only stand-up."

10.30pm A drink with the crew, then home. Watches the news and writes for tomorrow's breakfast show. "It's pretty hard to sleep afterwards. When we first started this show, I slept a grand total of eight hours in five days."

Gina Leros "This Life" --> SundayLife! in the Sun Herald

Return to article index
Return to mainpage!!