Where There's A Wil

9 November 2000, Sunday Telegraph   The only subject Wil Anderson scored low marks in for his Communications degree at Canberra University was radio. Ironic, considering that, after a stint as a newspaper journalist, a brief experiment as an author, followed by a successful stretch as a stand up comic, Anderson has ended up co-hosting the Triple J breakfast show with Adam Spencer. His years in stand up have made him a tough critic of his own performance. A regular listener once described the Triple J show as sometimes brilliant, at other times a car accident, and that sums it up pretty accurately" he said Anderson has taken time out from Triple J this week to perform his sixth solo stand up show, called Who wants to be a Wilionaire?, at the Glebe Vahalla. Five years ago, Anderson was building a promising career with the very serious Australian Financial Review in the Canberra press gallery when he threw it in to live in Melbourne and writea book. There wasn't much writing involved- there was a lot of drinking, a lot of hanging out, and a lot of telling people I was a writer." He says Nor surprisingly, his money ran out fast. A friend suggested he try stand up comedy. My first gig was the try out room as theEspy in St Kilda on a Saturday afternoon and I was ind staggeringly awful" he said But Anderson persisted amd last year he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh ringe festival. Stand up is clearly his first choice. "I see myself as a stand up who has a radio job, not a radio person who does stand up shows." He said Radio has forced him to be more profilic. A good stand up might write two hours of jokes a year, where as we write two to three hours of jokes each week for a radio show" he said But he concedes, some of the jokes misfire. On radio you can kid yourself that they're laughing at home. In front of a live audience, there's no room for self delusion."