WIL GOES TO WAR TO WIN A LAUGH

Is there humour to be found in the human tragedy of East Timor? Can laughs really be extracted from the Battle of the Somme, which cost a million lives? Local comedian Wil Anderson thinks so, and has written a dangerous routine for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. "I want to put Australian history in context," he says of his show Terra Wilius, which opens at North Melbourne Town Hall on Friday. "I want to look at things like the White Australia policy and Aboriginal massacres and other historical disasters." "And at wars and other military events, because they are historical reference points." As fodder for a comedy routine, it sounds about as funny as foot surgery to me. But Anderson, 25, says he has no intention in delivering the Manning Clark lecture. He says that Terra Wilius will deal with lighter subject matter as well. Super. A former finance journalist, Anderson lurched late into comedy after a chat with funny girl Wendy Harmer at an office party. "She told me she was paid $10 000 for 20 minutes work and I thought that sounded like my kind of gig," he said yesterday. Since then, he has become a regular at the melbourne and Edinburgh comedy festivals, and bobs up on Good News Week and elsewhere. He says he can identify with Marty Lappan, teh Melbourne comedian who last week claimd his ex-girlfriend was stalking him - by attending his gigs and not laughing. "I've never had an ex-girlfriend after me, but there was a guy in Edinburgh who would come to shows and take his clothes off," he said. Yeah, well. Sounds funnier than the Battle of the Somme to me, pal.