Will the Real Larry Einfeld Please Stand Up?

Oscar Schwartz takes a tour of the open mic comedy scene

I once heard an American comic say that everyone in Australia is funny except for the comedians. There’s something to this. Whatever humour exists in our national character reveals itself most naturally in the banter of day-to-day life. The word “cunt” comes to mind; if Australian culture has ever been upstream of global culture, surely it was in the casualisation of this versatile word. For some reason, though, when this shtick is contrived into a stand-up routine, something bad happens. You end up with Dave Hughes. Or Nanette.

And yet in Melbourne, Australia’s most self-serious city, there is a vibrant and bustling stand-up scene. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is the second-largest in the world, just behind Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival. There are a good half dozen clubs where you can see the aforementioned Hughes perform on a weeknight, along with drinks and dinner. And then there are scores of open-mic nights in pubs and bars, where strivers and deadbeats try out their material to a non-paying and often hostile audience. There is a grim horror associated with the phrase “comedy open mic night.” One hears it and gets a sad and lonely feeling in the middle of one’s sternum. But, if we are to prosecute the American comic’s logic—that Australian humour emanates from the unwashed masses—then maybe it is in the dank corner rooms of suburban pubs, where the jokes are still unpasteurised, that we may find some local comedy worth attending.

With this in mind, in the weeks leading up to this year’s festival, I decided to take a tour of Melbourne’s open mic nights. To initiate myself into the scene, I caught up with Belanco Loloa, an up-and-coming comedian and cyber security student with a gentle speaking voice, a considered manner, and the Instagram handle @crayonshithead. Belanco grew up in Launceston and moved to Melbourne with ambitions of making it in comedy. He quickly learned that the professional scene here revolves around the festival, but to break into the circuit, you have to make a name for yourself at open mics first. Shortly after arriving in the city, he attended one such night at a club in North Melbourne. Belanco got there early and put his name at the top of the list, but the host kept reshuffling the order, placing regulars and friends at the top, and unknowns at the bottom. “I didn’t know anyone and I was nervous,” he told me. “I started drinking beers and by the time they called my name I was so drunk that I didn’t even hear them.” He missed his slot and stumbled home.

Now Belanco runs his own night upstairs at The Clyde, in an airless room usually reserved for Lacan and Hegel reading groups from the University of Melbourne down the road. He told me to come along, but warned that he tries to keep the event as open and inclusive as possible. “Which means it can be ummm, what’s the word?” he said, gazing into the near distance. “Eclectic.”