Dane Simpson didn’t believe he could be a stand-up comedian until someone literally pushed him on stage to perform against his will.
“My mob come from Walgett, which is outback New South Wales, and I used to travel up there to see my dad every school holidays. In Walgett, if you tell the funniest yarn, you win,” the Gamilaraay comic says.
“You don’t let the truth get in the way of a good yarn. You go for whatever’s going to make people laugh the hardest. And I just grew up doing that. I didn’t know that you could do stand-up comedy for a living. It’s just how we lived life and connected.”
A decade later, the Wagga Wagga-based comedian has built a flourishing career since bursting on to the scene in 2015 as a national finalist on Deadly Funny, touring festivals across the nation, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala.
He’s also racked up TV credits on Channel 10’s Thank God You’re Here, The Amazing Race Australia, and Have You Been Paying Attention?, while hosting the hit online series, Servo Bingo.
Now he’s bringing his “highlight reel” show 100% Hits to the Adelaide Fringe, looking back at “all the killer punchlines, crowd favourites and greatest hits” from his career so far.
But going through 10 years’ worth of gags has been no easy feat, involving many hours spent in front of the TV watching his past performances.
“There’s been times I’ve been watching my shows and my wife comes in and she’s like, ‘Are you watching you?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m trying to find what jokes work,’ and she goes, ‘Are you laughing?’ – and I’m like ‘…yeah,’” he laughs.
“It can be a bit cringey sometimes but the majority of it is fun to watch. I forgot (a lot of) these gags. They’re from such a long time ago. So it’s really funny to go back and watch some of the stuff that I used to do. You know, I’m a better comic now, so I can take some of those jokes that were okay and make them better.”
Through it all, he says his wife, Eleanor, has been his rock and toughest critic, pushing him to be “the best that I could possibly be.”
“I’ll be like, ‘Do you find this bit funny?’ and then she’s like ‘Why don’t you think of something funny to say when that doesn’t work?’ I’m like, oh my god, that’s so full on but she’s gone, ‘Mate, would you rather me say it now or would you rather 200 people not laugh?’ I’m like, ‘To be honest I’d rather 200 people not laugh because you are cutting me to my core as we speak.’ But it’s really cool to have somebody that we can just bounce ideas off of.”
Jokes aside, he wants his achievements over the past decade to show people in regional towns that they don’t need to move to the big smoke to dream big and find success.
“Realistically, a lot of people strive to just be like a tradie or a doctor. Whereas any of the art stuff is not even on the radar. It’s not even talked about,” he says.
“We didn’t even have a comedy club in Wagga Wagga. We didn’t have any comedians. It was just, Carl Barron and Kitty Flanagan would visit every few years. There was no place that anybody could get up and do stand-up comedy so we invented it.
“The biggest goal for me is that I want people that live in regional Australia to watch TV and go, I can do that. I can tell some jokes – don’t rule out opportunities because you’re in Wagga Wagga.”
100% Hits, Le Cascadeur at The Garden of Unearthly Delights, 2-8 Mar, 8.30pm