The week I speak to comedian Dave Hughes, he's been in the news for an unfortunate incident involving gastro at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Concerned about getting through his show at the peak of his illness, Hughes wore an adult nappy under his jeans on stage. It was a detail that was easily concealed until fellow comedian Peter Helliar outed him on live television on The Project.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But thankfully, Hughesy is on the mend.
"The gastro's gone thank goodness, it was a tricky week. The show must go on, so you wear an adult nappy on stage and you get through it and then you get a couple of extra jokes out of it and it ends up a news story," Hughes says.
With his three kids now 4, 5 and 7, Hughes thought his nappy days were behind him, but at the end of the day, it all makes for good material.
"Anything unpleasant in my life becomes material. You don't wish annoying times but they do end up on stage and everyone loves to laugh at other people's misfortune, me included."
Once the Adelaide Fringe is done and dusted, Hughes is bringing his new show Deluded to the Canberra Comedy Festival. It will be his first time ever at the festival - surprising for someone so prominent on the Australian comedy scene.
"I don't get to Canberra often enough to be honest. Last time I was in Canberra it was winter and my God - it was a Friday night and I did a show at one of the theatres and I decided to walk to the theatre and I walked to the wrong theatre. And I tell you what, I nearly got hypothermia by the time I got to the right one. There's some brutal winters in Canberra - definitely crisp," he says.
"I used to do a gig years ago at a nightclub which was frequented by a lot of army people actually and they were quite robust audiences. The Private Bin or something? We're talking nineties."
While he has been to town a tad more recently than Private Bin days, it's no wonder it's been some time. These days Hughes juggles family life with touring as a comedian, and TV commitments, not to mention a national radio drive show with Kate Langbroek, which he does from wherever he happens to be that day.
"It's actually pretty easy because you can just Skype yourself in basically. As long as you're in a studio in a city you're basically looking at your co-host even though you might not be in the same room, and no one really knows," he says.
"You can do it from home too, I've got a little line in at home. One day at the depths of my gastro last week I did my show from home. Just trying to tell the kids to shut up, that's the hardest work in that."
Hughes says Deluded is an evolving show that changes nightly looking at "a snapshot of where my life's at at the moment". So what's he deluded about then?
"My importance in the scheme of things - I think we all are," he laughs.
"I remember once discussing 'my brand' - anyone who discusses their own brand needs to be slapped basically. Whenever you spend a second worrying about what other people think about you, you're deluded because you don't realise they don't think about you at all. No one could care less."
Dave Hughes Deluded is on as part of the Canberra Comedy Festival on Saturday March 25 at Canberra Theatre. Tickets $44.90-$46.90 from canberracomedyfestival.com.au.
