A funny thing happened to Wil Anderson on the way to a gig last year, though he could hardly see the funny side at the time.
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The comedian made headlines when he was arrested at Wagga Wagga Airport for allegedly causing a disturbance on board a flight bound for the rural town. He was later released by police and was able to take the stage for his 7.30pm show as planned.
At the time he remained tight-lipped about the events that led to his arrest, but a year on and he's using the saga as the basis for his new show Wilegal, telling the whole story in great detail.
"The show starts with me leaving home in Sydney on the Saturday afternoon and it finishes with me arriving home in Sydney the next day on the Sunday night and it tells the story of every single thing that happens in between," said Anderson.
While he can laugh at it now, it took Anderson at least three months to be able to see the funny side.
"It was a pretty horrible experience to go through to be honest and no bit of what happened was funny at the time. But a lot of it is funny in reflection. So I tried to tell that all in the show," he said.
"This show's very much about how we often misunderstand each other or the idea that people can look at the same set of evidence and take very different conclusions from it."
As well as touring, Anderson currently splits his time between cities, doing breakfast radio in his hometown of Melbourne and filming popular ABC series The Gruen Transfer in Sydney. He premiered Wilegal earlier this year in Adelaide, and has also taken the show to Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, with Canberra and Sydney shows to come.
When it arrives in Canberra on June 2, he will face perhaps his toughest crowd yet - it will be the first time the police who arrested Anderson on that fateful day in Wagga will see the show.
"So if you're sitting in the audience in Canberra, you will be sitting amongst the police who arrested me. So that will be a pretty amazing show to see because you'll see me tell the story of what happened in front of the police who actually arrested me on the plane," said Anderson.
"It will be very meta. You'll get to see me tell the story of how they ended up to come and see the show, while they are sitting in the show."
Next year, he also hopes to head on a rural tour and book a Wagga gig to take the show back to where it all began.
Wilegal is on at Canberra Theatre Centre on Saturday June 2 at 8pm. Tickets at canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
