Luke Kidgell On Radio, Podcasting & Comedy

Luke: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's a Daily Talk Show episode 390.

Tommy: What's happening, guys?

Josh: We've got a guest in the studio, Luke Kidjell.

Luke: Well, oh, I was about to say welcome. Hey, welcome me, huh?

Josh: You know, I've done that so many times when it's people's birthdays, or the classic one is when you have an Uber and you go to the airport and they say, have a nice flight, and you say, you too. Yeah, those fuckers aren't getting on the flight.

Luke: It's because I have my own podcast and I'm used to welcoming guests on. I'm not— I'm rarely a guest, so I was just like, guys, welcome.

Josh: Oh, it's not my show. It's a power move.

Tommy: It's a It's a different muscle though that you have to flex.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: So I mean, you're usually—

Luke: like, literally, that was a sick flex. I pretty much came in and started hosting your podcast.

Tommy: You do a podcast a lot of the time by yourself. Yeah, fuck that. Yeah, that's hard.

Luke: I agree.

Josh: I mean, comedy is a lonely business. Yeah.

Tommy: I mean, what is that? The first one, obviously you're gonna get through.

Luke: You've done 100 Yeah, I think I was like 120, 130 or something like that.

Tommy: So you're still sticking at it?

Luke: Yeah, I gotta go do one after this actually.

Tommy: And what's the vibe by yourself? What do you prefer?

Luke: Oh, I like talking to people more, but, um, I think it is like there's no other situation in which, uh, you can just speak your mind for an hour and people listen. There's something like fun about no one interrupting, and which means if you have a shit opinion, uh, people will just hate it.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Do people actually, uh, write it? Do you find people will write in if you you've said something that they don't agree with.

Luke: Oh, for sure. I did a bit about the weirdest stuff as well. I did a bit about like I was talking, I don't know why, I just thought it'd be funny and make fun of, uh, people who drive manuals now, which is not a demographic you want to make fun of because people who do drive manuals, yeah, like cars.

Tommy: I was always, I was always impressed with the chicks in my life when I was young who drove manual. I was like, fucking props to you. But I was, for some reason I was into it. I was into girls who knew how to— I mean, it sounds fucked up.

Josh: Yeah, I get it.

Luke: You know how to work a shaft. That's what you were going to say, and then you were losing it.

Tommy: But it's not even where it was in my mind.

Josh: It had nothing to do with the long piece. There's something about like the independence of like, yeah, I can control this whole thing.

Luke: Yeah, see, I was trashing manual drivers. I was saying like, what's the point when cars can do it for you now? Like, you can't even wank in traffic. I think that was my main point.

Tommy: Well, here's the reality.

Luke: I didn't have many good arguments.

Tommy: Here's the reality. If you want to get a Ferrari, Ferrari and you're rich as fuck, you're not getting a manual one. They don't do manual ones.

Josh: Really? Look it up.

Tommy: Is there a manual Ferrari? No, they're all automatic. They're all either Tiptronic, which is just like you do control the gears, but you don't have a clutch. A lot of these cars, so you're spending half a million dollars and you're getting an automatic. Yeah, automatics are actually more, more expensive or cheaper than manual?

Josh: One of them is more expensive.

Tommy: More expensive automatic. But now most cars are automatics, like heaps of the family cars. I mean, I'm all about automatics now.

Luke: Oh yeah, well everyone is. That's what I'm saying. My point was it's the future, why are we still living in the past? And, uh, people got mad. I put up a clip and it got like 80,000 views online, not because it was popular, but because like people were just in the comments like, you know, but, but the kind of guys who are honestly caring about that are like, you know, high-vis wearing. Yeah, they're the kind of dudes who they think calling— that they were calling me like, oh, what a girl. And I was like, the fact that you You think calling me a girl is an insult shows a lot about you. Like, that's not— I'm not insulted by that. Yeah, like, oh, you're a girl. It's like, all right, no, girls are great. I like it because you're talking about—

Tommy: you've spun on the head what the— what it used to be, you know? Like, people love manuals, and there still is.

Josh: I love it.

Luke: Yeah, clearly, because I just thought it was funny. And also, like, I don't care. That's the thing. I think people thought I was like, fuck manuals, but I was like, no, I don't care. I just thought it'd be funny just to say one line of, you can't even wank in traffic. I think that was my whole point. Yeah, you just wanted to get to the wank And they got stuck on the manual. It was like a 3-minute build to like a 4 out of 10 wank joke. I know no one else could see that.

Tommy: I know a tradie who told me that he used to have a wank on the way to work in the car.

Luke: Really?

Tommy: No joke. No fucking joke, dude. I thought it was weird. I hope you guys do too.

Josh: What did— just take the sort of— was he a nicer person on the work site because of it? Less angry?

Tommy: He's either got a sex addiction.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And this is a way of just sort of, I don't know, numbing it down a little bit for the day. I mean, if it works.

Josh: Just do it before you leave. I think that's the key, maybe.

Luke: I'm not going to say who it is or whatever, but I know someone who's wanked on the job.

Tommy: On the job?

Josh: I feel like episode 14, did we talk about that?

Tommy: Yeah, we talked about work wanks.

Josh: We did this, uh, yeah, episode 14, before we thought that this was going to be a thing that would sort of— we didn't think we'd have Seth Godin and just— yeah, anyway, we, uh, we spoke about sort of, uh, radical honesty. And so we just went through moments of talking about things that we are uncomfortable with personally, but things that we've done. And I think that maybe— I think that a work wank definitely made it in there.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Josh: I mean, a squeegee in my ass also made it in there as well, which you'll have to listen to the episode.

Tommy: If Josh didn't do that as a 14-year-old kid— how old were you, 12, 14?

Josh: In, in, in, in, as in I put it in my ass.

Luke: Yes.

Josh: Okay.

Luke: I was hoping you said on, and then I was like, maybe you said in.

Josh: No, but the thing is, um, that was actually, um, Because that's what it was. It was like 15. It was— I was like 15. It wasn't, Luke, it wasn't for cleaning purposes, bro. Yeah, it was because the reason, the reason why I did it, to be clear, was because I had a sex ed teacher who was trying to give us a more sort of real experience around what, what you need to know about your body. And she was an older lady and she said, talked about the male's G-spot in our asses.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And so that's what I reckon. I wouldn't have been the only one.

Tommy: Lead a dog to water, they drink.

Luke: See, I know that as a fact.

Josh: Yeah. And I've never tried it.

Luke: Curious.

Josh: I haven't had to do it since. Well, because I realised I didn't want to be—

Luke: No, I kind of envy you because I— everyone does want to know what it feels like.

Tommy: I just—

Luke: anyway, uh, yeah, good on you.

Josh: But the funny thing is that I then— I mentioned on the show and then I had a mate who was very sort of casual. He said, ah yes, I got, uh, my wife to put a dildo in my ass on the weekend, uh, to test it. It was the first time he was testing it out. And that's not even— that's not even a joke. But, um, we do— we do have a brave woman. We do have a squeegee keyring keyroll— uh, ski—

Luke: ski—

Josh: what do we have? PG squeegee keyring cult. Yeah, we gotta— we actually— so the reason that—

Luke: why did you call it the most difficult sentence? Well, it hasn't been difficult up until I've got some new Peter Piper Picks Some Pickled Peppers merch. We're also selling, uh, seashells that she sells by the seashells shirts.

Josh: Um, no, so this, uh, this keyring, uh, for people who listen to the show regularly would know this is actually designed by 3D Dill, which is how he got his name. And so, uh, he actually has come from Canada and he brought like, we basically started this cult. There's only 4 of them and I've got 6 of them. How many do we have? There's 9 in total.

Tommy: Really? Yeah. 3 went missing in—

Josh: Yeah, they're in my ass right now. In Josh's anus.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And so, yeah, but that's how 3D Deal came to be. So he was listening to the show, said, I've got a 3D printer, I'll make these for you.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: And then before you know it, I guess the—

Tommy: you're in the business, Luke, of sort of noticing things that are picking up momentum and running with them. Yeah, it's what I love about creativity, radio. It's like you start to see what audience is picking up on. Like, um, you sipping water on stage.

Luke: Oh, did you see that? How weird is that? That happens at all my shows and I don't know why. I still don't know why.

Tommy: So when he— explain what happened.

Luke: So, you know, there's— have you guys seen comedy? Obviously, like, comedy before, the comedian, you know, about 10 minutes in, you know, your throat gets a little parched, so you walk over to the stool, have a drink, and there's always this weird pause where there's like 150 people or whatever, or sometimes if you're that big, a theatre of people just staring at you drinking. And in no other profession does that happen where everyone's just watching you drink. So at my shows, like, it always starts at the first time someone, just to feel the awkwardness, one time just went— and I was like, thank you, whatever. And then the next time I went and got a drink, about 10 minutes later in the show, about 30 people started to clap. And then by the end, I was almost getting a standing ovation, like, to the point where I'd be like and everyone go nuts, and then I'd take it away and it would be silent. And then it was like, how did—

Josh: do you find that that adds to the show? Or at the beginning, like, from an energy point of view?

Luke: Oh, it's funny. Like, it's a good thing to call back throughout the show. But sometimes I'll be halfway through a joke, forget about it, and I'm so into telling the joke, and I just quickly get a drink and everyone starts going nuts. And I'm like, what? Like, oh, like, example of it, I have a clip of it. I was like, oh, so I went to Thailand recently and I just got a drink and then everyone started going nuts and I was like, why so many people care about Thailand? And then I briefly forget all the time, like, oh, it's shit. Yeah, okay, we're all doing memes.

Josh: Okay, cool. It actually reminds me of when I, when I watch Ricky Gervais's special, I feel like he's got big fosters. He's got like obnoxiously large—

Luke: Well, that happens in my new special that we've shot and it's coming out. And, and I don't know how each audience is. So what happened in like Adelaide happened in Canberra, happened in Brisbane. I don't know how these people are communicating this garbage to each other.

Josh: It's so funny.

Tommy: What is the main way of your tribe or your people, your fans?

Josh: Your cult.

Tommy: Your cult.

Luke: Cult, yeah, I do have a cult.

Tommy: What is the way that they communicate? Have you worked out how you can get them all sort of—

Luke: It's like Instagram, and I do reply to like everyone's DMs usually.

Josh: Do they talk amongst each other?

Luke: Yes, I have a Discord as well for like the Patreon people, like It's so weird, like some of them have become friends. Yeah, like they've met through my coming to my shows. Like then the next year you meet two people you met the year before and like, oh, we're dating now. And you're like, that's so weird.

Tommy: It's happened.

Luke: Yeah, it's super weird. Uh, you mentioned bonding over weird podcasts.

Tommy: It's a weird time. I mean, what I was thinking about us doing 7 days, if, if you listen to every show, there's a massive buy-in that I think is like, if you listen to one show a week, you have buy-in, but it becomes the voice in your ear.

Josh: I wonder how many people are listening to one. I feel like it'd be hard. Did someone just fucking yawn? Did I hear a yawn?

Luke: Yes.

Tommy: Is that you, Mr. 97? Do that again, mate. You're done.

Josh: He literally— this is what happened. We changed the audio levels. We've given him more mic volume and I fucking regret it anyway. The— what I wanted to bring up was you mentioned VKAL.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: In— was that your stand-up special that you're slicing up? Or is that from—

Luke: that was just a clip from a couple of years ago. That was me opening for my friend Lewis. As you had Lewis Spears on the show before, that was when I opened for his special. Yeah. And yeah, I did that VKAL bit and it since has gone very viral. Yeah. I didn't think it was that— I don't know, I thought it was a good bit, but it would have been a bit I never put in a special. But I'm glad I did put it out.

Tommy: Viral in a good way or viral?

Luke: This one was viral in a good way. But like, I got like 3 million views just from VCal kids who love it. And now it's— I've heard so many storeys of VCal teachers playing it in class, which kind of proves my point that VCal is a waste of time.

Tommy: I, um, I dropped out of VCal, which is the ultimate.

Josh: Wow.

Luke: See, I dropped out of TAFE, so everyone thought I was punching down. I'm like, dude, I'm just punching directly across to the gronk next to me.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, it's a VCal thing to do.

Luke: If you don't know what VCal is, it's That stands for Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning. Doesn't it really?

Josh: I don't think the VCal kids would know.

Luke: It's like TAFE in high school. It's kind of like if you don't want to do Year 12, then you'd— or you don't do VCE, you do like, uh, they just do stupid shit.

Josh: The problem that I had with— because I was probably a perfect, uh, student for something like VCal. Yeah, but because I wasn't like a seen as someone who would do a trade. It didn't really fit. But I feel like if they were to change VCAL to be more like open, so it's like you could be a creative or a filmmaker, because that's why I went there.

Luke: So the whole storey is, I, I tell the storey where I went to a school to teach VCAL kids how to do stand-up. They employed me. They were like, hey, uh, this VCAL teacher messaged me going, hey, like, we're doing the stand-up comedy thing, we'd love to get a comedian to come in and help the kids write like a 5-minute thing. And I thought it was super weird. Yeah, I was like, all right, cool, they're gonna pay me.

Tommy: I was—

Josh: it's like going to a jail or something, you know?

Luke: I don't do a lot during the day, so I was like, sweet. And I thought I might get a storey out of that, and I'm very glad I went. And then the kids just were not interested because the kids who were there were there to do a trade or whatever. So I'm like, why are we learning stand-up? And I'd be the same if I had no interest to do stand-up comedy. I'd be like, why am I sitting here listening to this guy?

Tommy: I love that the teacher thought it was a great idea.

Josh: I think it's cool. I reckon that's so cool.

Luke: That's literally glorified babysitting. Like, that's what I was doing. It was like, just, just tell them to sit there and keep an eye on them for 2 hours. So how do you, how do you actually set up a class for, uh, I felt like I was like, uh, I was like the Jack Black in School of Rock. I kind of came in, I closed the door, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna be real with you. Who here wants to learn stand-up? And they were like, uh, like 2 people, kids. I was like, cool, I'll have to teach you, you guys, if you just shut up for 2 hours. I don't care what you do.

Josh: I'm like, just don't be annoying.

Luke: I was pretty much like that guy.

Tommy: And were they reciprocal to that?

Luke: Like, yeah, the kids were just like, sweet, I've got a free period off. And then by the end, like, I kind of— I did the anti-thing of like, by the end I was being funny and they were teaching these kids how to write jokes, whatever. And the kids who thought they were too cool for it at the start kind of started to join in.

Josh: Yeah, it's because you fucking negged them.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.

Josh: It's the game. You fucking nailed it.

Luke: Like, you know, one of them was sitting there at the back back with his arms forward. And then by then he's like, oh, I've got a story. And then he started telling me, he's like, oh, you know what could be funny? And then I realised 5 minutes in, I was like, you're writing stand-up. He's like, no, I'm not. I was like, yeah, you are. He's like, no, I'm not.

Tommy: It's usually the kids that don't want to be involved that have something in them.

Luke: Or are they—

Josh: you've got something in your teeth, by the way, which I don't think the camera will pick up. Is it?

Tommy: Uh, do I?

Josh: I feel like you do. Maybe it's a gap.

Tommy: It's just my fucking head.

Josh: Like a poppy seed. If you had a— yeah, there it It's gone. It's moved. Anyway, sorry about that. I was— I keep looking at the— Yeah, we're good.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh: It's moved. I'm going to do this for the rest of you. You actually wouldn't be able to see it. You've— you had a radio show.

Luke: Yes.

Josh: With Lewis Spears, who we've had on the show.

Luke: Yes.

Josh: How did— how did that come about? What— as someone who I see you as someone who's been able to foster a community online, something that a lot of radio people dream of doing. Yeah. And so you've, you sort of, I don't know if they do.

Tommy: I reckon there's a lot of, I think, well, what's it, it's like YouTube stars want to be TV stars, right?

Luke: Um, maybe at the start because TV was still the big media. Yeah, TV maybe not, but I think YouTube stars just want to be YouTube stars now because it's all like TMZ report on YouTubers as much as they report on TV stars.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Like there's David Dobrik, like, and Logan Paul, like, being ambushed pushed in the street.

Josh: But David Dobrik talks about his— if his dream is to have his own Tonight Show, like, talk show.

Luke: And so I think what I reckon the future of that is on the internet.

Josh: But that's what I mean, you'll have that.

Luke: Yeah, it's just on the internet.

Josh: I think that everyone's like undervaluing their own like area in, in that sort of, sort of thing.

Luke: Hasn't he got like 18, 13 million, whatever how many subscribers he has? Isn't that like probably more viewers than the Tonight Show has?

Tommy: 100%.

Josh: Well, that's— but that's the weirdness in like humans, we, we value things that we think that we want, but we've got the actual thing right there. I mean, why did you do— why did you decide to do radio at the start?

Luke: Uh, well, that's what we've just realised recently, was we've since stopped doing it, but I think we just wanted to do Luke and Lewis. We wanted to do a show together, and then I think the go-to at the start of, you know, you're a comedian, you're like, all right, we want to do a show, what's a platform we can do that show on? And the obvious choice was radio, and we knew, um, and I think the reason why I found out about your podcast was we knew Jack Post. Yeah, I knew him from community radio, like at SYN. And, um, so I'd met him a couple of times. And then Lewis knew, uh, Sam Kavanagh, who was Hamish and Andy's old producer, and through like a family friend. And I think we just shot him an email and we recorded a little demo, and he was like, nah, come back when you want to change your online stuff. That's what Sam said. And he was pretty—

Josh: what is that? What did that mean?

Luke: Kind of just like like, oh, Lewis was doing some pretty edgy stuff and still is at the time, and he's like, maybe you guys aren't fit for radio. But then he was like, look, I'll still forward this on to all the content producers. Then Dave Cameron, uh, messaged— like emailed us like 3 days later going, come in.

Josh: Oh, that's great. There's a connection there because, uh, Tommy's like call-up, that was through Dave when you got the Shepherding gig.

Tommy: Yeah, he emailed me about 12:30 AM, just, mate, do you want a job regional? How old were I was 22.

Luke: That's like some Scooter Braun shit, but it's way less weird. Yeah, you're 22, like, up in the middle of the night watching little boys on the internet, you know. But in your case, big boys, you know. That's how Justin Bieber was found. Yeah, you could have been the Justin Bieber of radio.

Tommy: Yeah, but I'm shit.

Josh: And so that's talented. I mean, so what was the, um, so where, so, so Dave Cameron reached out, was that—

Luke: he reached out, then we came in, and then Jack was really good, uh, Jack Post was really good and stayed after. So we used to come in for about 6 weeks in a row after Hamish and Andy finished. And Jack used to stay around and record a demo for us, like, just for free. Like, amazing, which was very nice for him because we— they were like, oh, we need to record a demo, but they didn't want to pay anyone. If you've worked in radio, you'll know that they don't want to pay anyone to do anything. Yeah, yeah. And, um, so that— then Jack said, yeah, I'm happy to do it.

Josh: This is probably when Jack was trying to build his house, which is probably like— would have been 2 years of delay.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: And so what was the, um, what were you trying to get out of those tapes? What were like, what were those, um, we just wanted a show.

Luke: And then we got put on the modern digital, like the Triple M Digital Network, and then that was awesome. And then I think that that's where our show was probably best. And then after about a year on that, we, oh no, not even, like 8 months on that, we got put on Fox on the Sunday nights and we're doing like the fill-in stuff on the school holidays and like on the survey breaks. And then, uh, I think we just realised that like, oh, this isn't what maybe we really wanted to do at the start. I think we lost sight of what we originally wanted to do. Like on Triple M Modern Digital, we were doing whatever we wanted to do and we were doing all this ridiculous stuff like walking to work and yeah, like 30 kilometres and doing these dumb challenges.

Josh: The 30 kilometres bit is the outrageous bit.

Tommy: You're not walking. Yeah, you walk to work every day.

Luke: Yeah, well, the joke was that I— yeah, I was proving that I don't live I live in the country because Lewis thinks I live in the country. And he said, if you live— if you don't live in the country, he goes, you could walk to work. And I was like, fine. And I got up the next day and walked 6 hours.

Tommy: We had a bloke by the name of Craig Harper on the show, yeah, earlier in the week, and he— we were talking about what we're doing and, and how there's no rules. He's got a podcast too. There's no rules to what we're doing, and I— that's what I love.

Luke: Radio, there is a lot of rules, so many. There's— I don't mind those. It does keep the content moving, and it's almost fun to sometimes play in that field. But then, yeah, I think we're just better not playing that because I think our show was like an anti-radio show anyway. Like, we used to break them. Like, that was kind of the show. Like, we used to do a segment called like, is our boss listening, where we'd throw out a massive threat like we're gonna do something awful on air. Uh, and we, we, we timed how long it was between our studio and Dave Cameron's office, and we used to play a timer. And because he used to insist that he listened every day, but we knew he didn't, so we used to like start the clock and we're like, Dave, if you don't do this, we're gonna leave. One time we just left. We're like We're not like, we're 10 minutes into the show, we're like, we're not going to do the show today. And then we just left. So like, I feel like the appeal of our show and why it built an audience so quick of our online fans was because it was a radio show, like on roids. Like it was a radio show. Like, why do these guys have a show?

Tommy: But what do you learn about audience when you do a radio show? Because essentially a radio station has their own audience and you're then on there.

Josh: You're presenting to an existing audience.

Luke: I think that was always the battle between us and not like It wasn't— there was never any tension, but like between us and the radio station was like, there could be tension. They're like, this is how you appeal to the Fox audience. And we're like, we didn't care because we already had our own online audience.

Josh: What was that, out of curiosity? What would they say? What were the brand filters if you wanted to be the perfect, perfect boys?

Luke: For example, like they just used to stop us from doing stuff that we thought was hilarious. Like we used to have this segment called Businesses Exposed, and Lewis always wanted to expose the radio station for not— you know the Flying Fox, how it's not a helicopter, it's just a sound effect for the traffic report? And then they go like, live at the Flying Fox, and it's just someone in a news booth with a helicopter effect playing over it. We always wanted to just expose them on air for that, and they used to hate that shit. Yeah, and we used to come up with stuff like— that's just one example of—

Josh: because it's making fun of them, right?

Luke: Yeah, we used to always make fun of the radio station. We used to maybe, uh, like when big guests used to come in, we used to like— when Will.i.am came in, I remember he had a bunch of chocolate chocolates there waiting for him. And like, we were there the night before he did the performance before the grand final or whatever last year when he was on the Fox. And we just always like steal this chocolates, like, we're eating Will.i.am's chocolates. It's just like, it was a constant thing of like, can you guys just rein it in a little? Yeah, it was just like every day we were like, oh, we could do this, and we'd be running through the office like, yeah, just crazy.

Josh: And so it's been what, 6 months since you finished radio stuff?

Luke: About that? Yeah, probably wrapped up about March, like just before the Comedy Festival.

Josh: And so today you're announcing that you guys are back, you've got your podcast back.

Luke: Yeah, it seems like I've come on this podcast to announce that. It was actually a coincidence.

Tommy: No, I've got Will.i.am, he's coming on tomorrow to announce something.

Josh: And he's eaten all your chocolate.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: Um, yeah, so what was it? I mean, what was the thought process? Because you could say that, that all those nights that you spent, uh, doing the air cheques or whatever with, uh, Jack Post was leading It was essentially a podcast.

Luke: Yeah, well, we don't regret doing anything. Like, the show was so much fun and it built what we had today. And so many people loved our radio show because I think maybe we didn't— well, I think we always stayed true to what we thought it was like. We never did a— like, you guys have worked in radio, you know, like this, like, oh, you guys should talk about this because it's in the news. And you're like, but we don't want to talk about it.

Josh: It's great. It's also great, the night shift. Like, I think that the areas that you're playing in— yeah, it was that you— if you were in a breakfast show in Shepparton or whatever, all of a sudden you have to talk about—

Luke: they offered us a lot of regional stuff and we like, so an example was, it was in the news at the time, remember, in air cheque it was the Cardinal Pell case was happening. And I was like, just as an example, would we have to talk about that seriously on air? And they were like, yeah, of course. And I was like, well, like, well, that's not what, yeah, we wanted to do. We just want to do Luke and Lewis. So the reason why we kind of stopped it was because there was, uh, not a lot of, you know, by the end we were doing it in different states all the time because one of us would be doing shows interstate. And then we also really wasn't maybe the path we wanted to go down to. And also, like, we're only on once a week. We wanted to do it more.

Josh: Um, I think that's a great decision. I think that a lot of people don't listen to that internal voice, but being able to say—

Luke: crazy— like, all the other comedians on the circuit think we're nuts for quitting a radio show because that's all— think what a lot of people are striving towards.

Josh: Well, that's what I guess— that's what we're talking about at the front. It's that there's a lot of people who, uh, idealise certain things within the industry where it's like there's a bunch of people who like look at like who are in radio. Like I've heard people who are really successful in radio being chuffed that they're on a podcast. It's like, it's— that seems a bit weird.

Luke: I've, I've been lucky enough to experience both sides and I've, you know, weighed them up. And I just think the online stuff is more creativity. It's probably more work, but at the end of the day, there's more positives because you've got more freedom. If you're lucky enough to have an online following, I think just go for that. And there's more, because again, like, there was other people at the radio station controlling our future.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so what— describe the, the podcast. Yeah, what is it?

Luke: Was it just coming back and pretty much doing like, like what you guys do? Just like whatever we want. We come in every day, like, you know, if I want to trash Lewis or something for 10 minutes, you can't do that on radio because you got to go to a song.

Tommy: Yeah, well, it's one long talk break, right? This is— we have multiple chances. Are you still living in the country?

Luke: Uh, I do still live in Diamond City.

Josh: Yes, Diamond City sounds—

Luke: I mean, it's called Diamond Creek.

Josh: Okay, fuck, I was gonna say, because Diamond City, it sounds like— it sounds like there's a casino. The Diamond City, actually, it's amazing how the name— the slight twist of the name—

Luke: strip club, bro.

Josh: No, Diamond City, it sounds like— Diamond City sounds like a casino in Vegas or whatever.

Tommy: Strip club. Sometimes it takes Josh, you know, the moon has to be in the right position, coffee cup has to be in the right place for him to do anything, to get down to business.

Josh: Yeah, very specific. If it's too cold, too hot, don't like, baby doesn't like to work.

Tommy: But I think creative endeavours require, I don't know, you need to sort of be in a right place, some circumstances to get started. For you writing comedy, are you needing to like what works for you?

Luke: Yeah, I've tried a bunch of different stuff. Uh, I used to go down to my park and with a notebook and not take my phone, and then occasionally I'd be like, oh, what's another word for that? And I'd want to Google it, which kind of— yeah, yeah, did hinder you a little. So like I've now got a dictionary.

Tommy: Healthy.

Luke: Yeah, I'm not gonna sit there at the park with addiction.

Josh: That would be pretty—

Luke: and a thesaurus.

Josh: Like, couldn't you buy dictionaries? I guess you'd have to get like an Oxford Dictionary. I've wondered about that, like getting a fucking Yeah, I never appreciated scientific calculators when I was growing up.

Tommy: Still don't.

Luke: I think I still don't have no appreciation. How weird was it in high school when, like, primary school, it was like a— it was considered cheating to use a calculator. Then you get into high school and it's like, why don't you have your calculator in class? Yeah, you're like, well, I didn't bring it. And they're like, well, you need it.

Josh: Well, I—

Luke: it was always considered cheating in primary school.

Josh: Yeah, it was definitely a— I mean, I guess the difference between primary school and high school is Primary school was more sort of your times tables. Do you know what 6 times 6 is?

Luke: 36.

Josh: That's very good.

Tommy: Thank you. It was a complete scam though. Think about how much money parents around Australia have spent around the world on calculators.

Josh: I don't know if it's a scam.

Tommy: Ah, scam.

Luke: Mine was like $150, like those big ones. They're so expensive.

Tommy: That's what I mean. They fuck— all those books. Yeah, seriously. I mean, now it's a bit different.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, it's a classic dad move. You can tell that you're a dad because you just call everything a fucking scam. It wasn't a scam.

Tommy: It's a—

Josh: it's an expensive 'Cause I remember that was the most expensive thing in the whole, like your book list was a scientific calculator.

Luke: Oh, some of those textbooks are getting pretty expensive, especially—

Josh: Ridiculous.

Luke: I mean, I only did one year of like a course out of school, but I remember, I think it was like, mine was like $200.

Josh: Were you doing music? What was the—

Luke: I was doing a Bachelor of Music Business at Box Hill TAFE, which is—

Tommy: Business of music?

Luke: Yeah, it's an old industry. All I learned was there was no money in music, so I quit. But $13,000 later, I've now got a $13,000 HECS debt that I've actually, yeah, since paid off. I just decided to just pay it off as quickly as I could.

Tommy: So does it chase you?

Luke: You know, you get charged, um, like a level of interest. It's called indexation on all your, uh, HECS debt. I didn't know that. I think a lot of people do.

Tommy: Have you got HECS debt? No, I don't. Mr. 97 does. How much you got?

Josh: No, I don't have any.

Tommy: Oh, you paid it off?

Josh: Well, because he's from New Zealand.

Luke: You got a private school? No, public. Born high school.

Tommy: Yeah, which is basically—

Luke: your parents paid off your first.

Josh: I mean, he was only there for 2 months at uni. What was that? What was the actual bill, do you think?

Luke: Uh, I think it's 2.5.

Josh: Oh, that's all right.

Luke: 3D deal, literally for 3 months though. How crazy is that?

Josh: Yeah, I mean, it's cheap.

Luke: It's more than rent. Okay, no, it's not.

Tommy: How much?

Luke: How much at home?

Josh: It's like, that's, that's a year's worth of rent. It's like—

Tommy: oh, Dill's in his 4th year, 3rd year, going into my 4th year.

Josh: It's not a competition, but how much student debt do you have? Probably $32,000 at the moment.

Tommy: What's, what's the deal in Canada?

Josh: Um, we used to have a 6-month grace period where we could save up money and then start paying it back.

Luke: Um, but 6 months is not that much time.

Josh: But then the government decided to cut that, and then so as soon as I finish my degree, I have to start paying. What sort of payments do you reckon a month you will be up for? Probably starting at like $450, $500 a month.

Tommy: A month?

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: All right, so it's not like a percentage of your income like here? No. Here's what, like 2.5% or 5%? It's after you earn a certain amount After you earn $50,000 a year, I think it is. Yeah, so you could just scoot through on 40, which means I'll never have to pay it off. I don't know why I did.

Josh: I mean, as a comedian, like, what do your books actually look like? How does this all—

Tommy: run us through your profit and loss, brother.

Luke: I'm hoping you'll be asking Will.i.am this tomorrow.

Josh: Like, how does it actually work?

Luke: I would say most of the money comes in through touring, so like pretty much 60%. And then maybe like a bit of online stuff. But online stuff, I'm only making like— I think people think we make a lot more off YouTube. Like, I only make like $200 a month. Yeah, because all my stuff gets demonetized. Yeah, no, you think I'm joking? I'm not.

Josh: I mean, I can 100% believe it.

Luke: It just gets demonetized.

Tommy: But then they changed, they changed some restrictions around an account that can be monetized. You have to put up a certain amount of videos or— but the whole thing is views.

Luke: Yeah, like at the start you gotta have a thousand subscribers and also a certain amount of watch time. Yeah, but the thing is, which just cuts out all those weird kids at school where they're like got 70 subscribers. I think it's just YouTube going like, we only want to deal with the top 80% of— or the top 60% of YouTube users.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luke: You know, there's lots of people with like Minecraft channels out there getting 30 views. What's the point of monetizing for either party? Well, that's what I know, they're not going to make any money out of it if they're only getting 30 views. You pretty much don't make any money out of it until you have about 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers anyway.

Josh: I mean, that was the thing when that— when they announced that, it's like the amount of money that they're leaving on the table is like $10 a month is what the people would be making if they were actually.

Tommy: And so it's like, well, I made $90 on my account over its life, uh, and then I read the fine print, and until you go over— yeah, go over $100, they don't pay it out.

Luke: Yeah, that's exactly how they have a threshold every month. So some months, like, if I don't upload enough, I wouldn't even hit that threshold.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: Yeah. So I won't even get paid some months.

Josh: And so I feel like you invest quite heavily in those, like the special that you did and the content that you're creating.

Luke: Yeah, so that cost me $10,000 to film my own special, but I think everyone, that's the future I think is people self-funding stuff, like instead of waiting around for Netflix to give you one. Yeah. And then we're gonna try and get on some streaming services anyway, 'cause streaming services are a lot more likely to give you the time of day, because if they don't have to do any work and you just like have a product for them, that's so much easier for them than making— you know, making a Netflix original comedy special is more effort than just buying an existing one.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: So I think if you have a finished product, and especially if you bank up a couple, you can give them all, and hopefully in a few years is the plan, to a streaming service.

Josh: Yeah, definitely.

Luke: I mean, we've been talking to people at Stan and they're like, yeah, I mean, if we don't have to do anything, we'll take it.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Well, their content, they need content.

Luke: They do. Yeah.

Josh: And you've got, I guess there's companies like Netflix who are spending, what was that number that you were saying the other day, Mr. 97?

Luke: I think it's around $20 billion.

Josh: Yeah. There's a lot of money going into content.

Luke: Did you hear those numbers of how many views that Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston film got in the first weekend? It was like something like 30 million just in the US. Wow.

Josh: And Canada. TJ watches 5 times.

Luke: But that's like a quarter of their population. Yeah, that's crazy. Or is not?

Tommy: No, they got hundreds of millions.

Luke: Okay, there's like a tenth of their population. Yeah, that's more than—

Josh: yeah, it's about a year's worth of rent.

Tommy: No, it's— yeah, it's more than our population in Australia, right?

Josh: Yeah, we've got 25. 25. They don't teach that in VCE.

Tommy: I had to use a calculator.

Josh: No, but so how do you— How do you— where's the scientific calculator? Uh, how did you justify— so as video production people, what do you see the value in spending $10,000? Because that's how—

Luke: well, you make— well, I made, you know, over half of it back off the show because there was 400 people. Yeah. So you make most of it back on the night selling tickets. Um, but still, I— then I paid it off throughout the rest of my tour. So every show I did between Brisbane and pretty much the end of my tour, I just didn't— wasn't making any money. I was just paying off my special.

Josh: Yeah. So I mean, I think that's a—

Luke: that's super rewarding, right? Next the idea is like people have seen the special, more you sell, more tickets, more people come to your shows. So it's like, it's just an investment, you know, put in money to make money.

Josh: So do you— will you do a special? Is the idea that you do a special every 12 months?

Luke: Ah, nah, I think like once every few years, once every couple, 2 years, because it needs to be like a good hour. You don't want to put out the just the hour that you do every year because, you know, some bits are, you know, they're good in the room, but like, I think when you— you guys will know if you watch a special on Netflix, it's you know, you've— I feel like it's not as— never as funny as being in the room.

Josh: I'm always disappointed every time I turn on a Netflix special.

Luke: Well, don't watch mine. Yeah, you'll hate it.

Tommy: Who are you disappointed with?

Josh: No, I just think like all the best— I think, I think all the big— yeah, I think that like, um, the difference between being in like a, uh, actual, um, like going to a stand-up night or going and seeing it in person versus doing the Netflix thing. I just feel like the way that I always land on a comedy special on Netflix is it's like, uh, maybe I feel the pressure, especially with Bree, my girlfriend, when putting on a comedy special. It feels like there's an extra layer of like, we'll say, okay, if we don't laugh in the first 10 minutes, we'll turn it off.

Luke: People give it 10 minutes, which is why you got to put all your best shit at the start.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Tommy: I mean, but then you've got comedians like Chris D'Elia who does a podcast by himself every week. It's so fucking funny.

Luke: Yeah.

Tommy: And I love his stand-up too.

Luke: Last year, and I saw him in Melbourne and he was like amazing.

Tommy: Yeah, I think he's so funny. But it's amazing that you can— I almost like sometimes, I almost like his, um, his podcast better. Yeah, just because it's him just riffing for an hour.

Josh: But comedy is such a taste thing because I watch it and I don't laugh as much. Like, there's heaps of stuff that I'm watching.

Tommy: Funny enough people.

Luke: I feel like I watch the room though, because I do a lot of crowd work at my shows. Like, I reckon my Canberra show, I did about 25-30 minutes of crowd work and I only do 40 minutes of material. So I think I, I am similar to Crystal Ear, where it's like a thing where maybe you are funnier on the spot, you know, but, but that's never as funny to watch back online because it's like you weren't there.

Josh: There's an energy to the room, I guess, that you're sort of playing off, which watch when you're in— when you're sitting at home watching on the couch.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: And so how many, how many days a week are you doing the podcast with?

Luke: Uh, so Lewis and I are going to be doing it 2 days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, and then we both have an individual one as well. So still 3 podcasts a week.

Josh: Oh, that's sick.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: And so what's the— from a strategic point of view, how much thought do you put to distribution? For instance, the the YouTube stuff I was watching on the weekend, uh, how much effort there is now in that, you know, the funnel and the analytics thing where it's like watch time and you've got to get all this shit right and people are updating their thumbnails after the fact and testing things. Yeah, and I was looking at your YouTube channel and you've very much got it all dialled in, very compelling thumbnails.

Luke: I don't know if I do.

Josh: Well, I think thumbnails-wise, like, if you look at ours, it's all fucking like us sitting at a desk, right? Yeah, right.

Luke: So yeah, I feel like you do need to put a picture. So say if you talk about like whatever, Justin Bieber versus Tom Cruise fight, you need to put a picture of Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise in the thumbnail.

Tommy: We spent a week covering that.

Luke: People are, people are so thick though. They're like, I know those two people, I will click. Like, that's what people goes through people's head. Like, I know all of those words.

Josh: Yeah. How much do you think about it though? Like, are you—

Luke: of course, it's, I think, what's, what would I click on on. I'm like, and I do, I get sucked in by stuff. We all do that. You see something pop up on your home page, like, that seems juicy. Yeah, you know, and you're like, I've got, I've got 4 minutes, I could, I could watch that. Everyone does that. So you just gotta think about people's habits and what's gonna get people in. But also don't try too hard because then it's like you also get, you put off the true fans.

Josh: Well, I think that's where we're at at the moment with it, which is, what would you prefer, to win the masses or have the—

Luke: I think also no one gives a shit. You win the masses because no one really cares. Like, if I'm a fan of you guys, I'm not gonna be like, oh, Tommy and Josh did like this, this super clickbaity thumbnail, I'm not watching it out of principle. Yeah, no one's thinking that. Everyone just goes, I'll watch it anyway, I don't care. Yeah, so it's—

Josh: yeah, it is. I think that that's like one of the storeys that we're constantly pushing back on, that we tell ourselves is probably limiting beliefs around, oh, we don't do that, or like, it's—

Luke: that was a thing 5 years ago.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: Yeah, but since— because everyone's doing it and now it's the only way to get views and clicks and stuff, you just do it.

Tommy: What do you feel that internal pushback on? Like, is there anything that you feel like is a bit gross that you have to do? Because I think people don't like to be self-promoting. There's a sense that, you know, people have a filter, right?

Josh: And you walked away from radio based on X, Y, and Z, like, say, with the regional stuff that really doesn't fit So we've got to listen with our stand-up because we, at the end of the day, we pretty much went into a couple of meetings and it was pretty—

Luke: they were essentially saying in a nice way, yeah, there's going to be a fork in the road where you have to pick between stand-up and radio. And obviously everyone on radio is like, and I'm pretty sure it's obvious which one you want to pick. And they're all going, it's radio. And we're just like, no, it's so not like— yeah, this is a side project in stand-up. We're comedians. Yeah.

Josh: And so what is that, um, to TJ's point Um, the self-promotion.

Tommy: What do you cringe at? What don't you like doing?

Luke: I mean, I don't— no one likes self-promoting. No one's like, oh, swipe up, cheque out the new podcast. But I also—

Tommy: some people are convincing, mate.

Luke: But I also want people to watch it, so therefore I'm happy to do it. And I know it works, and I'm happy to plug my merch because it, you know, it's how I'm— it's an income stream for me. And I feel like the days of being shameless is almost over. Even with your audience, no one cares. Yeah, as long as you don't push stuff every single day. People— I am conscious of how much I push push things, people to buy things, you know, and how much I push people to watch a certain thing, because there's a time where it's too much.

Josh: Yeah. Well, I remember the, um, getting a lot of Insta ads of the Tambourine stuff.

Luke: Does that— is that—

Josh: yeah, no, no, I think that's just like my management over here. Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I think that it's, um, I think it's fine. One, he bought it. Yeah, no, but I think that— no, it's an interesting, um, um, like, uh, yeah, I guess a part of it is like the— when we think that we're getting tired of them as creators, it's only just getting cut through from people, which I think is part of it too.

Luke: Literally, the reason I realised is I do 20, 15, 20 nights, whatever, at the Comedy Festival, and can guarantee a week after I finish, you always get 5 messages going, so, oh, you never do shows in Melbourne, why don't you do shows in Melbourne? Like, I did Melbourne for a month.

Tommy: Yeah. What about, what about saying the same thing? I mean, a comedy special, an hour. You're not coming with a new hour every day.

Luke: How do you do an hour, a new hour? Exactly.

Josh: I wonder if there's any comedians that say, I don't do a joke twice.

Luke: That's ridiculous.

Tommy: Yeah, it's silly because you're crafting, you're seeing how it works.

Josh: That's why it's ridiculous. That's why I brought it up, guys. You just do, you have to put me down.

Luke: Do you feel so bad now?

Josh: That was just like, no, Fuck, that's not how comedy works.

Tommy: That's why he also doesn't watch specials.

Josh: That's what— no, I do fucking watch.

Luke: Like, what would you know? You hate it.

Josh: I don't like laughing.

Tommy: Saying the same thing, do you feel, you know, because some people might come a couple of times. I mean, you got to get that out of your head. It's a person who's not a comedian.

Luke: Don't care. I had people come to my show 3 times this year and they love it. Then they almost love harder because they want to bring their friends the second time, like, and they know the bit. Yeah, this is the bit you're gonna laugh. As long as they don't yell at the punchlines, I'm I don't give a shit as long as they know. No, not really. Yeah, I've had people predict punchlines before, and that's when you know it's a bad punchline when everyone's thinking it. You're like, all right, I need to change that. Uh, I've been— have been leading up to a joke and someone's just yelled at the punchline. I've just been like, yep, there it is.

Josh: The relationship with hecklers, I don't mind it.

Luke: Yeah, I just love— like, I don't mind people contributing because I, again, I like doing crowd work.

Josh: Have you ever done improv?

Luke: No.

Tommy: Which is what you do basically on a podcast.

Luke: There's a level of—

Josh: Yeah, I just, I find that interesting. I've gone to a couple of those, like fucking literally, like it's pushed as improv and they sort of—

Luke: I have a— I did one class once, but like I was at like a university thing for another thing and there was like an hour of the day was an improv class and I ended up writing a bit about it. That's the thing, whenever I do something weird like that, I usually just do a do it for a bit.

Tommy: Or ABC, always be contenting.

Luke: Yeah.

Tommy: Is that how you approach most situations in life?

Luke: I mean, it's— you don't want to live your life like that, but it's always in the back of your head, I think, of like, not when you're in the situation, maybe afterwards you're like, was there anything in that?

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: I don't think if you go there going like, whoa, the content, and you're looking for it—

Josh: have you— like, I had, uh, Bree, my girlfriend, tell me a storey 2 days ago, or like, I was like, it was all happening in front of me, and I was like thinking to myself, this is gonna be fucking great for the podcast. And Bree literally said, she said, um, by the way, you can't mention any of this on the podcast.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: I mean, do you have case— do you have cases like that?

Luke: Of course. Like, my friends think they're like— a lot of mates go, oh bro, don't talk about this. I'm like, yeah, you're not that interesting. I wasn't going to, but like, you do get people like, oh, people who I think You know, they say something, especially old people. Old people always make the joke of like they do something funny or whatever, like they, oh, I spilled my coffee, like, don't use this in your act. And you're like, I wasn't gonna.

Tommy: My mum's onto it now. She's like, don't put this on the podcast.

Josh: Yeah, which we've done, we've done a couple of times. Did she ever— she didn't blow up about— what did we mention?

Tommy: Uh, I secretly recorded her, uh, saying, looking at a photo of Josh when he was really fat fat. Oh, he was very fat, wasn't he?

Josh: Yeah, it was a good little bit. If we could actually put it up online, it would be even better.

Tommy: But then she said after, he's looking great or something now, you know, looking great now.

Josh: So, she had to cough.

Luke: Yeah.

Josh: What's the, from a community point of view, the comedy community, the podcasting community, how do you, I feel like you're in a unique position of being able to say it. We don't do comedy. We like the idea. I like the idea of like being out on the road mainly. I like the idea of— I heard one story. Yeah, I'm just being in a car and just having some snacks and going to like the next gig.

Luke: I mean, I did do that. I usually fly everywhere because Australia is so big, but I did the last couple of shows of my tour. I did Albury and Canberra in the one weekend. Yeah. And it's not fun. Like it's the drive.

Tommy: I like city.

Luke: I like city. There was one day where I drove from Canberra to Melbourne. In like 7 hours. And I was like, this sucks.

Josh: Were you on your own?

Luke: No, I was with my girlfriend.

Josh: Okay, yeah, it still sucked.

Luke: No, she was great, but it's just like, it's more just like, you know, we're taking turns and driving.

Josh: Yeah, sure.

Luke: We got like 4 hours in, and I've never listened to a true crime podcast, but we started going through. I'm like, let's just whack one on, we'll just see what all the fuck—

Josh: what's this series?

Luke: 3 episodes down, I'm like into like Man on the Window. I'm like, oh, play it, play the next one. I'm like so into it. I was like, you know, It's just kind of boring.

Tommy: Anything over 2 hours of a drive just starts to get boring.

Josh: I love it. But so the community bit, do you find that— are you— how many clubs can you do a night? Is that even a thing in Australia?

Luke: I think the most I've ever done a night is like 3 or 4. 3 in Melbourne. I'd love to go to New York and do like 7 in a night.

Josh: That'd be cool.

Tommy: How long are the bits that you do?

Luke: Yeah, usually like 10-minute spots, 5-10-minute spots. Um, in Melbourne. And yeah, and then like, you know, but as you go up and do gigs in interstate sometimes— like last, a couple of weeks ago I was in Gold Coast, you know. So you get like some more headline spots if you go interstate and stuff, so you can do longer. That's why I go, just to work on material.

Josh: Yeah. And so who do you hang out with? Like, what's the, what's the actual experience outside of those 5 or 10 minute spots?

Luke: Um, I mean, I usually just go there, do my in Melbourne, I just go do my time and like talk to a few comedians and then head off.

Tommy: It's just a lot, it's a lot of thinking, right? Like it's your head, it's your brain needing to be firing properly to make it all work, right?

Luke: It becomes habit when you're doing new stuff, definitely. You're like, oh, what did I think of again? Like you write it down earlier and you're like, oh, how did it go in the word? Because if you muck up one word in a joke, it can sometimes ruin the entire joke.

Tommy: Yeah.

Luke: Um, so yeah, you got to be on it for sure. But then And most of the time, once you've done a bit that many times, like I could just, you know, if you were like, all right, welcome to stage, Luke Hidgell right now, I could probably just do 20 minutes with that.

Tommy: All right, Luke Hidgell, let's go.

Josh: Who is the, who's someone within the Australian industry that has either helped you or have just been super, super nice backstage? I feel like comedy gets a bit of a bad rap in regards to it's a bit fucking bitchy.

Luke: There is a lot of that, but there's also so much of the opposite.

Josh: Yeah. Who are the people? Who are some of those people? Those epic people?

Luke: So when I really started, obviously Lewis was one of the first people I met, and he was— had been doing it for a bit longer than me, and I was very new. He was really good to me, which is why we became good friends, I think. Um, but people who— like, people would know, uh, who are great, like Nick Cody has always been awesome to me. He was the reason why I started stand-up. Yeah, I would see his show in 2015. That was the first ever stand-up show I'd ever seen. Um, and then 3 months later, I was— I was at an open mic night giving it a Um, I, uh, Hughesy's always been really good to me. He's a really cool dude. Um, I don't know, like, it just— there's a lot of people. Um, I don't know, I can mention a lot of names, but yeah, because I remember Hughesy was like, we know Doug Chappell at the Comics Lounge. He's always been awesome to me. Um, there's just so many people. I feel like if I keep saying that, I'm going to miss someone.

Josh: Well, I did a behind the scenes of a comedian a few years back, and I did this bit. I remember in the comics lounge, uh, or behind the scenes, uh, filming before the person came on, and there was a comedian who was like interacting or whatever within the video, and that they were like, uh, interacting with the person that I was filming, who's the video was for. So this person talks in it and all that sort of thing. Anyway, uh, edit the video, put it up,. And then I get like, uh, we get messages being like, hey, you don't have permission to have that online. And so we had to take down the video and all that sort of thing.

Luke: I think I know the person who the video was for.

Josh: Yeah. And so I feel like those, um, yeah. And I think that like it's such a common, um, common occurrence. I feel like that there is that sort of, uh, I feel like within playing in that scene you have to be talking a certain way, or you've got to be very careful of like, oh, this person's sensitive about this, and these people don't like these.

Luke: A lot of people are reluctant to— I think a lot of people just see what we, like, particularly the online guys, put out online and like, oh, that's them. And then like, I'm pretty, probably pretty the same, similar, yeah, um, to what I put out online in real life. But I think a lot of people just really are reluctant to embrace the online thing even still, particularly um, in the stand-up circuit, uh, because I think there's just like a— I think they think like we're cheating or like we're jumping a queue or like, like, but I don't think there is a queue. There's no, there's no queue anymore.

Tommy: There's also the— I mean, authenticity is a word highly used these days that lost a bit of its meaning, but there is— if you're online, if you're doing what you're doing, just creating this much content, it's hard to be a phony. It's hard to not be the guy that's appearing. And some of these people, they've got this set, maybe these old school comedians that you see them the way that you do.

Luke: It's a lot of the ones coming up as well, like they want to be on the gala. Like, I have no, I really have no desire to be on the Comedy Festival gala ever because it's like, well, I might have my stand-up clips get millions of views online. Yeah, so it's like they're getting more plays from a more target demographic online. Um, why would I want to be on the ABC? So yeah, well, like, it's not, not the ABC, I'm I was just like, what's the point? Obviously a cool gig, you get to perform at the Palais for 3,000 people, but other than that, yeah, yeah, the prestige is that they're hanging on to an old idea.

Tommy: What infuriated me the most was a radio article, an article written by a radio website talking about, um, you know, radio is still the way most people consume their music.

Luke: But it's not though.

Tommy: I looked at it, dude, the fucking stat that they pulled from as a survey.

Luke: Oh mate, you look at over 50 Like, AM, if you include AM in that thing, maybe it is.

Tommy: A survey of 2,000 people, that's where they got that study from. Yeah, I mean, that's 2,000 people is representing Australia. There's 400 million.

Luke: Yeah, but also young people don't want to complete surveys, so it doesn't actually—

Tommy: True, but like, all you have to do is look at Spotify numbers in Australia. It's huge. It's millions and millions of subscribers. So there's your fucking answer. Yeah, the Beats, your radio thing.

Luke: But there's a lot of people who don't— like, I feel like I'm gonna cop a lot of shit shit for— from maybe— I thought there was going to be a lot of people who mock me for releasing a comedy special myself, you know, this guy, whatever, doesn't deserve one. And it's like, well, I still go to gigs all the time. I gig like 4 nights a week at least, like minimum. Um, so I'm always working at stand-up. So it's like, if I'm in an opportunity where I can do that myself, then why—

Tommy: it's—

Luke: I think it's insane as to why wouldn't you. And I'm sure I'll cop a little bit of lashback under the surface from other comedians, like, oh, because, you know, promoting is a comedy special, they probably view it as a thing where it's like, you know, 10 years in, you do your Netflix comedy special.

Tommy: I think they're right, and you're also right. You're both right.

Luke: I agree with— I totally get why they think that, because it— the old way was like, you know, you get good enough, Comedy Central gives you a special, or HBO gives you a special. But it's like, the game's changed.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, if you're at a cafe and you're lining up somewhere because you think there's a line and then some fuckers just walk in and then you discover that there is no line, but you've been lining up. You're going to be a little bit pissed off, right?

Luke: I've done that before.

Josh: Well, literally, like, don't get me started. I've actually blacklisted, I've blacklisted a hash in the city. Fuck you, hash. I had a line. I was the first in the line. This was Sunday morning, Saturday morning.

Luke: Like a ticket system?

Josh: No, it wasn't a fucking ticket system. But he's like, oh yeah, just outside, like they can serve you outside. Like you sit outside. The thing was there was no fucking line outside. And so we went out and there was like 6 fucking people.

Tommy: I mean, I'm still getting ropeable if I've been lining up and there's only one checkout register and then they open another one, the cunt behind me fucking jumps to that.

Josh: No, you can't do that, bro.

Tommy: Absolutely not.

Luke: I'm in front of you.

Tommy: It should be the etiquette to shift me over there.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I learned that at Coles Endeavour Hills. Mum taught me young that, you know, the person who's at the front gets to go in.

Luke: So it should be.

Tommy: I mean, I mean, these are unwritten Unwritten rules of the world.

Josh: But also the other unwritten rule, always put your heavy stuff at the front and the light stuff at the back.

Luke: To make their packing easier?

Josh: No, no, no. It's because you don't want to squash your eggs and stuff. You want like the— If you put something, the cans—

Luke: So, you're doing it for your benefit, not for their benefit.

Josh: Oh, definitely. But it's a rule of life. Like it's a— Did you know that or no?

Luke: Yeah, I guess I knew that, but usually I never go to a low— live, live at home. The only time I ever buy stuff from the shops is I'm never getting more than a basket full of stuff.

Tommy: Yeah, like 12 items or less. I mean, that's not really a thing anymore.

Luke: You can— I never get—

Josh: what do you buy? What do you—

Luke: what do you have? I'm just like, you know, parents go away, even when like my mum and dad go on holidays, whatever. I will not go and do a weekly shop. I will go every day to the shops and buy like just stuff I need for the next 48 hours.

Tommy: It becomes a ritual, right? Yeah, we've done that. But then With a kid, I know it's impractical. With a kid, it's actually just entertaining. It's like you can run up the aisle.

Luke: It's like, oh, you like going to the shop?

Tommy: Well, he loves— my son loves it. He's, supermarket, supermarket. He wants to go, but then he fucking just goes down the yoghurt aisle and smashes yogurts.

Luke: But no one asked. No one was like, how does your kid say supermarket? But thank you for telling us.

Tommy: But fuck you.

Josh: So what's the So the podcast, the comedy stuff, and what else?

Tommy: The gala special that you're vying for.

Josh: Yeah, uh, yeah, what else is it? What else is in the works? What are you prioritizing?

Luke: Um, just, uh, getting Luke and Lewis off the ground. Uh, we, you know, want to see where we can take that, and, um, then the tour next year and just keep, keep growing it all. I really want to prioritise podcasting over maybe YouTube videos and stuff, I guess, is the way I want I want to go down. I think I like doing the long-form content more than sitting there writing a video about The Bachelor or whatever. Yeah.

Tommy: Are you thinking money? Like, is, is that a part of that equation?

Luke: Uh, no, not at all. I just— it's what I like doing.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: Um, and I think that's, that's the content that I like consuming is like podcasts and stuff. All my favourite comedians like Theo Von and Chris D'Elia, all those American guys, they're doing that and I— that's what I like consuming. So it's like, well, I just want to make what I like, I guess.

Tommy: Yeah, it's a good— it's a good—

Luke: it's probably not a good money move actually, but it's a good moment. The money move is probably to make, you know, shorter content, get people in and, you know.

Tommy: But I don't know if it's fulfilling, right? I think if you can win the other way— so if you get— you're going to try two options, you're not assured of winning either way.

Luke: Yeah.

Tommy: So if you were to do the thing you fucking love every day, yeah, and have that win, who's laughing now?

Luke: Exactly.

Tommy: Exactly.

Luke: I feel like for you guys doing—

Tommy: I guess, yeah, yeah, we're giving it a crack.

Luke: Well, you— we wouldn't do it 7 days a week if you didn't enjoy it.

Josh: Yeah, exactly.

Luke: Well, I think just sitting here getting sadder and sadder every day.

Josh: I think, yeah, I think that's the, the key. And it's like, even we launched, um, our new website, thedailytalkshow.com, uh, earlier in the week, and it's like there's so many things that are imperfect with it. Or even like, we filmed an episode earlier in the week where the camera was slightly tilted or things like that. It's like, these things will happen. This is part of the journey. And it's, I guess it's like a lot of people are trying to seek that perfection.

Luke: That's a cool episode. I call it the 45-degree episode. Lewis and I actually had an idea where to do an episode in like 140p, like, so make it like pixelated and just do like the 140p episode and just try and get it shit quality as possible. Put your glasses on. That's the name of the episode. Legit, like, we're just like, we always think of like weird ways we can get people's attention. And like, you know, it wouldn't be good to watch every time, but you know, for 30 minutes or an hour, you know, watch, watch us in 144p. It'd load quick, you know, it'd be great. That's the only benefit, actually.

Josh: Yeah, it's solid.

Luke: No buffering.

Josh: What's the, um, what's your relationship with like perfectionism?

Luke: I need to get over that. I, I'm— I've focused too much on trying to be perfect. Yeah, sometimes it takes me 2 days to edit a 10-minute video, you know, like, as I go through it. And when it's done, I should put it out. Then I go, oh, it could be funnier if I change that by 3 frames. Idiot. No one cares.

Josh: Well, I think that's part of the— us doing the show daily, that's the thing that we just have to get used to, is it's like, it's more about output.

Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say Content is better than no content. Sometimes I'll like not put out a video because I don't think it's done yet. Yeah, but it's like, I'd— no one cares. Yeah, also people, and I even know when I consume content, you just like go, boom, that was funny, all right, next. No one thinks about it. Yeah, as much as you do. Yeah, no one cares.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. I think it's interesting. I think the other interesting thing is the, um, as we build audiences, people care about different stuff as well. So something we'll say will resonate. It's like the annoying people with the manual cat-like people.

Luke: Some people would, would have been like really hated listening to that earlier. And then I'm sure there's a V-Car person going like, oh, that's bullshit, you know. And but they probably laughed at the manual thing. Yeah, you can't wank in traffic, but fuck you for talking about V-Car. Yeah, that's what I find all the time is like you talk about 4 different things in an episode and I have no idea what's gonna be the one that really resonates. Yeah, because I'm like, I think this one's funny, but other people might think that is.

Josh: Yeah. Do you— what's it— what are you gonna say?

Tommy: I was just gonna say you learn quick that what, what you feel about something isn't how everyone else does, for sure.

Luke: And I think that's good. And I— that's why I always throw it out there. Like, you know, people— a lot of people— I was getting death threats for about a week, like legitimately death threats from these car guys, going like, how dare you, and stuff. Which I thought, it's insane.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: Because what I said was, if you watch the video, it's like not that bad. I was just going like, it's the future, you're living in the past. It's clearly a joke. And I'm like getting death threats all week. And I just think like, that's— people are, you know, not— people are weird, but also not everyone's going to agree with you even when you're joking or talking about so something so mundane. So like, just don't let it faze you. Yeah, like, just don't— like, if you say, say your opinion for sure, but if people don't agree, you can't get mad at other people for disagreeing.

Josh: I think it also changes when you're actually in the arena and doing stuff. All of a sudden, I think your perception of other people changes too. Like, I think we're way more sort of empathetic with what people are doing, where it's like, yeah, rather than getting mad, being like, oh, actually I sort of understand.

Luke: I've never left an angry comment under anything. Yeah, ever. I've never felt the need to be like, ah, this sucks. If I don't like something, I won't even dislike a video. I'll just quit out of it. Yeah, not for me.

Tommy: Yeah, it takes a certain type to leave a scathing comment.

Luke: And the dislike one, such a kind of a weird thing to do. Yeah, I think.

Josh: Well, there is a, um, yeah, because I think about it, like, the most dislikes we've had in a video might be 2 dislikes.

Luke: And you think about that at night?

Josh: No, well, I just think about— I think, I think the interesting thing is it's like, on a— but it's just like, imagine if you got a death threat.

Tommy: Well, I think this place down, security guards.

Josh: Yeah, definitely. Well, we're nearly there. But I think, um, and after the vehicle thing, I got death from mums.

Luke: Really? Yep.

Tommy: Well, I get it, what they're thinking, their son.

Luke: My kid, how dare you. He tries his best and you're like, hey, he doesn't try hard enough. But I think that, yeah, it's, um, I think a lot of people thought I was making fun of people with learning disabilities, which I absolutely wasn't. And my point was VCal is a waste of time for a lot of people. Doesn't mean you're dumb if you do it.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: I guess like it's, um, It's also understanding, like, I look at the dislikes, I look at that stuff and I think like, not for them. Like the stuff that we created isn't for that. Like we're not creating something for everyone. And so sometimes people will land on our video that's actually, it's not meant for them. And that's all they're identifying is it's like out of the whole algorithm, out of the internet. Yeah, they landed on it. And I guess what ends up happening, and I've noticed this with Friends with Brands, I had one friend the other day say, uh, we're, um, we're getting bigger. One thing I'm noticing is there's more trolls coming out and questioning us. And it's like, well, the more—

Luke: yeah, the wider audience you reach, like, think about society, you're gonna— like, there's a lot of fuckheads. Yeah. But if you've only got 10 people you talk to, you're like, oh, there might be one fuckhead in the group.

Josh: Yeah.

Luke: But if you then branch out to 1,000 people, you know, there's gonna be a lot of fun. It's like when you go to a show and, you know, at the start I didn't used to get many hecklers in the first 2 years. Now that I'm doing bigger shows, yeah, you know, you go do a big room in Brisbane or whatever, there's going to be one person that sucks.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: What is it like? What kind of a person is a heckler? Who's like— that's drunk. Drunk, is it? Yeah, yeah.

Luke: Or drunken. They usually— they're not— they don't think that— they think they're contributing. No one actually— no one really tries to— I've never got anyone going like, 'You suck.' It doesn't exist.

Josh: It's the play fighting gone wrong. Jack Post.

Tommy: Yeah, I think I wonder if it's premeditated. I'm coming, I'm going to comedy show tonight.

Josh: No, I think it's 100% project— I think it's like they're projecting experience that they're having. And I guess like Jack Post talks about it where it's like, uh, you know, on H&A they could be play fighting and then on Instagram he'll do a post and then someone will be trolling him about something, whether it's his house or whatever it is, and it just misses the mark. And it's based on— they see the play fighting, yeah, they're just a bit fucking socially awkward.

Luke: Yeah, people don't know how to who— some people just aren't funny, and that's fine. But they— yeah, then they come in. I get that a lot. Like, some people can try and get a lot of comments, and I know they're trying to be funny and they're trying to have a playful dig at you, but like, they just say something like so unfunny and so boring that you're like, oh, this just like reflects more on your personality than it does my video.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Luke: Um, but yeah, no, it's, it's an interesting thing with the heckler thing. I think a lot of people think they're contributing, but, um, I don't think anyone goes out of their way to doing it usually. I think it's like a— a lot of people though, because it is a glorified thing of like comedian versus heckler. Yeah, a lot of people who don't know a lot about comedy go like— I get a lot of, oh bro, I'm gonna heckle you. Like I get messages going, man, when you come to Aubrey, just bought tickets, I'm gonna heckle you, bro, hahaha. And it's like, yeah, but they don't, they don't, but they do think it's like a cool thing they could do. Yeah, I think they do.

Josh: Death threats are just banter.

Luke: Yeah, but a lot of people do like, oh bro, I'm gonna heckle you, and and they don't, or they do and then they go, oh, and they realise as soon as they have yelled something out, they're like, oh, this isn't for me.

Josh: Just back right down.

Luke: I think a lot of people fantasise the idea of being a funny heckler in the head, then they yell something out, no one laughs, and they go, okay, you do the joke.

Tommy: Well, the whole setup is usually the comedian comes out on top.

Luke: That's the whole thing with heckling. You're the one with the microphone.

Tommy: Exactly. And the audience that probably like you.

Luke: Everyone's kind of— especially if it's your show, everyone's paid to see you, not seeing the guy who, you know, no one's paid $30 to see some dude yell out.

Josh: Luke Kidjell, thanks for coming on, mate.

Luke: Thanks so much for having me.

Josh: If you, uh, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, give us a review, but also type in, uh, Luke and Lewis on Apple Podcasts. Are you gonna— is it a new feed that you're having to start?

Luke: Same feed.

Josh: Same feed. Oh, that's convenient.

Luke: Go back and catch up on all the radio if you really want. A year and a half of us disrespecting, uh, commercial radio station if you want to go listen to that.

Josh: I think it'd be interesting. I I'm curious to hear the contrast.

Luke: I'm so am I. Who knows what it's going to be? I think I'm very excited about it. That's all I know. And we also use the same sign people as you, so we're going to have a really good sign.

Josh: Yeah, they're great, great people. Uh, it's a daily talk show. If you listen this far, do a screen grab, do an Insta story, tag us up, even tag, uh, Luke up so he knows that you've listened as well.

Luke: Tag me.

Josh: Uh, otherwise we'll see you tomorrow. It's Fat Fridays tomorrow. I have no idea what we've got planned.

Tommy: End. It's gonna be fat.

Josh: Something savory, maybe. I feel like savory.

Tommy: It's not fat enough.

Josh: We did Ben Jerry's last week, so yeah, uh, we'll see. It's a daily talk show.

Luke: Just see what Will Am brings in.

Josh: Yeah, it's favorites.

Luke: I know for a fact he has it in his rider.

Josh: See you tomorrow, guys. See you guys.