Dry humour brings flood relief
The Age
Monday January 24, 2011
IT WAS dry humour and joke inundation at the Corner Hotel in Richmond last night, as some of Melbourne's best comics put on a benefit gig to raise money for the Queensland and Victorian flood victims.Among the line-up were Dan Ilic, Felicity Ward, Lehmo, Dave Thornton, Josh Thomas and Tom Gleeson the last of whom lives in flood-affected country Victoria, and found water lapping at his fence last week.Ilic, the instigator of Evapor-Aid, said pre-sold tickets to the Melbourne event were double those sold to a similar fundraiser hed in Sydney a week ago. Organisers were hoping to raise $14,000, compared to $7000 raised by the Sydney Evapor-Aid.Ilic says water-related jokes go down well with a benefit audience because people come primed for them. "They are up for laughing about floods, the media anything. People want to share the catharsis that's a great thing."It's a contrast with his last attempt to turn tragedy into comedy, his Beaconsfield: The Musical, which was critically well received for its lampooning of media excess surrounding the Beaconsfield mine disaster, although popularly derided for insensitivity to the miners themselves.The comedian's appetite for political sensitivities is undiminished, however. One of his favourite gags is about the inundation of Ipswich, best known as the home town of Pauline Hanson: "Now she's a boat person."
© 2011 The Age