Comedy Books

Would That Be Funny? Seems That It Would

Lorin Clarke’s Would that be funny? Growing up with John Clarke is a book about growing up with John Clarke as your father. Let’s get the suspense over with: having Clarke as a dad seems to have been exactly as awesome as you’d expect. The portrait of him here is the kind of thing you’d... Read More »

Ten Steps to Nanette: A book review situation

As you’d expect, Ten Steps to Nanette is witty, compelling, and expertly crafted. It documents a life’s work, and what a life it’s been!... Read More »

The ScoMo Diaries: a review

Finally we’ve been able to lay our hands on a copy of Tosh Greenslade and Andrew Weldon’s The ScoMo Diaries. And we didn’t even have to wait for one to come free at the library! Guess there’s an upside to all those bookshops having closing down sales. First, the good news: in something of a... Read More »

Things That Make You Go Hmm

So we picked up a copy of Greg Fleet’s latest book These Things Happen pretty much the moment it hit the shops. Why wouldn’t we? Fleet is a comedy titan: a legend of the local stand-up scene, a regular on television for close to twenty years, and always good for a laugh on radio show... Read More »

Rolling through Kalangadoo

A collection of Roly Park's Letters from Kalangadoo, by the satirist Bryan Dawe, has now been released by University of Western Australia... Read More »

Braaaaaaaains

If you’re like us, occasionally you wonder how Australian comedy writers pass their time between the rare gig where they get to actually write some comedy. In the case of Michael Ward, writer for various Shaun Micallef projects such as Mad as Hell, mystery solved: he’s written a children’s book titled Zombie McCrombie from an... Read More »

Bob’s House of Horrors

It’s a sad state of affairs when we have to stop and think about whether we’re going to have to explain who Bob Franklin is to a comedy crowd. But let’s be honest: it’s been a fair while since he was a deadpan regular on Australian comedy TV. At a guess, we’re going to say... Read More »

What we read on our holidays

One of the books we read during our January break was John Safran’s Murder in Mississippi, and while it’s not exactly a comedy it is Safran’s first book and it came about as a result of his comedy, so we thought we’d post a quick... Read More »

Blurst Wednesday Book Club: The Bedroom Philosopher Diaries

A lot of comedians have been turning their hand to books of late – why look, here’s a Fairfax story on that very same subject. Good luck getting past this line… what is evident is the women on the comedy circuit seem to write more memoirs than the blokes, and those books are made up... Read More »

Worst Friday Book Club ep 1: Bargain Bin Scab

One of the big advantages of being a comedy fan when it comes to books is that pretty much everything ends up in second hand stores. Even the cruddiest used bookstore usually has an A-grade collection of comedy books on their shelves, simply because comedy books are the most disposable, throw-away books there are. A... Read More »