Anthony Salame: Straight Up
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

He has his own commercial DVD out in the shops, but in his late-night slot at the comedy festival, Sydney comedian Anthony Salame can barely muster an audience of two dozen.

But then this 28-year-old is more of a club act than a festival act. In this show he tells of a booking for a rugby club Christmas party in New South Wales, and you can’t help feeling that might be more his audience.

Because listening to him for an hour is like being bashed around the head by Zoo magazine – a relentless tide of blokey pseudo-humour tinged with low-level misogyny, homophobia and racism. Women are manipulative, gay men are defined purely as dick-suckers, vegetarians are faggy, and when he starts chatting to the Indian man who’s the sole occupant of the front row, of course he puts on the comedy accent.

‘Leave your political correctness at the door,’ says the blurb, which is clearly code for ‘I’m a bit of a dick.’ But it’s not that Salame is hateful – just so very, very lazy.

He is not a man with a single original comedy thought in his head. This is a hour of jokes about air travel, masturbating, smoking weed, masturbating and masturbating. There’s more jizz in his show than… well, to complete that thought would be right on his level.

And still the clichés come, offering nothing new on tired subjects. How men think with their dick and can’t argue with women’s warped logic... hell, he even does a bit about the ravages of age making the ballsack droop. Really? At 28?

It all adds to the feeling that he’s regurgitating what he’s heard the older boys say. In the past year, he’s traveled to Lebanon, where his family is from, Syria, Paris, Dubai, London, Canada – yet his greatest observations are that the United Arab Emirates are strict on drugs and that English people are dour.

In his favour, his cocksure swagger gives him an attitude that works for stand-up, and his timing and delivery are sharp, even to this quiet, sparse audience. He must surely have put up a valiant fight in that raucous Christmas party, too.

On the way out, a fellow punter was overheard wishing Salame had done more ‘Lebo stuff’. Anything original would be a start.