Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Thankfully Andrew Hamilton’s jokes are less obvious than his show title.

In 2021, he was charged with supplying ‘half of Sydney’ with commercial quantities of magic mushrooms and other drugs, having got into the criminal business to feed a gambling addiction.

He spent several months in two high-security prisons on remand, and although he was facing a maximum life sentence, the fact he had taken up stand-up comedy was taken as sign of rehabilitation by the judge, who showed rare leniency. Even so, Hamilton has had to seek special permission to travel out of state to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where he amusingly advertises his late-night show with the quote: ‘One to watch’ – New South Wales Police.

In short, he’s got a lot of material about being banged up that no other comedian can boast… at least, not unless the #metoo movement finally delivers the reckoning it promised.

But while his insight and life experience as a criminal and as an inmate make this a fascinating and unique show (who else will joke about being offered intimately-smuggled heroin in the back of a police van?), Hamilton is also a decent comedian. First up, he’s a personable fellow – far more akin to Howard Marks, the ‘Mr Nice’ drug smuggler turned raconteur, than Heath Franklin’s Chopper – which normalises his unusual experiences.

That he doesn’t fit the mould of a hardened criminal isn’t the only stereotype cracked. For another, he quite enjoyed his incarceration, where he amused himself writing reviews of prison food and saw the darkly funny side of some surprising and sometimes brutal jail experiences. His anecdotes could be a sitcom or comedy movie in waiting.

He has a cheeky approach to the police who arrested him in a dramatic raid on his flat, as well as some of those he’s encountered in the criminal justice system. He also raises wider points with wit, such as pointing out that the shrooms he illicitly supplied were always associated with parties, festivals and other good times – while the perfectly legal pokies he got hooked upon are miserable destroyers of lives.

After jail, he has more funny and surprising anecdotes to share about rebuilding his life, such as taking to the dating apps with a criminal record, and needing a chaperone to be out at night.

Hamilton also shares some wordplay as his revisits his first open-mic set about jail (some of these puns really are criminal), but he’s more of a charming anecdotalist than a dealer in one-liners, ironically enough since cocaine possession was on his rap sheets. He’s not 100 per cent comfortable on stage – but even if he’s slightly wary, an audience is clearly a lot less intimidating compared to what he’s previously been exposed to.

The jury may still out about how he’d fare without these experiences to talk about. But the bottom line is that he has got this well of compelling, edgy stories, and he draws on them in a matter-of-fact, and reliably entertaining, way.

• Andrew Hamilton: Jokes About the Time I Went to Prison is at Bard's Apothecary at 10.40pm untill April 15. Plus shows at 8pm on Friday 7 and Saturday 8.

Review date: 6 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival