When I was 10 my family went camping for the weekend at Garner national park in Texas. We’d spent the day by the river, and when we returned to the campsite our newly arrived neighbour was sitting topless covered in tanning oil, burning in the sun. “Look at this bozo,” Dad said, filling a bucket of water. “Dave,” Mum said, but Dad was already walking towards the stranger. He looked, suddenly, not like the man we knew who worked with computers and served in the military, but like a child.
In another world, I’m sure there would have been a fight. The man leapt – angry, soaked, furious – from his chair. Dad just looked him in the eye, grinned imperceptibly and said, “Thought you needed cooling off.”
The tremendous writer Scott McClanahan once said something like, “If you can make someone laugh then you can disarm them, and then you can do any kind of wild thing in a story after that.” My hope is that these 10 clips will disarm you too.
1. Russell Coight teaches you how to dance
Novelist Peter Temple once joked that Wake in Fright set Australian tourism back 20 years. If that’s true, then comedian Glenn Robbins, playing the enthusiastic and useless outback expert Russel Coight in his classic show All Aussie Adventures, did his best to convince the world the only thing to fear from Australia was incompetence itself.
Airing for the first time in 2001, this mockumentary heroically parodies the archetypal bush-tucker man, and features some of the greatest cutaway cinematography I’ve seen in years. “When it comes to music, I only like two types, country … and western,” Robbins says before dancing in short shorts, then attempting to whip some straw from a boy’s mouth. Welcome to gag country.
2. Claudia O’Doherty on Conan
Australian comedic powerhouse Claudia O’Doherty once had a show at the 2011 Melbourne international comedy festival called What Is Soil Erosion? which involved smoke machines and lasers and Claudia talking about soil erosion. It is still the greatest show I have ever seen. In this clip she appears on Conan O’Brien and tries out several characters because she is terrified of being typecast as an Australian. Wild and brilliant.
3. Bunnings man
Speaking of Australia, although more specifically Brisbane, the guy in this video reminds me of every person I met at the RE – Toowong’s historic and impressively filthy watering hole – on a Tuesday night when we were 18 and drinking jugs of Bundy Rum and Coke before stumbling to the Regatta. Unbelievable storytelling, and told with the kind of flow one falls into before suffering heatstroke, this gem is now immortalised forever by the gods at Brown Cardigan. Get this man a Logie.
4. Lou Reed in Australia
There’s something fascinating about Lou Reed at the airport behind huge sunglasses, quite possibly on another planet, enduring the perplexed and conservative Australian media in 1975. “Would you call your music gutter rock?” one journalist asks. “Gutter rock?” Reed says. “Oh yeah.” “Are you a transvestite or a homosexual?” “Sometimes.” His commitment to character and ability to keep a straight face while the journalists embarrass themselves is extraordinary.
5. Aamer Rahman
Aamer Rahman is a genius. The first time I heard this clip I sent it to everyone I know. His delivery and pace; the way he Trojan horses the pain, uses humour and narrative to tell the horrible story of the world in two minutes … it’s breathtaking. Should be mandatory viewing for every child on the first day of kindergarten, and then every morning thereafter.
6. Millie Sykes meets Southern Comfort
While the world was losing its mind during lockdown, local superstar Millie Sykes was busy dancing and workshopping new characters on Instagram. Three of her characters here audition for a Southern Comfort advertisement. They’re all brilliant, but the goateed man who I’ve unconsciously called Ryan is a cut above. Confident for no discernible reason, able to lick his teeth while smiling to devastating effect, he’s the American you thought you needed to befriend in Thailand but now can’t get rid of. Breathtaking.
7. Hello…?
An enduring classic! A good friend of mine showed me this Vine five years ago and I sent it to my brother and sister. Today we still answer the phone by saying, “Hello … ?”
8. Catch the ice dude
For the first 20 seconds, I have no idea what the people in this video are saying, but it’s irrelevant. There’s a man in swimmers staring at a frozen pool weighing up a decision. But what elevates this from other high-risk, low-reward narratives, is the moment our protagonist suddenly turns to the camera. There’s a flicker of wildfire in his eye. He drops to one knee and says: “Motherfucker. Fuck the fucking world. And my new band is called SYSKILL,” before jumping, cannonball style, on to a sheet of ice that doesn’t break. It’s brutal.
9. Wim Hof
Also in ice videos: I have been obsessed with Wim Hof for a while. Most of the time he comes across as an eccentric and loveable uncle – but not here. Gone are the niceties. Yes Theory, the makers of this video, pride themselves on seeking discomfort, and rather than teach them his breathing techniques to withstand freezing temperatures, Hof decides to use them as guinea pigs to see whether they can withstand a 10-minute ice bath without training before hiking up a freezing mountain in shorts. “There is no anxiety, only power,” Hof says at one point, before yelling, Will Ferrell style, “YOU ARE THE OWNER OF YOUR OWN BRAIN. GOT THAT? YOUR OWN MIND. YOUR OWN HAPPINESS, STRENGTH AND HEALTH IS YOURS.” A funny, informative, profound and timely reminder.
10. Train Lord
In 2015, shortly after my first book was published, I suffered a 10-month migraine which left me unable to look at screens or write or read. Roughly a year later, after what I would call a breakdown, and still in a certain amount of pain, I attempted to pick up the pieces of my life. In the end, I managed to get a job on the railway as a train guard for Sydney Trains. The job was perfect because, for the most part, I did not have to look at screens, and I was able to physically and mentally go around and around for as long as I needed to figure out whether it might be possible to love myself again.
At a certain point, I began experimenting with characters over the intercom. One of the characters loved telling dad jokes. For example: “Attention customers, next stop is Newtown, named after Isaac Newtown.” Or, “Next stop is Ashfield, but for all you singles out there we call it Pashfield.”
Another character was an Irish loose unit who loved to party and encouraged people to send it. Slowly, the light returned to my own life, and I wrote a book about it called Train Lord. The work became a stage show, winning a best theatre award at Adelaide fringe and selling out at Sydney fringe. Now, for the first time, I am taking Train Lord to Edinburgh fringe. For the love of God if you know anyone in Edinburgh send them my way.
Oliver Mol is the author of Train Lord. His show of the same name plays Edinburgh fringe 4-12 August
