Comedian Andrew Hamilton has travelled an unlikely and difficult road to his current career.
Having performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival, Hamilton is about to kick off a nation-wide tour of his new show.
However, Hamilton didn’t discover his passion for comedy until he spent four months in maximum-security prisons for drug dealing in 2021.
Behind the facade of a man with a promising career in public relations and successful pizza shop in Sydney’s Kings Cross was “a mess of a life and a very unhappy soul”.
“It was pretty chaotic… it went from just my mate and I growing a few magic mushrooms and selling them to friends,” Hamilton said.
“By the end of it I was selling mushrooms, acid, MDMA, ketamine and cocaine, and I had picked up a pretty wild cocaine habit myself.
In July 2021 Hamilton’s house was raided, where police discovered a “whole bunch of drugs”. The incarceration that followed forced Hamilton to examine his life.
“I didn’t really like the man I’d become, but when you’re caught up in it… you don’t really know how to stop it,” he said.
“(Prison) was a pretty rough and depressing time. But I found it life changing. I was able to have a pretty hard conversation with myself.
“I decided I really wanted to do stand-up comedy. I thought, either I get out and try to go back to a normal life and job and try to pretend like none of this ever happened, or I can get on stage every night and just own the hell out of it.”
Upon his release Hamilton was under strict bail conditions, which meant in order to pursue his new career his mother would need to accompany him to open mic nights and first gigs.
Over the last two years he developed his show, Jokes About the Time I Went to Prison. The national tour through August also coincides with the release of Hamilton’s autobiography Profound Benefits of a Stint in Prison, due for release on July 30.
“I’m much, much happier as a poor comedian living with my parents than I ever was as a wealthy drug dealer,” he said.
“My show is one hell of a story about how a big idiot fell into drug dealing, how he fared in prison, the humour he saw there and how he changed his life. So it’s good laughs, some inappropriate content and also a lot of heart, I think.
“I don’t think that most people that go to prison are evil, I think they’re lost souls that make mistakes and are worthy of second chances. That’s certainly what I saw in there and that’s what I hope people can see in me; someone who is trying my best to redeem myself and hopefully earn a second chance.”
Andrew Hamilton is at The Deck on Tuesday, August 6.
