Local Legend: The comedian’s on

Andrew Mathieson
HOLDING a conversation with comedian Dave Thornton is like sitting back in one of his audiences. He’s always on no matter what.
Having neither stage, microphone, nor a few loosening drinks beforehand presents no barrier. Every remark is accompanied by a comeback or a funny one-liner.
From the moment he picks up the phone, Dave plays down his growing fame in the midst of rehearsals at a TV studio.
“I thought you rang to ask me if I had the number of someone else important,” he firstly quips.
Ba-zing.
So adept at playing the jobbing funnyman, Dave cries poor about not getting get paid a cent at some of his gigs – or so he says.
But other times booking agents are eager to fly the Geelong boy to New York, Montreal and Edinburgh to mix with comedy greats.
Harping back to years studying at the Gordon Institute of TAFE, he insists graphic design work was forced to subsidise his earlier stand-up act.
Dave shapes to rustle his pockets for change.
They’re clean empty.
“Do you guys need some freelance work down at the Independent?” he then asks.
But winning an amateur night that earned Dave an opportunity to perform at the 2002 Melbourne International Comedy Festival made the career change easier.
“It is very rare that you knock off a newspaper ad and there are 80 people behind you clapping, saying ‘good work there’,” he explains.
“So it makes comedy a bit more rewarding than (graphics) work.”
Making people laugh comes natural to Dave.
The one-time class clown at Belmont High, he is quick to praise his father and his early years around the family home.
They would sit down watching cartoons together and would often replicate silly Marx brothers’ moves.
“I wish I had a really cool story for you,” Dave apologises to the Independent.
“I wish there was some comedy group that found me just drifting along the river in a wicker basket, said I was the chosen one and they trained me my whole life.”
That first time on stage was nerve racking – even worse than drunken revellers at Lorne’s recent Falls Festival throwing empty cans in the veteran comic’s direction.
Dave told his first joke at the Raw Comedy Geelong heats when the crowd went deathly quiet and his mind went blank for what seemed an eternity.
He froze and comedy seemed to lose its humour.
“It’s good to know I don’t work in emergency services,” Dave deadpans.
“If someone’s life was at risk and they were standing there for 10 seconds with their mouth wide open, I wouldn’t be much good.”
But as a short-lived rapper, the 31-year-old still makes a pretty good comedian.
Hesitating for a moment, telling the hidden story is akin to confessing a crime to a cop.
“To be brutally honest, there was a mate of mine and myself at one time did a rap performance in Geelong,” he mockingly admits.
“It was just one performance and let’s say one was all that was needed.”
Dave has cast aside the past to establish a regular TV spot on the 7pm Project with his witty remarks.
A new show entitled ‘I Want to be Bruce Lee’ at the comedy festival has consolidated his headlining ability.
Paradoxically, he’s never trodden the boards at our own Blakiston Theatre.
A tongue-in-cheek appeal then turns a touch serious.
“I’m dearly hoping one of these days they can possibly squeeze me into GPAC,” Dave says, “and actually perform in Geelong.
“That’s what I’ve been hoping, so if people want to write in petitions to GPAC, feel free to do so.”