Just for laughs

Andrew Mathieson
THE ink is still wet on aspiring comic Jonathan Schuster’s rave reviews but not on his hand.
His witty one-liners won over judges at a Raw Comedy national final in 2007 even though, new to the caper, he had resorted to notes on his skin to remember some of his material.
He was surprised the audience continued laughing after he revealed his prompts.
“I didn’t know what I was going to say, so I wrote them on my hand to help me remember,” he admits.
“Instead of just glancing at them, I decided to make it obvious.
“I don’t do that any more, mainly because I’ve learned all my jokes now.”
Telling jokes in the schoolyard is one thing but braving the toughest critics of Raw Comedy is another.
Still, raw is one way to describe the Newcomb 21-year-old on the grandest stage.
It’s different in smoky comedy clubs in front of a handful of punters. There Jonathon tells jokes for beers rather than cash or, on the traditional pay-rate for amateur comedians, peanuts.
Live stand-up is a tough gig. One performance at Geelong’s National Hotel in particular was a disaster.
“They turned down the volume on the mic,” Jonathan remembers.
Corporate gigs pay the best, he says, but there are no laughs at police balls.
“They’re all drinking, talking with their mates and they don’t want to hear comedy,” Jonathan observes.
“They’ll be silent while their mates are telling stories but, when you get up, the whole room starts talking.”
Comedy for Jonathan is not all about the delivery of the gags but developing his own material.
The latest came after discovering a peculiar bump on his writing finger.
“I thought that would be a pretty good joke but I don’t have a punchline yet,” he smirks.
Jonathan admits developing a bag of jokes for Geelong audiences about his “funny town”.
He likes to tell gags about the waterfront bollards and Smorgy’s but the Sphinx is a favourite.
“It turns out that Egyptians like smoking, gambling and karaoke with Laurie Atlas,” Jonathan grins.
He suspects that the joke means the famous North Geelong venue won’t be on his tour schedule any time soon. However, Edinburgh and its famous comedy festival have been.
The unique opportunity to mix with the world’s best comics was the prize for his Raw Comedy win – along with a spectacle-wearing, stuffed-chook trophy with lots of feathers, of course.
Virtually nothing was off limits for the chuckling natives of Scotland where swearing is part of the vernacular.
Nothing except for soccer jokes, that is.
“I was told ‘Don’t do football jokes there’,” Jonathon recalls.
“If we say Collingwood’s crap, people laugh, but over there other fans would look at you strange and say it’s not cool.
“There have been known stabbings for wearing guernseys. In the pubs signs say ‘No sports T-shirts’.
“They get offended by that but not a good, old joke about masturbation.”
Jokes about genitalia are always open fodder, Jonathon contends. The secret is telling them at the most-inopportune time.
“I tell these series of animal jokes because they are interesting, almost cute,” Jonathan explains, “then I like to throw in a penis joke, just to whack them in there.”
Speaking with a touch of a lisp and a quirky grin, it’s easy to understand why his humour had classmates in stitches.
But it might also explain why teachers shifted the self-confessed class clown from Newcomb Secondary College to Geelong High School for his last three years.
“I wasn’t a great student because I was too busy joking,” Jonathan confesses.
“Every report was that Jonathan is a good student, but he needs to focus more.
“I remember Mr Billing used to put me at the front of the class – they knew that if I was at the back I would only cause trouble.”