Zach - "So, what is your name & what do you do?"

​

Wil - "My name is Wil Anderson. I tell dick jokes to strangers for cash. (Not only cash, but I’d prefer cash if you have it)."

​

Zach - "How old were you when you realized you wanted to do stand-up? And what was is that made you want to start a career in comedy?"

​

Wil - "I was a week from going to university to study journalism, and my mum took me to see Billy Connolly. I remember sitting in the audience that night and seeing a man entertain 3000 people from 10-80 with nothing more than his thoughts, and in my head something clicked. I remember thinking: I don’t really know what this is, but I know that everything else will seem a bit boring compared to it. I went to University and did my degree and even worked as a newspaper journalist, but then quit for the lucrative dick joke circuit which at the time was a big call, but in retrospect worked out ok because otherwise, now I’d just be a 42-year-old bloke with an angry blog."
 

Zach - "Who would you say are some of your biggest influences?"

​

Wil - "Connolly, Moran, Carlin, Pryor, Hicks, Lily Tomlin, the early Whoopi Goldberg stuff (genuinely edgy story-telling) Greg Fleet, Anthony Morgan, Judith Lucy, Eddie Izzard, Louis CK, Patton, Bill Burr, Rich Hall… I could keep listing people to be honest, I find a lot of comedy inspirational and influential. Sometimes the greatest stuff is just a regular open mic seeing people at the start of their journeys and seeing where the future of comedy might be heading."

​

Zach - "Apart from comedy, do you have any other passions that take up your time?"

​

Wil - "I am a pretty fanatical AFL football fan, and support the Western Bulldogs who have only won one premiership in 1954, twenty years before I was born or as I used to put it: "If I wanted to see the replay of that Grand Final I only would have had to wait another two years until television came to Australia". I now have an AFL podcast with my friend Charlie Clausen who barracks for St. Kilda who have also only won one flag. The podcast is called Two Guys One Cup, if you are new to the internet just be a little careful googling that one."

​

Zach - "You host the podcast 'Wilosophy', what made you want to start a podcast?"

​

Wil - "The podcast that never comes out. I have such a complex relationship with this podcast. I like that people seem to have responded to it, but it’s so difficult to actually do. It requires a bit of a commitment from the guests, and coordinating my and their schedules (particularly with my travels) more often that not proves to be impossible. I think Tim Minchin and I have been trying to do an episode for over two years now.

​

I have my footy podcast which is weekly, and Charlie and I are trying (not always successfully) to do a new TOFOP every Sunday. The most regular of my shows is FOFOP with a bunch of guest comedians, which is the only one that tends to come out every week and we just had a massive few episodes for the 250th."

​

Zach - "You are the host of the 'Gruen Transfer' tv series, (Including 'Gruen Nation', 'Gruen Sweat', 'Gruen Planet' & simply 'Gruen') what was it about commercials that made you want to host a show dedicated to them?

​

Wil - "I don’t have any real interest in commercials. I use the skip button whenever I can, and have no real interest in the advertising industry at all. But I am interested in why we buy what we buy. What motivates us, how it can be triggered and what that says about us. At its heart Gruen is not a show about ads, it’s a show about capitalism. We look at the world through the prism in which the world operates: the free market. We follow the money and that’s where you get to the truth."

​

Zach - "You we’re a guest on 2 of Doug Benson’s podcasts (who I am a big fan of), Doug Loves Movies & Getting Doug with High. What we’re those experiences like?"

​

Wil - "One of the great things about podcasts is the connections in the comedy industry it brings you. For me moving to a new country, one of the ways I have been able to make friends in a new industry is through podcasts. In fact, I think podcasts are like Tinder for comedians."

​

Zach - "When you first started in comedy, did you ever have a really bad bombing experience on stage? And if so, what happened?"

​

Wil - "Not just when you start out. One of the things that every comedian knows is that it could happen again the next gig you have. Every comedian in the world has bombed, and no-one has ever bombed so badly that the comedian union got together and voted them out of comedy.

In fact, I would argue that the moment you truly get what being a comedian is about and find your own voice is the moment you reconcile that failure is perhaps the most valuable part of the process, that in some ways you learn more from a bad gig than you do from a great one, and that if you are not allowing the possibility of failure then you are not pushing hard enough."

​

Zach - "Who would you say are your favourite comedians working today?"

​

Wil - "Just off the top of my head: Dylan Moran, Marc Maron, Celia Pacquola, Felicity Ward, Anne Edmonds, Judith Lucy, Tom Ballard, Rhys Nicholson, Justin Hamilton, Daniel Sloss, Dave Anthony, Gareth Reynolds, Ronny Chieng."

​

Zach - "Did you ever have a really bad experience with a heckler during a show? And if so, how did you deal with the situation"

​

Wil - "I remember in Edinburgh in 1999 I got heckled by a guy from Glasgow who said: “Australians are so lazy they wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dog’s arse!”; I was going to let it go, but then I realized he wasn’t heckling me, he was heckling our entire country. So I said: “Mate, as a proud Australian, I don’t reckon we give a shit. I reckon we’re a little more concerned what Scottish people are doing putting it up there in the first place? How bad are you at playing chess? What is going to happen if I pull it out? Oh, I am King Of All England!”

​

Zach - "Do you think that any topics should be off limits in comedy? Or do you think it is all fair game?"

 

Wil - "I think it’s more about perspective. You should be able to make jokes about any topic, but I personally prefer comedy that pushes up rather than down, so whatever the topic I try to keep that in mind. (By the way, this is not something I always get right, but hopefully something I get right more often than I did in the past)."

​

Zach - "Thanks for this Wil. Where can people go to find your work? And are there any upcoming stand-up shows you want to plug?"

​

Wil - "If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook then I tend to plug all the tour dates and podcast links pretty regularly."