The end of another comedy festival
Monday, April 21st, 2025 at 11:17am
Yesterday was the final day of the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and it is also ten years since I jumped in to going to live comedy.
In early 2015 I was six months in to working in the city and having to commute on the train. I was looking for things to listen to and I was put onto two Melbourne based comedy podcasts. Things escalated quickly as the host of one of those podcasts ran a Saturday afternoon comedy room, and then both of them had live podcast recordings on the Saturday and Sunday afternoon during the comedy festival. As I was now working in the city, it became easy to stay in and go to comedy shows.
Looking back at my calendar for 2015 I see that I went to 10 podcast recordings, 15 solo shows and 3 showcase shows.
Those weekend afternoon podcasts (more than the original two) became the foundation of my festival, also becoming a place to catch up with friends I had made because they also listened to the podcasts and you need something to do while waiting in line…
I won’t go through every year, but in 2019 that had grown to 19 podcasts and 45 solo shows.
A big difference for this year was that due to some podcasts ending and others not being available to do live shows I no longer had that foundation for my weekends. There was a single live podcast, but I made up for it with 52 solo shows. If I didn’t have to still go to work there were a number of late night shows that could have pushed that up above 60.
And now some miscellaneous observations:
- The weather was hot or warm, not the typical cold and rainy April in Melbourne
- I caught the train from my regular station 12 times and due to works I drove to a station on a different line 7 times.
- I drove in once because a late weeknight show finished after the last train.
- Last night was the only time I drove in because all the nearby train lines had works.