Yawp Mag ISSUE 19 Getting Ready for the Comedy Festival | Page 26
Introducing 3 newcomer
By Blake McDermott
This year at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, we will get the chance to watch
and laugh with some comedians that have not
performed at the MICF before. I get to write
about three of many new comedians performing at the MICF this year: Murphy McLachlan,
Veronica Milsom, and Lewis Hobba.
When I asked Murphy McLachlan how
long he had been
into comedy, he responded ‘as long as I
can remember’. McLachlan grew up in
Geelong. Throughout primary and high
school he wrote comedic short stories
and sketches, and
(like every sane person) watched many cartoons.
McLachlan still keeps himself busy with a variety of creative, comedy-related endeavors.
He is co-host of the SYN FM radio show/
podcast Aural Contraception, presents on
the breakfast program Get Cereal, amuses
the world with Edward and Patch cartoons,
and has appeared on Channel 31 numerous
times.
It was just after high school, however, that
McLachlan started performing stand-up, and
has been doing it ever since. ‘At the beginning, I was pretty shit but I can see my advancement…it’s a really good feeling’.
Squirrel Comedy described his style as
‘short, shaggy, dog tales with zinger punch-
lines’. Melbourne Fringe called his show as
‘a unique blend of wit and stupidity’. What
many don’t know, however, is that his show
Murphy McLachlan Has Two Last Names is
autobiographical: ‘The show is pretty much
about me being poor because of my love of
fast food and drinking.” As such, he is the
voice of any person who has ever been to
University.
Like McLachlan, Veronica Milsom also grew
up in Geelong. Many will recognize her as
an actress in ABC’s Mad as Hell. ‘I get quite
inspired by the humour of Shaun Micallef.
I love his stuff and always have, which is
why I am so excited to be working with him
now’. She has also acted in The Humble Beginnings of the Balloon, Hungry Beast, and
broadcasts for Triple J radio.
She describes her show Do Not Irony as a
‘bunch of disparate sketches, which eventually link up through the course of the show’.
In it, she plays about 15 different characters,
ly themes that run throughout…one of the
themes is radio, another is the idea of performance and getting cast, and another is what
life is like working behind a camera…or rather, in front of a camera’. She warned me that
the humour is really weird, but that it would