Yawp Mag ISSUE 19 Getting Ready for the Comedy Festival | Page 27

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also be a lot of fun. ‘There is lots of audience
interaction, which I think is necessary during a
one woman show, or else it would just be me
talking with myself the whole time’.
Milsom’s journey into stand-up is a story worth
telling: ‘Growing up, my siblings, my cousins,
and I used to put on shows for our grandparents. I would always try to get the lead role and
make it a really funny thing. There is a series of
pictures of me as a four year old, trying to act
like my mother. I was sporting a bra stuffed with
oranges at the front and wearing a hideous
wig… that is when my obsession with wigs
started’. Scarred by a ‘D’ in grade 12 theatre,
she eventually studied broadcasting because
the chances of becoming an actor were ‘ridiculous and not realistic’. Strangely enough, her
pursuit of broadcasting eventually brought her
in front of the camera where she belongs.
Milsom co-hosts Triple J radio with Lewis Hobba, and also worked with him on Hungry Beast.
She describes him as ‘one of the loveliest people ever: very funny but also very modest’.
Hobba responded that ‘she knows enough bad
things about me that she could bury me if she
wanted to’.
Hobba was born in
Melbourne, but mostly
grew up in Torquay. ‘My
parents are big hippies
so they moved down to
Torquay’. Later, he went
to school in Geelong,
attended university in
Melbourne, and now
lives in Sydney.

Although he had always had an interest in
comedy writing, Hobba entered stand-up
comedy almost by accident. After getting
a job writing sketches for Hungry Beast, a
producer told him that he would need to
start acting because they needed someone
to be in the sketches, and they couldn’t afford anyone else. He ended up performing,
eventually progressed to reading on stage,
and now does stand-up comedy. ‘I just got
addicted to being on stage and just really
enjoyed it’.
When asked how he compares stand-up
nitely scarier, there are no second takes
when in front of a live audience, and that
is petrifying. On radio, if you fuck up, you
just go to a song. I can’t do that on stage
unfortunately…maybe I should bring out a
stereo and just throw up a song whenever I
mess up’. Hopefully, however, his show will
be stereo-free.
I asked Hobba about his show Backs To
The Wall and he said ‘in general, it is a
show about complaining, but it won’t just
be me saying, “we need to complain less”
because I love complaining…comedy is
like creative complaining’, he stated. His
show is inspired by things that happen in
the world, opinion writers, and his experience growing up with hippies.
Make sure to catch all three comedians
at the Melbourne International Comedy
Festival this year. For details of the times
and dates they will be performing, visit the
MICF website.