An Interview with Michael Chamberlin
Michael Chamberlin takes on God and all his rules (well ten of them anyway) in his new Comedy Festival show “Michael Chamberlin and The Ten Commandments”. “It’s essentially an attempt to update the Ten Commandments ‘cause they’re…believed to be three thousand years old,” says Michael, “it comes from my schooling because I went to this really strict Catholic School”. Michael says his indoctrination into Catholicism was rigorous. “It was shoved down my throat at school,” he says, describing being Catholic as “like barracking for the St Kilda Football Club, in that you’re only truly happy about once in every hundred years”. Although brought up a Catholic Michael says “I’m not religious anymore, I don’t believe…but I do hope. I don’t believe there is a god, but how fucking cool would it be if there was one!”
Michael’s style of comedy incorporates a mesh of genres, from straight stand up to aspects of surrealism. “It’s kinda funny when people say what kind of jokes do you do cause I think I do kind of a gamut,” he says, “there are little bits I think in the show that are kinda just gags and then there are those little stories…I think I’ve tried to tell a few more stories in this show cause I just kinda like that thing of telling a story and having a punch line at the end.” Michael’s main concern in presenting a show is to simply make people laugh. “People love doing a show where it’s fifty minutes of stand up and then it’s ‘oh here’s the bit where you cry’...I just can’t bring myself to do that…and I don’t have that story of ’...this is me when I was an amputee,” he says, adding “I think [with] comedy shows these days “is it funny” is about fourth down on the list of criteria of a good show, and I would like that we could try and maybe get that back to number one.”
If you wanna join Michael in his attempts to massively offend God (like he hasn’t already) check out Michael Chamberlin and the Ten Commandments for booking details.