Godfather of Australian comedy
‘Godfather of comedy’ and Tamarama local John Pinder is warming up Sydney comedy fans for the upcoming Australian Comedy Festival event, World’s Funniest Island. The two-day event will be held on Cockatoo Island from October 17 to 18 and features a plethora of Australian and international comedic talent.
The Goodies, Jimeoin, Merrick and Rosso, Fiona O’Loughlin and Julian Morrow from The Chasers War on Everything are just a few of more than 200 well known jokers set to crack wise at the event. But Pinder, the festival’s director and founder, believes the best acts will be relative unknowns.
“I love seeing something new and original,” he said.
One of the quiet achievers to look out for is Die Roten Punkte, a musical duo who play hammed up fare fit for Eurovision and look like the love children of Gene Simmons and Joey Ramone. Pinder saw the pair in April and wet his pants with laughter.
With such an extensive and exciting roster of clowns on offer, the event is set to complement the illustrious Melbourne International Comedy Festival, a weekend music festival mixed with a night of stand-up. A good combination, according to Pinder: “This short, sharp, sensory overload format is perfect for Sydney, the city with an attention deficit disorder.”
Situated in beautiful Sydney Harbour, Cockatoo Island is the perfect venue for the fledgling event. Unlike a music festival, comedy tends to be enjoyed indoors with smaller, more intimate audiences. “It was one of those light bulb moments; you couldn’t design a better place,” Pinder said.
Originally from the countryside near the small New Zealand town of Oamaru, Pinder moved to Melbourne before settling in Sydney’s eastern suburbs some 25 years ago. He recently moved from Bondi to the relatively quiet suburb of Tamarama.
“Bondi is a fantastic place to live. You get an eccentric mix of people,” Pinder laughs as he describes some of the eccentrics he has met over the years. “The woman who wears witch’s outfits and howls at the full moon and the bloke who lives under the blue plastic sheet on the cliffs at south Bondi.”
But after 20 years of faithful residency, Pinder now calls himself a “Bondi Kid”, a more appropriate sobriquet than “Godfather of comedy” if you ask the man himself.
“The job of comedy is to take the piss, and every time someone calls me that I get 10 emails telling me I’m going to get a horse’s head in my bed,” he said.
It’s no wonder the name has stuck. Pinder’s résumé is an impressive read: he’s had a hand in many comedy cream pies over the years including The Big Laugh Comedy Festival in western Sydney and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
After the World’s Funniest Island kicks off, Pinder may well be stuck with his ‘Godfather’ moniker, much to the chagrin of the Capo di tutti capi.
– By Liam Kinkead
