Minchin Mouths Off

Tim Minchin has two radically different approaches to handling criticism. Firstly, he no longer reads his reviews. Secondly, he’s written a song that crucifies a journalist who gave him a one star notice at the Fringe three years ago.

“I’ve tried it out live a couple of times,” the ostensibly unthreatening Australian, with the crazed hair, manically gleaming, kohl-eyed zeal and so much onstage intensity I’ve seen him wiping the blood from the keys of his Steinway grand, reports for the benefit of the offending hack, who shall remain Phil Daoust of the Guardian.

“The BBC wouldn’t play it because they reckoned they’d get sued,” the former Perrier best newcomer sighs. “He absolutely slammed me in my first Edinburgh year just as I was riding this weird wave of general acceptance. If somebody does something like that it really impacts upon you, because that early in your career you’re fickle about how you feel about your work, you have no base confidence. I mean, I barely have that confidence now, you’re only as good as your last gig. But that really affected me for months and months. The song’s actually about how pathetic I am, but it’s truly brutal towards him. It’s sort of asking for forgiveness but, um… it’s pretty violent.”

For a performer with so much passion and sensitivity for his art, the 32-year-old comic, composer and actor acknowledges that he has genuine issues concerning offending others. With a career that now spans Australia, the UK and America, following a well-received off-Broadway run earlier this year, his chief preoccupations remain, as ever, the universal themes of sex, God and death. And though he maintains he’s trying to make his material more palatable for television and radio, and that his new Fringe show, Ready For This?, is “gaggier” and “sillier” than the earlier two, new tracks like the provisionally titled Feminist and Racist are as provocatively mischievous as ever.

“Me becoming upset when others get upset by my songs is ridiculous because my work is simply upsetting to some people,” the composer of 10 Ft Cock & A Few Hundred Virgins reflects without a hint of self-congratulation. “It’s ridiculous that I’ve got this tendency to be offensive but an inability to deal with the consequences. Still, I don’t want to become soft. I don’t think I’m particularly cutting-edge or out to save the world but this is my sense of humour, so I can’t not do it.”

He’s easily annoyed by liberal comedians taking cheap pot-shots at conservatism and religion, but his major bugbear remains censorship.

“I change lyrics depending on which country I’m playing, but I defend my right and obligation to use all language,” he says. “I find the idea that people find rude words a problem in the face of all the other problems in the world patently absurd. But I know that language is extremely powerful and there’s a reason I use certain words with care.”

He concedes that country and western number The Good Book is partially intended to “contribute to the movement away” from religious dogmatism in the US, yet the presence of an R ‘n’ B love song and a finale about dancing bears that may well feature choreographed dancing in furry costume – “I’ve already had Robin Ince in it!” – suggest that Minchin isn’t wholly embracing po-faced political tubthumping just yet.

There’s “more backing track stuff this time around,” he adds, “which is dangerous because it’s tempting to orchestrate everything as it makes the songs bigger and better, but I’ve got to remember that what people seem to enjoy is just me sitting at the piano.” Even so, he stresses that if the opportunity arose, he would jump at the chance to film a live concert with a backing band.

Currently living in London, Minchin plans to return to the States soon and will release his second DVD in October to coincide with his UK tour. He intends to write a musical at some point and release some non-comedy albums, but for now, he’s recently drafted a sitcom treatment about a musician who falls in love with a Christian R ‘n’ B singer and he acts in the forthcoming Australian film, Two Fists, One Heart, playing, at a push, a pianist named Tom.

Meanwhile, the as-yet-unscreened in the UK documentary, Rock 'n' Roll Nerd, by his friend and director Rhian Skirving, shows him coming to terms with his wife Sarah’s miscarriage at the time of his initial Edinburgh triumph. Since then, he and his wife have had a daughter, Violet, whom he intermittently describes as “fucking amazing” and “the evil baby that keeps me up all night”.

“I’ve had a very strange relationship with Edinburgh,” he remarks of his big breakthrough. “I never got to know it in that ‘popping up’ to do 10 minutes here and there, having a blast, getting pissed and having sex kind of way. My first year had so much riding on it career-wise. I wasn’t a 23-year-old arriving to enjoy myself, I was 30, my wife was pregnant and I didn’t really have a career and I was painfully aware of it. I arrived 10 days early, did all the marketing and the flyering, it was like a fucking mission. And it worked.

“The year after I was scared shitless because it was the follow up. But I’m confident enough now that I can pull off an hour show simply by virtue of experience. I’ve explained to myself, ‘Tim, you’re one of the people who does this now. It wasn’t a fluke.’ I will be judged by the press but I don’t care as much any more, partly because I’m passing judgement on them in song!”