Danielle:

Today I have Tim Ferguson with me, comedian, screenwriter, and so much more. I came to Tim’s work through reading the super practical and helpful Cheeky Monkey: Writing Narrative Comedy. So I’m excited to ask Tim about that and many other aspects of comedy today. But before we dive in, Tim, is there anything else you’d love people to know about you and your work or connections to creating comedy?

Tim:

We’re doing an art exhibition, Paul Livingston and I, in Sydney, starting on the 15th of August. And people will be able to Google it because it’ll have details that I can’t remember. But it’s a very fancy art gallery with some not so fancy art. But Paul’s done some very, very intricate paintings. So yeah, we’re looking forward to that as the next nightmare.

Danielle:

And have you always painted or is there something that’s new to you or comparatively new in your career?

Tim:

I haven’t painted so much. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of drawing, cartoony sort of stuff. But I’ve got no skill. But it’s like, if you play guitar for long enough, eventually you can fake it. And so I fake art. So my art looks like art, but it’s not actually art.

Danielle:

That’s such a funny thing to say. But why have you been drawn into your career now? Because you’ve done so many things and you’ve got so many options. Why art?

Tim:

Well, I just figured, you know, you’re never busy enough and there’s nothing like having, you know, an art exhibition because it’s a very long play. It’s like writing a…not a feature because that takes longer, but it’s like writing a one-hour drama. It goes on and on. So no matter what you’re doing, there’s always something you should be doing. So it’s, you know, makes you feel guilty and busy at the same time.

Danielle:

True. Always a good combination, that guilt-busy

And have you always wanted to be involved in comedy? Because I’ve also been researching online, you’ve done so many things. Was that always the plan for you?

Tim:

God no. I mean, these days, eight-year-olds will say to me, I wanna be a comedian. That did not exist when I was a kid. In fact, being a comedian, I remember when I told somebody in, where was it, Sydney, where I said, yes, I’m a comedian. He said.. oh, God, I thought everything was gonna work out for you. Which is like… That’s the kind of thing actors say. Actors, you know, they take their ignorance to a greater level. But at that time, it was the 80s and nobody wanted to be a comedian. That was what actors did if they failed. It’s just some of us ended up with beach houses and some of us didn’t. And it’s the being in comedy that was the difference. But no, I never wanted to be. I just started busking with a couple of guys and the next thing you know…We took it on the road and we took it to Edinburgh. And yeah, it became the rest of our lives.

Danielle:

And was that your comedy trio?

Tim:

Yeah, yeah, Doug Anthony All-Stars, Paul McDermott, Richard Fidler. And we then reformed in 2013. Richard’s way too busy and important and way too serious to hang around comedians because he’s got a great ABC radio show. So our friend, Paul Livingston, who played Flacco, who’s the one who’s doing the art exhibition,  piped up and said… I can play guitar. And it turns out he’s a concert guitarist. So he definitely was hired and yeah, we had a great time touring with the band back together, God help us.

Danielle:

Amazing. I’m sure you’ve got lots of colorful stories from those days.

I wanted to ask you,from the book, you’ve got some really lovely insights into the primal nature of comedy and why we laugh, which is always a question that’s intrigued me. And I think about… because on the one hand, I can be a very serious person, but I also like imagining…a time without laughter seems like it would just be tough. It would make life so much tougher. So I often think about like why we laugh and in what situations. But I’d love to know how you think about that now for us humans, because you had some amazing insights in the book.

Tim:

Well, they’re all stolen insights from scientists and people who’ve written theories and theses or thesai, whatever you call them. There’s a great Japanese thesis about why babies laugh. And that was one of the first things that got me going down the rabbit hole to work out… why do people laugh. And the reason why I wanted to know is so I can explain to writers or comedians what we’re doing on a subconscious level to an audience.

And basically the theory that emerged from Japan and then was backed up by an English, I guess they’re a professor now, is that fear and laughter are tied together. if only because they

start in the same part of the brain, the amygdala, which is a very old part of the brain. And so what that means, I think, is that when we write, the best comedy is always about stuff that is either sad or scary or tragic or unacceptable in modern conversations. And so, you know, stand-up comedy in particular is always about how difficult life is. If you look at domestic comedies, it’s always an episode that you wouldn’t want to happen to you. In satires, everything from Black Adder forward and back are all things that you wouldn’t want to happen to you. And I think that’s what triggers the amygdala, which is why we have spontaneous and… And irrepressible laughter. When you’re laughing, you can’t just stop because the vicar walks in. You’ve got to sit there and pull faces and snort and all that stuff, trying to hide it. But it’s, laughter is the body not rebelling but taking over. In the same way that your body takes over when you’re terrified. Speeds up the heart rate. You wet yourself, you poo yourself so that the shark doesn’t eat you. You get flooded with endorphins in your system. All of these things happen when you’re scared and when you are laughing repeatedly.

So if you’re starting out as a comedy writer of any kind, pick the other side of the two drama masks. Not the laughing one, but look at the sad one. Oh my God, Raymond discovers that his parents have just moved in across the road. I mean, seriously, it’s a living hell for anybody.

Danielle:

Yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it. I love that. I love that image as well. Amazing.

I want to ask you about comic characters because I really loved your eight questions. I won’t ask you to go through all the questions. People can read the book and find out more about your work or take your courses to get that. But I’d love to know whether, and it’s not an easy question, but whether any particular favourite comic characters come to mind? And why you like them so people might get a bit of an insight into how you think about comic characters.

Tim:

I really like Veep. It’s amazing how few people have seen that great series. I don’t know which one of the streamers it’s on. I think it’s on Binge. Veep, V-E-E-P, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus from Seinfeld as the vice president. I love the way her character operates because it’s terrifyingly simple. For a character… that was regarded as, well, Emmy-worthy several times, to be so freaking simple is a key to character development in comedy.

Some people try to give them layers like their drama characters. Layers in drama characters don’t work either, which has been proven again and again and again. The simpler they are, like Mr. Darcy in Crime and Prejudice is not complex. The simpler they are, the longer they last and they think more easily. They communicate or the writers use them to communicate. And the Veep is the most selfish woman in her world, which is not what you want in a vice president, but I think it’s what we get most of the time. And that selfishness is at the core of everything she does and all the ways she operates. She’s a selfish parent, she’s a selfish politician. She will throw anybody overboard if that advances or protects her position. When you look at it that way, the writing of Veep doesn’t become simpler. It becomes harder because the walls have just narrowed in because whatever happens, it’s got to be in some way related to her self-centeredness.

So all of a sudden, what seems very easy to watch becomes really hard to write because it’s the same thing being shown in countless ways. So that’s… I admire the way they just keep coming up with shocking new ideas for this character that at film school, you would get a fail for because they would say, yes, but no layers. And you haven’t even written a back story and all that other bullshit. That does not help a script in any way. If you’re writing a character and you’re working on the backstory, throw it out, burn the whole script and have another idea. Backstories are completely useless. And I like the fact that Selena, the vice president in Veep, doesn’t seem to have one.

Danielle:

I also really love Veep.

Tim:

it’s terrible. I’m the guy who speaks against a lot of what is taught in the high-falutin writing schools, and universities all the way across Australia. For example, they all teach screenwriting and writing, creative writing. But they don’t teach comedy. So as far as I’m concerned, they’re not teaching writing because you have to represent both masks to students, otherwise what are you doing? You’re just saying the more depressed you are and the more dark and miserable your story, the more worthy it is. The only trouble is nobody goes to see it. So it’s, yeah, so I enjoy poking an eye here and there because they’re only academics. They can’t really hurt anybody. They’re too weak.

Danielle:

Well, you can go back at them with your paint brushes and your wit.

I also love VEEP, I think it’s a tremendous show. And I was just thinking about some of the other… it’s got some of my other favourite characters in it as well, like Gary, her king od sidekick and Jonah. Oh my goodness, so many great characters.

I want to ask you, because also really helpfully in the book, you talk about how to create conflict  in comedy with different characters. So I’d love for people that haven’t read it yet, I highly suggest you do, or take one of your courses, but how do you think about conflict in comedy with characters?

Tim:

Well, if you look at it very simply, I think, Danielle, that if you look at, say, Gary and Veep, who is just the idiot character,is an archetypal idiot who adores the vice president. I mean, adores her romantically, sexually, everything, but is never going to get anywhere. And you’ve got the Veep. So he is selfless. If she wants something, he will kill anybody to go and get it. So you’ve got the most selfish character in the world of the show and who is her sidekick…it’s the most selfless guy. He has no identity. When he’s asked who he is, he’s just like… I just work for the vice president. That’s all he is. He has no other, as far as he’s concerned, personality. So you put selfish and selfless together. And even though they’re not always fighting and in conflict, they are never truly working together.

So if you are writing a character and putting it together, I suggest you use the idea of Simon van der Borgh, a great screenwriter who works, I believe at the moment, at Leeds University in the UK, who said that… a character, if you’re writing one, needs a most identifiable and active characteristic. And you have to define that thing because like selfishness for Ceep or like neurosis for George Costanza or insensitivity like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. They are this, they are this above all other things. And they may have other qualities. They can be sniping and jealous or whatever it might be. But at the heart of them, like Homer Simpson and laziness, that’s where you start. And it’s from that adjective or just that short phrase, which might be a know it all, from there, then you can build things that directly conflict with that quality.

And it doesn’t have to be as simple as selfish and selflessness. It can be selfish and incompetent. Because they’re never going to get along. And of course, Mike in Veep is the media guy and he’s completely incompetent. So if you’re writing it, do that. If you’ve already written it, then go back and ask yourself the simple question, what is this main characters and all the character’s most active and identifiable quality? And if you can’t name it, or if it’s 10 different things, the character is shit and it has to be thrown in the bin. God, did he say that again? God, no wonder they only let him talk at big universities.

Danielle:

Oh, no, but that’s great. Active and identifiable is a really good shorthand for it. And particularly with the active then immediately, like you say, I’m thinking… oh, what does she do when she’s being really selfish with her daughter? What does she…so yeah, it propels us into action too. Love that. And I’d also love to ask you about… yeah, go for it.

Tim:

Oh no, it’s just, it’s everywhere. If a show is successful, or a movie is successful, or a play is successful, it’s because, because of that simple principle.

Danielle:

Great, perfect, I love that. And you’ve got so many brilliant pieces of wisdom. One of them that I underlined in the book was ‘the best situations challenge a character’s true nature’, which I thought was a really elegant way of explaining where a lot of the comedy comes from when we get to really think about what that challenge is and what their true nature is.

What are some situations that you’ve really enjoyed writing in your own work? Or if you’d rather, you can talk about ones that you enjoy in other people’s, your choice.

Tim:

So it’s easier for people to know what I’m talking about… I mean, I hate all of the situations I put my characters in. They don’t deserve to be treated like that. But one I use in teaching is talking about The Golden Girls, which is, it’s not even in my opinion…. I think everybody agrees the best sitcom ever written. If you haven’t seen it, it’s because you’re living underground or because you’re so young and stupid you’re irrelevant so I’m not interested. But look it up, The Golden Girls.

But in terms of that idea there’s one called Rose who is effectively the baby of the family. She’s a classic idiot so she misinterprets things, has no ability to lie, she doesn’t understand it, has a couple of joke types like malapropisms, gets words wrong. It’s like…no, I said, you know, castigation, you know, get it together, whatever it is. But she’s the baby of the family. There’s an episode, I think in series three, called Old Friends, where her teddy bear is effectively stolen. Now this is an older woman. You would think losing a teddy bear is like… ah, damn it, it had a lot of… sentimental value. But no, for Rose, this is basically her partner. When she’s feeling sad, she talks to Fernando the Bear and now the bear is stolen and she’s shattered.

At the other end of the story is the oldest of the four, Golden Girl Sophia and she’s got a very thick emotional skin. She’s effectively an archetypal father of the family in the sense that you know she’s very gruff, she doesn’t have patience for you know people talking emotionally, she doesn’t sugarcoat anything but she falls in love. So how do you hurt the baby character… you take their teddy bear? How do you hurt the thick-skinned you know masculine acting tough old lady… you make her fall in love. And then just when she’s in love, you give her partner Alzheimer’s, bang. This all happens in half an hour with ad breaks.

So it’s a brilliant show, but that’s the idea. You hit the character where it hurts them most. Otherwise it’s like, oh no, I might be… You know, I might be Homer Simpson, but I’ve just got a bit of a toothache. It’s not going to work. Better to have Marge say.. that’s it, I’m leaving. And then all of a sudden…hit him where he hurts.

Danielle:

Yeah, that makes so much sense and so well explained. And you’ve got such like….

Tim:

I explained that really well.

Danielle:

You did.

Tim:

I’m beginning to understand it.

Danielle:

Yeah. I think you’re great at explaining things and really cutting through stuff to highlight what really matters.

Tim:

That came from…being a narrative comedy teacher involves a lot of arguing with narrative drama writers, particularly in Australia, where none of them know anything about comedy, so they never put it in their dark dramas. And so… I’ve learned how to boil things down so even a screenwriter can understand it. It’s that stupid.

Danielle:

Yeah, no, I get you. And you mentioned, for example, the disagreeing with the layers and actually for comedy, needing, like you say, that identifiable, actionable…it needs to be simple. Are there any other pieces of advice that infuriate you and that you think just don’t work for comedy that you rail against or feel like you need to correct people on?

Tim:

I think in terms of stand up at the moment, in Australia there is a competition called Raw and it has I think over 2000 people who have a go around the country. They get up, they do five minutes on whatever it is and then they’re judged by I don’t know failed radio stars or God knows who would get together to judge comedians. I mean you’ve either got to be an alcoholic or somebody with nothing to do. But they do these five minutes. And what’s happened is for the 15 years, I think, Raw’s been running, every year there are over 2,000 people doing the same thing, which is a five-minute routine. Comedy is not built on five minutes. Usually the best five minutes come out of an hour that’s been written.

So it’s changed the culture. I’m not sure what will be the ongoing ramifications but the immediate thing is you see a lot of five-minute routines where people talk about their own identity. So it will be well speaking as a middle-class man, speaking as an Asian Australian woman, speaking as a mother, speaking because they’ve been told. what you tell three-year-olds, which is write about yourself, write what you know. And that is not the beginning of comedy. The beginning of comedy is write about something that pisses you off. Write about something that scares you. Write about something that isn’t just a juxtaposition of your ethnicity or sexual identity or your gender or whatever the hell it is that’s you. It’s better to go on stage and ignore who you are and talk about stuff that’s really going to surprise the audience.

What do they think about the no voters for the Aboriginal voice in Parliament that’s up for a vote in the referendum? Tell me about that. Or if it doesn’t have to be political, tell me something generally personal. Or something just so it’s not the same thing all the time.

And of course the routines only go for five minutes. And even if people win Raw, it’s very hard for them to write the next five minutes because a lot of the jokes that they’ve used are their old and favourite jokes that they’ve made about themselves, their family or some juxtaposition for years. So… Nobody’s telling them how to write. I’ll see how it all works out. And you know, always good ones are like fart bubbles. They rise faster. But in the meantime, there’s now a lot of white noise for comedians. And the white noise is people saying, you know, I might just give it a go. I’m gonna give it a go. When? October, okay, what is it now? January? But I’m gonna give it a go. And that’s using comedy as if it’s a self-help exercise. And that’s fine too, but it makes it very hard for someone who wants to build a serious career.

But for that, I am writing a book to be published by Currency Press, which tells people how to write standup comedy. Whether it’s polemic comedy, topical comedy, personal comedy… oh my mother, oh my dad, oh my wife, whatever it might be. There are different schools of comedy, but I’ve broken it down so that even though it’s not encyclopedic, that tells you every funny thing you can say…..I’ve tried to give people a new bunch of tools when they look at a topic.

So they might go, wait a second, forget juxtapositions. How about I confirm or negate the idea? How can I turn it into a paradox? Is there a song in this? Does it rhyme? I know, what if I find a pamphlet about it and I use the pamphlet on stage reading from the pamphlet and then undoing it in front of the audience? As it were, there are dozens of things new or older comics can do that will just change gears for them. And, you know, in comedy, it’s not like when you’re an author and you write a book and someone doesn’t like it, you never hear about it. In comedy, you hear about it straight away.

So I’m trying to help people as much as possible. And so when they do Raw, they’re doing something different or they emerge from Raw and say, having won that, talking about being from a Chinese family living in Melbourne, actually I might try one of these tricks. I’ve got a pamphlet here that I picked up from the Chinese embassy. And so let’s go through what China and Australia are up to and then comedy can…a different kind of comedy can happen. But I know a lot of comedians will never buy it because they think they know everything as they’re standing in the queue at Centrelink.

But if they really wanna get serious, they have to do comedy every night of the week. I met a couple of comedians who said… oh no, we can’t come to your party. Why? Oh, because we did a show the night before and another one the night before that. If you can’t operate while you’re exhausted, what are you doing in the arts?

Teachers shouldn’t say this to students, but I tell them, you know, they want to be a screenwriter, they can’t just do it in the evenings while they’re doing another job. It’s, you know, it’s all the time. You’ve got to be working on it in some way, or doing other things that inform it somehow. Otherwise, you’ll never get, you certainly won’t get a feature written. But, yeah…so it should be fun. Fingers crossed that someone will read it. I don’t care if they buy it, but I hope they read it.

Danielle:

Yeah, I’m sure they will.

And how did you find your way into being able to really master screenwriting and structure and all the things that come from that, from where you started?

Tim:

Well, a lot of it’s just working with great people. So a dear friend of mine, Marc Gracie, is a movie producer, but he started as a promoter for The Vagant, for the All Stars in 1989. And since then we’ve done stuff. We’ve made TV shows and, you know, clip shows. Oh my god, on commercial television, watch out for those because you can’t kill them once it starts they want another series. And then we moved into feature Marc has made a lot of comedy features and so it’s relationships like that can be more inspiring than just having an idea. Sometimes it’s fun just to talk to Mark and just say so what do you think. And he’ll say… I don’t know….have you got anything. And then we’ll cook it up together. So it’s more than just sitting in a quiet room, staring at the wall, praying to have an idea. Relationships are very important in these things, particularly in comedy, because it never hurts to have someone there next to you to say, no, it is funny. Because sometimes your own opinion isn’t enough.

Danielle:

Yeah, I get that. And what does cooking up together look like when it comes to the writing? I’m sure there’s so many different stages… everyone’s got their own process. But I haven’t worked with a co-writer. I’ve worked in theatre collaboratively, but writing…I’ve had a little bit of experience in a writing room, but not collaborators in the way that you have. So I can imagine sort of the idea generation stage and bouncing things around, but when it comes to actually trying to… figure out the structure of it or the script or really drill down, how do you like to work? And it might be different with different people.

Tim:

Yeah, I wrote a feature with Edwina Exton, the Spin Out movie, which was fun. It was cars going in circles and young people trying to kill each other as they’re falling in love. The process we kind of ended up with was one where we’d get together, have a coffee and bash out a scene just in note terms, in bullet point terms. She comes in, she shoots the dog, the dog grabs a machine gun and shoots back whatever it might be, and then one of us would take it and write it in script form.

The reason why we worked out this was bad is because there’s nothing more torturous than sitting in a room saying… okay, so she comes in, right, she’s got a gun. Okay, and she points the gun at the dog. Oh, I don’t know, what does the dog say? The dog says, you know.. then you’re there for three hours. Whereas a person by themselves can knock it out much faster and then bring it back and you’ve got something in black and white to argue over, as opposed to…the dog says this…no, it doesn’t, it says that…this is funnier…no, it isn’t..this is…you’re gonna be there all year.

Apart from that, the only other rule is if you argue about it for more than five minutes, whatever it is, you cut it. Cutting is the great end to all arguments. And you just come up with something else. I mean, we’re supposed to be creative. It’s like, well, that was the good idea. Oh, well, suppose we give it up then. Better to just come up with a new idea if you can’t agree.

Danielle:

That’s so pragmatic.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah. But collaboration is really important just because eventually you’re gonna collaborate with an editor who’s gonna come in and say, that’s not how you spell the, or whatever it is. Or you collaborate with the audience as you quietly sneak out of the cinema that’s totally silent while your funny movie plays. Hell. One of the things about collaborating with comedy is that unlike drama, you tend to find it much easier to cut major characters, which we did this week. We had to get one of my favourite characters and she was wonderful. She was a greenie who doesn’t like…

Danielle:

What’s a greenie?

Tim:

Those crazy hippies who want to stop….Yeah, they want to swim with whales and whatever. And she was one of my favourites because as somebody said to her, you have to go with the activists you get. But we had to cut that character for a variety of practical reasons, but it’s much easier, because this person is not a real person, they’re a comedy writer’s construct. So they’re not based upon, my mother… I can’t cut that character. But my God, it’s… no, this character is… but this dog, it was like my dog… I can’t cut that character.

It’s harder for drama people because A, they’re weak, but also because quite often they have… like a genuine life affiliation with a character. In comedy, it’s like saying, shall we cut Kermit? You go, yeah, get rid of Kermit. What about Gonzo? You don’t need Gonzo. And it’s much easier, because all you’d be fighting for is your own ego that you may have had in inventing your Gonzo. Whereas in drama, it’s from, quite often from people’s real experiences. So they don’t like the idea that we’re going to change the ending. What, the dog becomes a Baptist? No, no, no. That’s where the fights and the tears begin. But again, like I say, drama writers are weak in that response. Because really, dramatic characters are just as puppet-like as the others. And if anybody wants to argue with that, tell me about Tony Soprano…how he’s not a muppet.

Danielle:

Oh, well, I’m going to ask at the end of the episode where people could find you… so they can come and battle you there. I’m sure you’ll be happy to take them on. But no, I totally see what you mean. And I see your playful way of looking at it. That’s great. So what other comedy creators or writers do you admire?

Tim:

Oh, I think, obviously, Stephen Merchant, more than Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, I think, is the brains behind Ricky Gervais. He’s a great writer and has written, you know, The Office and Extras and just some of the great comedies of the last decade and two decades. And if just the sheer scale of their success, I think it’s worth taking our hats off and saying, whether we like it or not, you are technically funny.

In Australia, in terms of that narrative comedy, I think the Working Dog team who make currently a series called Utopia, which is about the planning department in a satirical Australia, they’re just a wonderful team of people. They’re just… lovely people, which I don’t understand in comedy, how they can be stable and likeable and friendly and generous, but they are. And their comedies just, their satires in particular just hit the nail on the head every time. I’d say they’re Australia’s top narrative comedy team. But hopefully…

Danielle:

Great. So I wanted to ask about that because I think…

Tim:

Oh, hopefully new ones are being born right now. What’s that? It’s the sound of a screaming child railing at the injustice of it all. Sign that kid up. Sorry, Danielle…

Danielle:

Thanks for giving us that recommendation as well, because I think sometimes with the way that streaming is a setup now or podcasts are organized, it can be quite a US centric conversation with comedy. I understand why. And obviously I’m here in the UK, so it’s its own little microcosm. And I’m always really interested to hear about what’s happening in other places that we, you know, just don’t get to be on the radar as much, which is such a shame, we miss out. So I’m definitely going to go and look them up. Thank you.

I want to be respectful of your time, so we’re coming up to close here…. I’d love to know, is there any parting advice? You’re so good with the tough love. Is there any parting advice that you’d have for people who are writing comedy? And then I’ll ask where we can go to find out more about you and your work.

Tim:

Aristotle said, might as well go to Aristotle, because it’s a good one. Aristotle said that…. a tragedy that doesn’t bear any humour is preaching and suspicious. So if you’re writing a drama,

somehow you’re gonna have to work out where you’re gonna put the gags. And I suggest that you make fun of the antagonist. So you may be saying, oh my God, but this is such a terrible thing that’s happening, it’s not funny. Of course it’s not funny, but there’s no reason why you can’t darkly, bitterly mock the antagonist in the way that Ralph finds a character in Schindler’s List, finds himself in a comic situation, and it’s funny, but he’s a Nazi and all of that. It’s… a scene that starts with the question, who stole the chicken? And from there it builds.

So there’s that half, but then there’s the other half, which is… a comedy that does not bear serious examination is false wit, is what Aristotle said. Now I know he lived three thousand, four, what, two thousand… thousands of years ago, but nothing’s changed. You want your comedy to be about something important. If it’s not feeling right, Pick something even darker and scarier or sadder or whatever it might be. There’s no point in just talking about funny stuff. The number of scripts I read, which is two guys sitting in a cafe saying really funny stuff, is like…it’s great, but I want a piano to fall on one of them. Ppreferably, you know, the blonde one. So, yeah, it’s if you’re writing drama, you need comedy. And if you’re writing comedy, lean towards the crying mask because anybody can talk about… oh, man, those skinny aisles in Selfridges. Doesn’t change the world, doesn’t change anybody’s opinion. So, well, or you might just, you know, start with Brexit and try to argue the opposite. Brexit has worked out really well… and see how far you get. Hopefully Dover.

Danielle:

Oh, that’s great advice. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today. Thank you so much for sharing so many practical… and some hot takes as well, which is always welcome. Where should people go to find out more about you and your work?

Tim:

I’ve got a website, cheekymonkey.com. Where you can find classes and books and where I’m doing live shows and a whole bunch of different tips, but it’s got heaps of free stuff. I should really take it down, but I figure better to give something back.

Danielle:

Oh, thank you. That’s a lovely sentiment. Thanks so much, Tim.

tim:

Thank you Danielle. Thanks everyone.