The good old-fashioned pub yarn is having something of a pop culture resurgence. Venues including Sydney’s Giant Dwarf host popular themed-story evenings, while in New York, formats such as the Moth have reinvigorated the in-person anecdote as a public event. Meanwhile, podcasting has enabled stories to be distributed far beyond the campfire. Hilarious anecdotes are bricks and mortar for standup comedians. The best tell us stories that not only make us howl with laughter but also groan with recognition.
It is fitting, then, that the people to reinvigorate the pub yarn for a television audience are the comedy duo Hamish Blake and Andy Lee.
Their new show, True Story with Hamish and Andy, aims to bring to a wider audience those legendary stories that were once only shared between groups of friends. You know the kind – the ones that transform a drab dinner party or night out at the pub, and usually leave you aching with laughter.
“Those bad moments – while they make us squirm at the time – they end up being the stuff of a great story that you can’t wait to tell your friends down at the pub,” Blake says.
The duo are no stranger to this kind of narrative: this year marks 15 years since they first performed together on radio. In that time they have become two of Australia’s most well-loved and well-paid entertainers. In person, they are just as charismatic and friendly.
All of these qualities are evident in the new show, similar in format to Comedy Central’s Drunken History. The storyteller – a member of the public, sourced via a Facebook call-out, local newspaper ads and a research team travelling across the country to various pubs – tells Blake and Lee (decked out in velvet smoking jackets, naturally) their tale, which is then reenacted by actors including Glenn Robbins, Kat Stewart, Mick Molloy and Madeleine West.
Crucial to the success of these stories is the element of surprise. Blake and Lee are hearing the story for the first time on camera, which means they had to place a lot of trust in the producers to find good stories. After years of live broadcasting, though, they are at home with the unexpected.
“We love surprises,” says Lee. “It’s what’s drawn us to the radio show – we love getting surprised by people’s stories every day. With Gap Year” – their travel show for the Nine Network from a couple of years ago – “we loved waking up and not knowing much about where we were going and just being awestruck and curious about where we were.”
Not knowing the stories in advance also enabled the pair to improvise, to “show a bit of resistance to the story”, taking it in new, unexpected directions.
“People do silly and unpredictable things when they’re under pressure or embarrassed,” says Lee. “And I think it’s pretty Australian. Australians love talking about our stuff-ups. We love owning our stuff-ups. The people in the series are going through something or telling a story about something they really wish didn’t happen.”
In other words, these aren’t humblebrags disguised as tales of woe.
Consider, for example, the first story of the series, about Rachel, an Australian woman visiting Hong Kong to lecture on public safety. Her story begins when she is invited out for a posh dinner, along with her husband and two children, by a student who is high up in the Chinese government. At such dinners it is polite to eat everything that is offered to you. When Rachel and her family are presented a local delicacy – eggs that had been buried in soil for months then dug up and served – Rachel tries to offload the eggs on to her husband’s plate. She promises him that if he eats them, she will give him “anything”.
In a flashback scene, we watch Rachel’s husband try and eat the green, fermented eggs that are piled on his plate. His method is to wash them down whole with large glasses of wine. His hosts think he is enjoying the expensive delicacy so much that they order him more – and you just know it’s not going to end well.
“That’s what makes the stakes higher,” Blake says. “When you decide to eat the eggs but say, ‘Well, I’ll wash it down with a glass of red wine.’ You are essentially backing the fact that you can hold your alcohol, which is the thing Andy and I loved about the story. It’s such a guy thing to do – yeah, I’ll drink two bottles of wine in five minutes but I’ll be fine. And he’s just not. And he has to eat the eggs to get his prize – that’s part of the deal.”
But what would they do in the same situation? Lee and Blake have both evidently thought a lot about this.
“If you get caught hiding the food, the stakes are far higher,” says Lee.
Blake then launches into his own food-hiding story, an experience shared with the pair’s long-term producer and co-creator Ryan Shelton.
“We were in New York at a dumpling place and the waiter said, ‘You’ve ordered too many dumplings, I’m going to cut your order in half,’ and Ryan got really offended. But the waiter was right, we had ordered too many. We finished the dumplings – which were enough – but then Ryan – just to show this waiter who’s boss – went on to order 16 more.”
The problem then became how to dispose of the dumplings without the very impressed and attentive chefs noticing.
“I had to take eight dumplings to the toilet and flush them because all the chefs were watching us saying, ‘These Australian guys are incredible.’”
Between the two of them they have humorous anecdotes in spades but they are also keen to move the focus away from their own adventures to the stories of others. They are winding up their afternoon program on the Austereo network this year to concentrate on television, and they hope to make another series of True Story.
“A big part of the show is that the stories are being shared,” Lee says. “It’s just as fun watching your friends laugh along.”
• True Story with Hamish and Andy starts on Monday at 7.30pm on Channel Nine
