You'll be familiar with Jim Jefferies' schtick. He's the archetypal Aussie bloke, unconcerned with politically correct ways to address hot-button topics. His rants wrong-foot you with boozy observations that crystallise into astute commentary on modern society, like he's some kind of pub savant.
His 2014 bit on gun control nailed the idiocy of the NRA's sentiments so accurately that it's been said that every time there's a mass shooting in America, Jefferies gets more famous. The routine is hilarious but, on repeated viewings, is simply a common-sense dismantling of gun lovers' arguments, inspiring a YouTube commenter to call it the best TED Talk ever.
Jefferies was in town on Friday touring his "Night Talker" show. His catchphrase is the F-bomb, and he brought a full payload to drop on Bangkok. Hosting him was the Scala Theatre, still dodging the Grim Reaper of retail development, and it's great to have a central Bangkok arts venue where you can catch Roma or a sweary Aussie comic. It was a sell-out, and they'd even put rows of additional seats on the auditorium steps, a trick they may have to repeat when Jim Gaffigan appears here in March.
Jefferies kicked off by describing Bangkok as "f*cking mayhem" to cheers from the crowd. One of the delicious anticipations when a comic such as Jefferies arrives in the Kingdom is how they'll talk about Thailand. Lazy comics would rely on generic ladyboy and sex-tourist quips, but what about a comic famous for his supposed no-bullshit candour? Has he been briefed on the no-go topics? Will his set fall foul of the law? Can he say the unsayable?
Sadly, he doubled down on Thai stereotypes, targeting ping-pong shows, although his take on the origins of such an infamous cultural pursuit was pretty good. Thankfully, later in the show, a monologue about visiting Thailand with his girlfriend veered suddenly into an outrageous riff on the boys trapped in Tham Luang cave. Not one sentence of it is printable, and even Elon Musk would be shocked by the conceits Jefferies spun, but the audience half-gasped, half-roared with laughter, and the whole theatre buzzed as he delivers on his promise.
Absent from the show was what he called mild misogyny (critics would state that his shows were riddled with it), and the rape jokes he was dropping as recently as 2015, but 2015 is a long time ago in comedy and the new gender landscape is littered with landmines for those who trade in near-the-knuckle material. The "It's only a joke" defence no longer works. Hence the 2019 Jefferies persona is a self-deprecating single dad, a little ragged from cocaine and booze, sharing funny stories of dating, being famous and flirting clumsily with Gal Gadot at his son's school gates.
He still gets scatological -- his last tour had a long bit on sharing food poisoning with his son -- but this time Jim's suffering alone, a victim of his lactose intolerance and his "Instagram model" girlfriend's intolerance of his struggles.
He's a good ad-libber, seen in his attempts to engage the Scala's stoic security guards in banter or taking on a rather confident heckler. This off-script diversion came after a solid hour of laughs, but it was mostly downhill for the remaining 30 minutes, which saw Jefferies tell a few tales about his parents. (Summary: good relationship with his father, not so fond of his mother.) The final bit about being cruel to his mom was simply that -- cruel -- justified with a callback to an earlier reveal that his mom used to hit him. But it wasn't justification enough, and Jefferies needs to work on both his relationship with her and the end of his set.
