Tim Minchin: I don’t see myself as a comedian

With his humorous and sometimes controversial songs telling stories of love, society, politics, and everything in between, Tim Minchin has crafted a unique stage act which blends live music with comedy — just do not call him a comedian.

The 49-year-old, who was born in Northampton to Australian parents, rose to mainstream fame in Britain after writing the songs for Matilda The Musical, which made its West End debut in 2011, having seen success with his solo albums, shows, and appearances on British TV.

Minchin, who has released seven live albums and two studio albums in Apart Together (2020) and Time Machine, which was released last month, tells the PA news agency he feels he is now able to shed the comedian tag.

The pianist says: “I don’t see myself as a comedian, I’m happy to be a comedian and stuff, but I’ve done some other things.

“I think, once Matilda happened, I was like, ‘okay, I’m allowed to see myself as a songwriter, composer, now I don’t have to [say I’m a comedian]’, you know what I mean, and I don’t want to sneer at comedy, but it takes a lot of work to be able to write Matilda.

“It’s not something you just wake up one morning and go I might write Matilda like that, it took 20 years of songwriting and so I fiercely defend my right to think of myself as not a comedian.”

Minchin explains he had first seen himself embarking on a career as an actor during his early life in Australia, where he and his parents moved to when he was aged two, before turning to comedy.

He says: “I was writing songs all those years, but I was trying to be an actor, and trying to be a songwriter, and I made a demo in 2000, so I guess I was 25, I put all my money into a demo and sent it out.

“[I got] all these letters back from record companies all over the world, going, ‘this is brilliant and fun and singular and we love it, but it’s not quite what we’re looking for right now’.

“And then I moved to Melbourne, I tried, and I’ve been rejected by every agent in the country, because even though I had acted a bit, I don’t look like I’m going to be on Home And Away and I wasn’t trained, and then suddenly I started playing cabaret, and people started coming, and then they started laughing.”

It was then Minchin said he realised “oh, f***, I can make people laugh”, and made the move into comedy telling himself “one day I’ll still put out a record”.

He continues: “I just got busy, I wrote Matilda, and I made TV shows, and I ended up in LA making Californication, and then I directed an animated film for four years, and wrote Groundhog Day, and I was in movies and just f****** didn’t get around to it, but also I knew that’s not what people wanted from me.

“I’m good at a few different things, and I knew that, like sincere ballads is not necessarily what people want from me, except that perhaps the most loved songs I’ve ever written are like White Wine In The Sun, or the song Quiet from Matilda.

“The things that stick with people are not ‘f*** I love boobs though’ [a line from his song Confessions], or Prejudice.

“So I eventually just went, ‘I’m going to make my record’, and Apart Together has lots of quirky stuff in it, but the song Apart Together, or the song Leaving LA, or Carry You. I mean, they’re fine, they stand up. I mean, I wouldn’t f****** listen to it, but it’s not for me is it? It’s for other people.”

But despite distancing himself from the medium, comedy is still important to Minchin, and he says he feels that a “really important part of comedy” has been “lost” as comedians try to “make sure we never upset anyone ever”.

He explains: “We actually do want to laugh at things that are really hard, and in doing so, in the application of irony to very serious things, we might upset some people, and unfortunately, social media means we all try and do it online and forget that everyone’s watching.

“But actually within our own cultures, whether they’re the culture group of our family, the culture group of our friends, or the culture group of our wider community, the Australian sense of humour, as opposed to the American or whatever, within those cultures, we have comic rules that allow us to make jokes about horrible things.”

He says he has made “jokes about my own kids dying” during previous shows, and adds that he joked about his mother’s death during a performance on the night she died.

Minchin says: “It’s part of my culture, if you’re going to look for beauty in brutal truth, you’re going to find that sometimes, the only solution is to laugh.

“And so I have got to point in my career where I now I get to go out and tour and I make people laugh, because I tend to be funny on stage, because that’s my kind of instinct.

“Because I’m needy, laugh at me, love me. But then I get to do something that most comedians don’t get to do, which is I get to just switch it off and play something very, very still, or put them all in the dark and make them sing along, or go on a rant that’s really not looking for a laugh at all.

“But is, is like making them [say], ‘oh god, do I agree with that?’, putting them in a state of thinkiness, and then a joke so that they can release their thinkiness, and then a song that makes them cry.

“I mean, I just feel so f****** hashtag blessed that I’ve ended up in a place where I can do that, because that’s what I want to be — so that’s why I end up doing, being a comedian as part of who I am, because I want to tug on all the strings.

“I want my audience to feel like they’ve come to a buffet, and they’ve tried everything, and then they go home [full].”

Minchin has just completed a UK tour and will now head to Australia for an album launch and numerous dates across the country — his latest album Time Machine is out now.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Matilda The Musical, featuring Minchin’s songs, is currently playing in London, and will concurrently tour Britain and Ireland from this autumn, while his book You Don’t Have To Have A Dream was released last year.