What MICF means to me

To me The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is a life affirming experience. I come down here every year with hopes and fears and expectations and I walk away knowing that everything is just perfect.

I learn that it doesn't matter what you want to happen, what shows you see, how many shows you see, who you shag, who you don't shag, who gets the barry, who gets passed over, who gets the worst review, who gets cancelled halfway through, it doesn't matter how your show goes, it doesn't even matter if you make a complete arse of yourself. None of that really matters to me.

What matters is the experience. Seeing friends you haven't seen in years, making new friends you'll keep for a lifetime, watching them do something they love, them watching me do something I love, smoking in the peter cook, dancing without a thought for who might be watching you and saying you suck at it, making memories that may well last a life time, and for me, finding that sense of freedom to do what I want without fear of reproach, feeling free.

Everytime I come here I learn what it is to be me, I may be nothing special, but it feels great to be me. Every year I go away and forget who I am, so I have to come back, and every year I wonder do I really want to go back to melbourne and my producer tells me I must, so I do it begrudgingly and everytime it's the most wonderful experience in the world. I have seen some of the wierdest things down here, some of the most amazing things and some of those things I've been a part of. The friends I have made here I wont see or talk to for a year or two, but I know that when I see them again, after all that time, it will be just like only a day has passed. It's as if time has stood still, like the festival does go on forever, we just have little in between stuff we refer to as lives.

When I first came to MICF in 2002, it never went long enough, I wanted it to go on forever, over the years that feeling has wained, the festival is just the right length, by the end we all need sleep and our livers need rebuilding. And when you come back, it's like you've never left, everyone remembers you, everyone loves you for who you are. And it's also long enough for me to learn what it is I need to learn.

Which is; to be happy, to be free, to be me.