Nick Schuller: Bad Pandemic Timing and The Art of Deadpan

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, Screen Rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times.

This one is coming to you from a very cold UK.

It's freezing, it's absolutely freezing.

It's snowed a little bit, a tiny bit, not like in Scandinavian countries.

We've had just a mere dusting of snow.

Not a lot, but enough to really make the temperature drop, and for me to doubt my unsuitable clothing for the school run, which has been shorts right up since the summer.

So, now today's episode of Television Times comes at you from Edinburgh.

It was recorded in the Fringe during the summer, and today's guest is Nick Schuller.

He's an Australian comedian.

He's very, very funny, very deadpan, and I loved his comedy.

I really, really did.

I didn't get to see his solo show, which is a real bummer, but I did get to see Two Whongs and a White, his Australian showcase show with Jenny Tian and Patrick Glamko.

I really enjoyed their show.

I wish I could see more of Nick, but my own show and his show clashed, so it was sort of impossible.

But I urge you to check him out online.

He's a very funny man.

His slow delivery had me in stitches, absolutely in stitches.

I wasn't having to pretend.

I was actually laughing a lot.

And that was the Two Whongs and a White show that I was lucky enough to get tickets for.

They did an extra show.

They were absolutely sold out, by the way.

They did the show right on the other side of Edinburgh, where, you know, shows don't go.

And they absolutely sold out.

They were turning people away, which is obviously a testament to their collective talents.

Now, because it's absolutely freezing around, I'm not going to witter on here.

Let's get straight into this chat.

So this is me talking to the very funny Nick Schuller.

His wine is full bodied and tastes much fuller.

Sit back, grab a glass, listen to Nick Schuller.

Roll up, roll up, and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host me, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

You are one of these elusive people online, which I quite like, in that you haven't got a website.

No.

Because you don't need one, do you?

Not really.

Don't need one?

No.

Everyone else says, oh, you got to get a website, you got to get a website.

Why do you need a website for?

You just do the link tree to…

Yeah, it's on my Instagram.

If I'm selling tickets to something, it'll be there.

And do you have your own podcast?

No.

Who are you?

How can you be a comedian with that website and the podcast?

This doesn't make any sense.

I hate social media, basically.

You don't like self-promotion?

No, I don't like self-promotion.

I don't like social media, which is difficult because it is a necessary part of this.

Like, so Jenny, who I'm doing the Split Bill Show with, is phenomenal at that stuff and has a massive following.

And is really good at that stuff, but I don't like it at all.

I know, yes, was it her post she put up?

I should ask her, but she put up something about her and Brubbe.

That post will go massive.

She posted one earlier in the Fringe about, like, Scottish food and deep-fried Mars bars.

Daily Mail picked it up.

Like, it's huge.

Have you had a macaroni pie?

No, I have been told, I got told about a lasagna pie as well, which sounds even more insane.

And if you go to Aberdeen, they deep-fry that as well.

I've had that.

So you've got the pasta in the pie, you batter the pie and you fry the whole thing.

Why are you frying a pie?

That's pastry already.

I'm going up north after fringe ends.

I'm spending like a week traipsing around like Stonehaven, that kind of area.

And I'm excited to get kind of regional and see how fucking weird the cuisine gets.

I mean, this is all just like touristy.

This is like fucking...

It's like eating snails in Paris.

I mean, no one's walking around with a escargot and a fucking takeaway thing.

Exactly the Pompfritz.

But is that a person?

Hi, we're recording at the moment.

Just letting you know.

What's it going to say?

Yes.

So what I can garner online from you, which is very little, it says you were born in the UK.

Is that true?

Born in Oxford, grew up in Oxford.

You grew up in Oxford?

Grew up in Oxford.

So I kind of went back and forth between Oxford and Australia until I was 12, which is when we moved permanently and I started high school.

But I very much was English and considered myself English.

And then during high school, that kind of changed.

And I feel like, because I used to have an English accent, but I moved early enough that it was still malleable.

Because I wouldn't be at a towel at all, which is because I lived in Ireland as a kid.

And I remember being the most English kid in Ireland.

But then when you come back to England, they go, why have you got an Irish voice?

Well, I haven't.

But to them I had.

You can't really hear it yourself.

Yeah, but I think I moved.

If I'd stayed in England a year longer, I reckon the accent would have stuck.

But I was just on that cusp of it's still, I was able to adapt.

And yet now, you just could not tell.

No, no.

So do you, are your parents English then?

Dad is, my Australian.

So do you have like, I don't know, sort of English-y kind of food things that other Aussies don't eat and things like that?

Or do you have kind of like, do they go around your house and go, oh, he's got the English food, he's got the Marmites, the Vegemites or something like that?

No, as well as being English, like our family is Austrian, that's my last name, Schuller, is Austrian, and he's really interested in the family history.

So we have more like weird Austrian food at our house, mostly like Austrian sweets, which are good, real good.

There's like these little wafer things called, there's a particular brand, they come in like a pink packet and they're just basically like little chocolate wafer biscuits, they're delicious.

And then we heard of Sachertorte.

It's like a Viennese cake from the hotel Sacher.

And it's like they developed it.

It's fucking unbelievable.

It's a chocolate cake.

I think it's peach jam and then chocolate icing.

It's a little sweet though, like Viennese Whirl.

Is that actually a thing?

Is that just made up?

Mr.

Kipling?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just made up.

Yeah.

Yeah, so no like weird English food mostly, like, yeah, Austrian.

And what about the sense of, obviously the sense of humor?

You call yourself a deadpan?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like that dry sense.

Is the wine real?

I was in Melbourne.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So in Melbourne, so for context, like my show is called Still Dry White.

Yeah.

And the poster is like me with a bottle of wine.

And in Melbourne for the Melbourne Comedy Festival, I got a marketing grant from the festival, which I used to buy, I think it was like a hundred bottles of wine that I put the show poster on the bottle as the label.

And then just gave them away for free at the show, which was great, but a week before the festival started, so a week before the run, I found out that the venue I was in, their liquor license didn't let me give away alcohol in the venue.

Oh, give it away alcohol.

Yes.

At the end of the show, I had to be like I talk about the wine during the show and say I'm giving it away.

And then right at the end, I have to be like, I can give this to you, but not in the premises.

So if you want a bottle, hang around outside the door of the room, and we'll all go out on to the street, and I can give you the wine for free on the street.

And so like after each show, I was like the pied piper just carrying these bottles of wine and had like a trail of people behind me following me out on to the street so I could give them this free wine.

And was it nice or was it like that stuff that Kylie tries to sell in Sainsbury's over here?

It was surprisingly not that bad.

Surprisingly not that bad, that's the tagline.

Yeah, so I think it was roughly, I want to say like eight or nine Australian dollars a bottle, so like four pounds, 50 maybe.

And I still have, I think after the festival run, I still have like 12 bottles at home.

And my wife and I have been getting through them.

And they're, yeah, not as bad as you would think for £4.50.

It's easy to get through.

You've just reminded me of something I haven't thought of in years.

I might have said this before, I hope I haven't.

I was on tour with Inspector Koolz in Sydney in 2005, 2006, like over New Year.

Star City was on the show.

Oh, in the casino?

Yeah, in their massive venue upstairs.

And they threw this lavish party at the beginning, you know, like direct from London, even though it wasn't.

It was a show that was on tour, fucking, you know, wherever, some shit, old town.

Yeah, and they had all this wine.

And then I had a dressing room.

I was the sound guy at the time.

So I had a dressing room quite close to the stage.

And then I came in a few days in and they said, Oh, Steve, we've got to change your dressing room because blah, blah, blah, the understudy needs that one.

We're going to send you upstairs.

And I was absolutely furious because I had a big walk to the stage, right?

Annoying.

But then there was this sort of, you know, those folding things that people get changed behind those dressings.

They had a couple of those in the room and I was like, Oh, what's behind there?

All the wine left over from the opening night.

Thank you.

So me and the dresser and the wigs guy, we would just sort of take these bottles bit by bit back to our digs, to our apartments down in fucking wherever it was, Surrey something.

And I swear by the end there was like two boxes left, but nobody ever said anything.

Yeah, great.

And it was all bought for that event.

Yeah.

We just robbed it fucking blank.

That does not surprise me.

Star City is the casino that I'm pretty sure lost its gambling license not that long ago, just because it's like a haven for money laundering and all sorts of things.

I'll tell you one thing.

I'm meeting a mate today and when I was at college, we had prop wine.

I've never heard of anyone apart from you ever used in prop wine.

We did a show like when I was at college and I just used to take the piss out of it.

His name is Michael Chadwick, I call him Chadders.

I put his face everywhere in college.

I mean everywhere.

I made it like eight bottles of Chadder wine.

I put a Chadder Place pop.

I put all these posters everywhere.

He said like two decades later, and he went to see a show and the Chadder wine was on the stage.

So your wine could just send it into the future.

So I gave 70 bottles out to random people in Melbourne.

So I may just appear.

So are you based in London?

Is that what's happening now?

So something on the online that you were going to move to London in 2020.

It didn't work out.

What was that timing like?

Real bad.

So I moved to London on the 1st of March 2020.

Yeah.

And lockdown started on the 16th, I think.

Are you joking?

No.

So I had two weeks in London of like out and about doing stuff, and then straight into lockdown in like a one bedroom flat next to a train line with my now wife.

And that, well, it was obviously not what we came over here for.

Yeah.

In hindsight, like being in the UK at that time was probably better than being in Melbourne, which is where we would have been otherwise, because Melbourne was the longest lockdown city in the world.

Really big lockdowns.

Yeah.

Whereas here, like because Boris was just doing whatever the fuck he wanted.

Yeah.

Like we got a European holiday in July of 2020.

I snuck up here when there was no French.

I stayed in a hub for like three days for like 20 quid a night.

In the middle of it.

Eat out to El Pán.

All that stuff.

Yeah.

We went to Malta for a week.

It was bonkers.

It's funny because that's all the people were worried about.

It's like, when are the pumps opening?

When can we get to Spain?

That was literally all I remember about it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So we did that.

And then after summer, like again, it was that weird period where it was like, this county has these restrictions.

That one has this.

This one's open.

And that one's closed as like tier one.

So there was that.

By this stage, we'd kind of moved out of London.

So my parents, they still spend time here.

They live in Oxford.

And so we were fortunate enough to move into their house.

So we were like way more comfortable, had a lot more space.

But like, it was still, this was like, I don't know, October 2020, it was still like very unclear what was happening.

And we figured it would be best just to go back to Australia.

But at this stage, it was still, like Australia's border was still closed.

It was really hard to get in, but we were quite fortunate in that we managed to get flights.

And so we left on the 1st of Jan 2021, so we lost nine months in total.

That's a rough.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it did not pan out as planned.

No.

But yeah, it wasn't as terrible as it seems.

Because it's very hard to, you know, talking about COVID is very boring, I guess.

But it is looking back now, it is hard to distinguish the sort of 2021, 22.

I can't really.

And all I remember about that period you're talking about is I went to see Stewart Lee do a work in progress at the stand in Newcastle.

Yeah.

On like the 14th of December 2020.

I remember that.

Yeah.

And I remember him saying, I don't know how long we can do this for, but let's give it a go.

Yeah.

And we all went.

And then everyone's phones pinged and said like 12 people had COVID, that gig or whatever.

Classic.

And then we went into another lockdown, I think in January, didn't we?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Stewart's like one of my all time favorite comedies.

I still never seen him live.

I had tickets to his show at, it was either Leicester Square or somewhere in London in for like June 2020.

I bought them before we moved.

Obviously that got canceled.

Then he was doing a work in progress in November 2020 at the Bill Murray in North London in a room, which is like, I don't know, 60 people, which would have been unbelievable to see.

And a week before that, back into lockdown, got canceled again.

So I still have never seen him live, which I'm very, and he's not here this year.

I met him two days ago.

He was here.

He was wandering around downstairs.

I gave him a flyer of my show and we had a little chat.

I think you're not burning the material, but basically is out now.

I saw that here live at the stand last Fringe.

Yeah.

And just the amount of time he takes talking to the latecomers to tell them to probably not bother coming in.

It must have been 15 minutes.

It's so good.

It's so good.

You're not going to get any of this now.

I've seen like he's released little snippets on YouTube of like those sorts of bits.

Well, if any clip of Carpet Remnant World comes up, I just watch it.

I think that's my favorite of all time.

Yeah.

It's hard to pick a favorite, but it's just full from the beginning to the end.

It's just...

And I've seen him go up there and do like that work in progress one.

He was just like going on about some fucking journalist from The Guardian.

You know, I've never even heard of for about 40 minutes.

And he wasn't even joking.

He goes, if you don't know who this is, this is going to be a tough hour.

And he just...

And it was that, but it's still funny.

Yeah.

But like you sometimes you just have to go with it.

Yeah.

Stay with it, man.

Stay with it.

That's it.

You get compared to James Acaster by a few people here and there, I noticed.

Do I?

I think it's more of a visual similarity rather than style.

Yeah.

Like James is incredible, but I'd say maybe like a bit more whimsical than I am.

Like I'm very monotone, robotic, deliberately like slow, no energy.

I love this.

This is what I can never quite understand watching comedy sometimes.

I went to see Nish Kumar last week and he had to remove an American who was being obnoxious.

But Nish is like...

Sometimes I think I'm talking too fast.

Beginning of mine is quite fast.

It's like he's on cocaine.

And then you come on and you're like...

And I much prefer that, I think, because it gives me time to think and take it in.

I don't feel like I'm watching The West Wing.

I can actually absorb the jokes.

And I really do admire that skill that you have of being able to do almost like one liners with toppers and stuff.

But they're like, they are so slow and thoughtful and you still don't know what's coming.

And the delivery is just so droll and bang on.

It's very enjoyable.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

It's very enjoyable.

And it's a skill that I don't think many people seem to have these days.

Yeah.

Well, that's why I like doing it.

Because so much stand up your riot is like a hundred miles an hour, motor mouth, yelling, screaming, shouting so much.

And like it never adds anything to the performance.

Like unless you're like, there are some jokes that like, where the purpose of the joke is a rant or an angry rant.

And that can be great, can be really funny.

But if it's that for an hour, like it's too much.

Yeah, like Tom Marr does quite a bit of that.

Yeah.

It's not the whole thing.

It's just like about five or six outbursts, which are hilarious.

And then it's back to normal.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's so much of that in stand up.

And so just not doing that is nice.

And like while I've been here I've sped up a bit.

Like I'm not as slow as I normally am because it's hard to do that when I'm doing my own show or when I'm like hosting two wongs.

Because if like you as the compare the first act, come up and just drone on like you do have to, you have to amp it up a bit to get people into it.

But like back home, if I'm just doing spots, I will be probably even slower than you saw me on whatever night it was.

Just because I don't know, it's fun for me to just take my time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not speed through it.

Right, television.

Let's go to television.

Yes.

Let's listen to some tele questions.

How long we got?

Oh, we're all right.

We're doing all right.

Oh, this was something I read just there.

I was just, because of the wine, really.

I said to someone the other day, like, I'll see you in the Arvo.

Yeah.

And I use Australian things like in my normal clothes.

I know it's not stupid when I say it, but I will text it.

And my mate Chris was like, what the fuck is an Arvo?

I was like, afternoon.

I'm just writing afternoon.

So I'm just wondering if you might be out the loop because you're a married man.

Are you 31?

No, I'm 31.

31.

So you're a grown up now.

So you might not be in with the kids.

So what gen are you?

I'm a millennial.

You won't like any of this then.

So have you heard about this Hun culture, this Hun language?

No.

Okay.

Over here, it's taking off quite a lot.

Things like Jenny Leck, General Election.

Have you heard of this?

It sounds quite Aussie to me.

If I say it in an Aussie accent, do you want to give yourself a Jackie P?

It sounds kind of like, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Is it like cost of living, Aussie lives?

Yeah, all that shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that happening in Australia?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, you're right.

I'm the wrong generation for it.

What do you think of it though?

I hate it.

That's hard.

What are you doing?

Yeah, Savvy Bees, that's a classic.

But like all that, like TikTok, you can't say that you don't like this stuff without sounding like an old man shaking your fist into the wind.

But like, it's not a dog.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you straddle that kind of world of pre-internet, pre-streaming?

Did you grow up with VHS tapes and DVDs?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, definitely.

So, you are old-worldly and new-worldly.

You're going to be the trickiest old people, I think.

Because I'm like fully...

I remember all of it.

And I embrace all the technology.

But I'm not like sitting there confused about, oh, do you remember Blockbuster?

Yeah, kind of.

But now it's all fucking robots.

You know, it's not so dramatic and so quick.

You know what I mean?

It is very dramatic and quick.

But it's not like what you've experienced.

I had a lot of time without the internet.

Well, my whole childhood.

So, that was good, in my opinion.

Yeah, I mean, I was always had the internet, but I was like young enough to have VHS.

And not bad technology, but like the old school technology.

You know how it works.

Yeah.

You can be like picking up a set and go, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I, in my bedroom as a kid, had a TV that was, there was no remote, had big aerial coming out of the top.

Yeah, the aerial was, did they do anything?

I don't know.

No, no.

But the channels were like seven buttons on the front that you pushed in.

Yeah.

And the volume was a knob on the front.

Like, yeah.

I can just about remember dial TVs because they were knocking around in my childhood still.

You had to actually like tune them in.

So the TV could only do one channel.

Yeah, exactly.

And you tune it in and it would just be like black and white grainy footage and you'd get a coat hanger and attach it to a radio.

You'd hope for a better signal.

It's fucking weird.

It sounds like I'm talking about 1800s.

Yeah, yeah.

But it was, what, 25 years ago.

It's ridiculous.

It really is, man.

Yeah, man.

So what is the, there's another question on here, so I'll jump straight into it, is what do you think the biggest change TV-wise that you've witnessed?

What do you think that would be?

I think, like people say what we have been for the last little while in like the golden era of TV.

I feel like when I was growing up, like movies were dominant and TV was a bit of an afterthought.

And like there wasn't like blockbusted TV series necessarily.

I know there were a handful, but...

Yeah, like the Soprano, the obvious ones.

Yeah, the Soprano.

The continuous search for the next Breaking Bad or whatever.

Yeah, whereas, yeah, like since probably early to mid 2000s, there have just been so many like iconic, classic, excellent TV shows.

And now like TV is ubiquitous with like an abundance of great stuff.

And I feel like, yeah, in the last more 15 or 20 years, that's really shifted.

Whereas TV used to be like a second place to movies.

And also it fits with people's attention spans, right?

Because what do you do when you go to look to watch a movie?

I did it last night.

Check out how long it is first.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't go in dark into a three hour movie for like 11 o'clock at night.

I'm not fucking doing that.

It better be 90 minutes so you can fucking do one.

You know what I mean?

Whereas television, 45, 50 minutes, maybe I'll watch another one.

I'll decide in 50 minutes so you have a better chance.

But there are TV shows that do get overlooked because there's so much, you know, I hate saying the word content, but there's so much, like you say, really good, well-made television that sometimes you'll see an ad for something like this, that TV show Griselda.

I don't know if you've seen that.

It's a sort of drug kind of cartel 70s, 80s story.

And I saw that and I was like, yeah, I mean, who cares, right?

But then when I came in and I wanted something to watch, my wife said, oh, you should check it out.

It's actually really, really good.

And I watched it and it was really, really gripping.

And it was a miniseries, limited.

Thank you very much.

Wrap it up.

Never have to watch it again.

Love those.

They're my favorite.

Don't make me hang on for seven years.

If I watch something now and it's like, so what man, is this seven years?

I'm into this now, so it's a seven year commitment coming up.

I can't do it.

I agree with you.

I think the films now, especially Netflix films with any one of the Hemsworths and whatever, it's just like, I'm sorry, I'm not watching that.

That is not made for me.

I don't want to watch that.

I don't know what that is.

It's just some action stupid thing with bad script.

Night in these lines and next time take the bridge type thing.

It's shit.

It's just thousands of these things.

Churn them out, churn them out, churn them out.

And television is better.

We do live in that golden age.

So here's one.

I bet you don't look like a man that likes Miele TV.

Maybe you do.

Maybe you say.

It's definitely not my first choice, but as like a guilty pleasure every now and again, like I quite like Below Deck.

All right.

I've heard people like this.

I've tried to watch one episode and it looked like it was full of cunts.

Oh, it is.

And I thought I'm not going to get through this.

I might try again.

I might try again.

And every season follows exactly the same formula.

And you know what's going to happen, but it is.

Is this an Aussie one or the American one?

There's heaps.

There's British one.

Because the American one would be just very...

The voices would just...

I'm not going to read, but it would just be like...

I'd get my nerves immediately.

But yeah, so like occasionally I'll watch reality TV, but it's definitely not like...

Are you aware that Australian reality is massive here compared to our own?

Yeah.

It's huge, like Married at First Night Australia is like one of the biggest shows.

Which is insane.

Your versions of it are bigger than our own versions.

Yeah, which is...

It's weird.

Well, like people do watch it in Australia, but it's definitely bigger here.

Like, maths, for example, like it is big in Australia.

Like, really no one watches free-to-air TV in Australia anymore.

Like, it's...

As an industry, it's completely in the toilet.

As in schedule television, terrestrial, or ABC, whatever.

Yeah, just people aren't watching free-to-air TV and they're just dying.

Like, they are, they're transitioning to streaming, so they're doing other stuff.

They've got a lot of good stuff on Stam as well.

A lot of that stuff gets picked up by the BBC.

Like, coming from counts, things like that.

All that stuff comes over.

Lots of really good Aussie stuff doesn't, though, and I have to find it via unscrupulous means like Utopia, which I love.

Oh, Utopia is phenomenal.

Love that.

I've banked them all.

I've got them on a hard drive, because I think they're going to vanish and we're going to find them.

Which they might, they might, but those are the guys who make that working dog, who like just pretty much dominate the Australian TV comedy scene, both with sitcoms and with, like, panel shows are great.

They're so good at what they do.

And what are the popular panel shows at the moment?

Probably the biggest one is called Have You Been Paying Attention, which again is Working Dog, the same guys who Utopia.

Very, it's literally just a quiz basically.

Five comedians, regular hosts, dumb answers, like video clips, like what's going on here, that sort of stuff.

And you've got that other show that quite a lot of people are starting to have been on, something like We're Pleased to See You or We're Glad You're Here.

Thank God You're Here.

Thank God You're Here.

We don't have that show, so that's a clever idea.

It is.

It's basically like improv.

Like you get thrown into a scenario where you're a character in the scene, but you don't know what the scene is going in, and then you just have to bum all your way through.

I guess Murder and Successful was the closest thing we have.

I don't know if you've seen that.

I haven't.

With Tom Davis, he's a detective, and then someone famous like, you know, will be thrown in, but then all the other people, they are impersonators.

So it'd be someone pretending to be Gordon Ramsay as the chief of police.

Fuck in hell.

Fuck off.

You fuck off.

You fuck off.

And then like, someone's just thrown in there to deal in the situation, and it's really weird.

That's a really fun one, if you want to check that out.

I've got a little favor to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Times podcast.

One of the weirdest but best TV shows I watched recently was Nathan Fielder.

The rehearsal.

Yeah, that's wild, right?

It's insane, but it's so good.

It just keeps going.

Yeah, it takes the simple idea, as Stewart Lee does to link it back to Stewart, like it just takes a simple premise and pushes it to the absolute extreme of what it can be.

And it's so good.

It's so insane.

It really is.

And the money he got to build that pub and just move it.

I mean, it's just wild.

It's bonkers.

Yeah.

Are they making a second one out?

I don't know.

Oh, actually, weirdly, it just reminds me another sort of reality show that I just stumbled across last year.

It's an Amazon Prime show called The Jury.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the guy from X Jones.

James Marsden.

That was fantastic.

It's so good.

That was really funny, right?

Yeah.

And again, it's like that, thank God you hear style thing where it's, it's basically a prank show where there's one guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All that for one person.

He's like, there's a jury for a trial and it's completely fake, but there's one guy who thinks it's real.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Marsden playing up to his Hollywood actor status.

It's just so funny and phenomenal.

Yeah.

I didn't think I would like that.

And I watched it and I was like, oh, yeah, I think we watched that in about three days.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was just, I just heard it go on out.

Yeah.

So is there a reality TV show that you would be happy to go on as a contestant?

Oh, I mean, for the money, I'm a celebrity.

I take that, because it's an Australian version.

Do they have horrid politicians in their one?

No, no, it's more like, yeah, it hasn't.

Oh, actually, I think, oh, maybe Pauline has this.

So Pauline Hansen is our adjunct forage.

Maybe she has done it.

They do send some pretty cooked people in there because obviously, it's going to make TV.

Cooked meaning?

Cooked meaning, insane.

Right, cooked like that.

Yeah.

I don't know, right wing racist, crazy.

You have some of those too?

Oh, plenty.

But they're normally, the cooked people, they send in are often like sporting figures or like social commentators.

To sort of do that, because what we seem to have now is it's like they have to go there as like some kind of punishment to sort of like go through this thing and then maybe the public will, you know, because we had Matt Hancock, he was our health secretary, right?

You know, he was from here.

And then he went in and it was like, it's a little too soon, Matt.

You know what I mean?

You fucked it all up and you shagged that woman when you told granny she couldn't go outside or meet her.

You know, it was just to go in there for like...

Like to revive your career.

Yeah, like sort of, what's the religious word for that?

Repent.

Repent, that's it, exactly.

Yeah, to repent for your sins in public in front of the nation.

I don't know why they sent Faraj in there, but yeah, I can't watch that because of who's in it.

And there's always...

But then they'll throw in Sean Walsh or someone, a comedian, and they'll have to talk to Matt Hancock or something.

It's so weird.

It's bizarre.

It's real strange.

So what I quite like, the Aussie ones, what I like watching is...

Because I don't know any of them.

Like they'll always have someone English like Paul Foot or fucking...

Not Ross Howard.

Ross Noble.

Oh, Ross Noble.

Yeah, Ross Noble is huge in Australia.

So he was in like the Australian Celebrity Apprentice with Bill Sugar.

But then all the other people, I won't know who they are.

And I quite like that because it's like I'm watching a reality show.

Like we're traitors.

I don't know who these people are.

So they'll have a couple of celebs in there.

And it's like, who is that person?

And what I liked is the SAS one.

You know that one?

I tried to write a bit about that show a while back because while the show was on TV, Australia was also prosecuting members of RSAS for war crimes.

So we were reckoning with the war crimes RSAS committed while also having a reality TV show about being trained by the SAS.

Literally being abused on television.

It was fucking insane.

That's funny.

I like it when they get a Brit.

They should get Leo Sayer.

He's hanging out in Sydney.

He's been there for years.

Get him there.

I don't think he'd cope so well getting called a cunt to his classmate.

You can't make it work.

You're talking.

Get in the fucking water, Leo, you can't.

It'd just be amazing.

That would be sick.

It would be great TV.

That would be good.

So yeah, so those imports and exports do very, very, very fucking well.

We watched the Aussie ones.

I guess you might watch some of ours and the whole, let's not even talk about neighbours.

Is it finished?

Is it not?

No, it's on Amazon.

No, it's that thing.

It's that.

It's never gonna die.

I'll be trying to get Stefan Dennis on this because I met him once.

We've got a picture together.

So I keep sending it to him and say, look, we've met.

Make it on my podcast.

I'd love to get proper neighbours now.

That'd be sick.

That'd be sick.

Toady.

I met Toady once.

Yeah.

Toady in a bar in St.

Gilda.

Yeah.

Some pub where like every Thursday there was a neighbours quiz and three or four people from neighbours would come down.

So we were on tour and we just went for a laugh.

And there was like fucking Harold and Toady and fucking the doctor guy.

And I was like, this is what they do?

Yeah, man.

I'm pretty sure Toady comes here and tours around and just does like a speaking tour.

He must make fucking AIDS some money.

People just want to see Toady talk like in Hull and Bradford and shit.

Imagine like the stars of Emmerdale going around Australia for a tour, isn't it?

Crazy.

So did you get married in the pandemic?

No, I got married in January this year.

This year?

Was your relationship before the pandemic?

Yeah, we've been together.

Nine and a half years now.

Oh, shut up.

There's just a lot of people I'm meeting who were like thrown in a room and now they're married.

Some of them even already have kids in that period.

Oh yeah, we got together in January 2020 and we've got two of them.

What happened?

Yeah.

Fast forward life.

Well, if you can survive that.

Yeah, when we came back to Australia, we had to do hotel quarantine where we were locked in a hotel room together for 14 days, weren't allowed to leave.

I love a hotel though, isn't it?

No, not for two weeks, the window didn't open, so you're literally in a box, the two of us together.

Aircon?

Aircon, yeah, but no fresh air, no nothing.

Not even a balcony walk?

No, nothing.

They closed the door on day one and then two weeks later.

Did it work?

It did for a while, it was working.

And then what led to Melbourne's second massive lockdown is that one of the security guards in one of the quarantine hotels fucked someone who had come back from somewhere who was staying in the hotel and then he went out into the community and then they just ruined it.

So it was working for a while and then it stopped working.

Sounds like how Monkey Box is going to kick off.

I look forward to that.

I look forward to another one.

It's been what, four years?

Probably due for another one.

Due for another one.

But that one is apparently predominantly sex workers and truckers is what it says.

That's a very specific...

I mean, there's a lot of overlap there, isn't there?

Makes sense.

I mean, I don't know, can't we stop this?

We know it's coming, can't we just stop it again?

Are you a vaper?

No.

No, good.

Don't like vapers.

And that's the weirdest thing of all time.

I go on about it a lot in my show.

I just can't stand vaper.

I had people vaping in my show the other day.

In this tiny...

It's a 35-seater.

I hope you fucking ripped them in your mouth.

There were these loose Scottish people and I was concerned they were going to fuck up the show, but they actually were great and really enjoyed it.

Yeah.

So I was like, hmm.

Yeah, it's hard to know, isn't it?

Is that going to be an asset to the gig?

Yeah, exactly.

Or is it going to be a problem?

Yeah, I felt like if I went after them, it would just fuck everything up, because they were being relatively well behaved.

Right.

And it's like, yeah, you've got to make that judgment call of like, is it going to be worth me trying to deal with this or just let it slide and keep them under control in the way that they are at the moment?

Have you had some like rough incidents in the sort of more outbacky towns of Australia or anything like that?

No, outback crowds are sick, like rural crowds.

They're so grateful that something has come to their town, that they're often like the best audiences, yeah.

Yeah, I love regional gigging in Australia because it's such a massive country and not that much stuff goes out there.

If there's something on, they're just stoked that you're there.

And yeah, they'll be sick audiences.

Stoked, I like stoked.

What do you think will be the top TV show on Australian television in the year 2050?

2050.

Ooh.

It'll definitely be a dumb reality style show, but it will be catering to kids being born now who will grow up with like the most fucked exposure to social media.

I reckon potentially it'll be like a reality show.

And this may well already exist about like people trying to gain internet clout.

They'll all be in a house and they'll all have different amounts of followers and they'll get competitive over who's got the most and who got the most likes on this post.

And it'll just be toxic, garbage, gross, disgusting, nothingness.

So almost like a real version of the BBC Three show called Please Like, which is like these three influencers living in a house trying to sort of get famous for whatever old shit.

I reckon it'll be like a real life reality TV show.

I'm going to be controversial and say I think it might be the opposite.

Like a whole generation of the kids now, so my kids essentially grown up, right?

And they try living without it, like really living without it.

Not in a kind of Bear Grylls on an island, no pants.

I mean, like, because it will be so ingrained, right?

It cash will probably be gone.

So I've just thought that I never said the cash will be gone.

So maybe they'll have to get cash out and it might only be limited amount of it available.

Most places won't take it.

But maybe living slightly less with not Internet won't even be a word, will it?

Because that will be like saying television set.

It will be like the web.

It's not anything, is it?

It's like a website.

What do you mean?

What do you need a website for?

Back to that.

I mean, we don't need them.

No one needs them.

You won't say Internet or you.

What's the other words you use for it?

World Wide Web.

No one's going to say anything.

Google or something like that.

The verb might be gone by then because it will probably just be like, you know, have you deed that thing?

I don't know what people say.

Yeah, right, so it will be people like, not exactly living off grid.

No, no, like you go about your day in the normal world, but without all the technology and how would you maybe get by?

That would be quite interesting actually.

That would be interesting.

No apps, not allowed in apps.

You can't do a photocopy at Finch Central.

Yeah, fuck.

I've had to do that.

Fuck, no, I mean.

Have you ever tried to photocopy in a more complicated way in your life?

It's like, I didn't want to be like Larry David or something, but it's like this.

Go and watch the final episode of the last season of Always Sunday in Philadelphia.

It's exactly us going to Finch Central.

He's trying to get a coffee, but he has to get the app and he needs a lot to come.

They don't take the cash with them.

Oh, I think I've seen a clip of that.

That is just exactly how I felt.

And I thought, I might explode here.

I'm going to keep calm because it's not her fault.

No.

Yeah, I'm going to turn it on and off again because the QR code isn't coming up.

It doesn't need a QR code, it needs a slot for coins.

Yeah, just anything.

Any better system than what you're doing.

Oh, yeah.

That's mad.

Well, Nick, thank you so much for coming on Television Times.

We barely talked about it.

We skirted around it.

We did.

Thank you so much for coming on.

And are you going to be touring the UK?

No plans at this stage.

So they'll come find you next year.

Yeah, next year.

Next 2025.

Find me on social media.

I don't have a website.

I don't have anything, but I'm on there.

Cool, man.

See you there.

Thank you very much.

That was me talking to Nick Schuller.

Very funny guy.

I think you'll agree.

Yeah, check him out online.

All links are at the bottom of this episode in the show notes.

You can find loads of clips online.

Go see him live if you're in Australia.

And you know, I'm sure he'll be back in the UK as well soon, so you can all look forward to that.

And you know, I'm pretty sure he'll be back at Edinburgh French next year, so you can go see him up there as well.

Now to today's outro track.

Today's outro track is a song called Rerun.

I wrote this in America in about 2009-ish, I guess.

I recorded it in Arizona with my wife.

And yeah, this is a song about, I think it was just because I was on tour a lot, and when I was in Edinburgh, I felt exactly the same way.

I'm just carrying, lugging shit around the whole time.

I had another song called Luggage Machine, which I think I folded into this one.

So it's just that feeling of constantly going around in circles and carrying your shit around all the time.

And then I put that into a sort of worldly view.

Anyway, so this is the song.

It's from the album, We Argue in Silence, which you can listen to any point in time, because it's on Spotify, all remastered and lovely.

So this is the song, Rerun.

That was rerun, which you can find on all streaming platforms.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that, and I hope you enjoyed my chat with Nick, and we'll be back again very soon with another episode.

Until then, thanks for listening.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell all your friends about this podcast.