Shiny Happy Person

Australian comedian Adam Hills is shortly to arrive in Dublin to perform his latest stand-up show, Happyism. Hoot Press catches up with the affable comic one lunchtime at his home in London, where he has just finished playing tennis in the garden with his young daughter (we enquire if he won and his reply is, “Tennis was the winner”). When it comes to Happyism, does the performance do exactly what it says on the tin?

“There’s a story in the show about me being on an American TV programme a few years ago, and it was the kind of show where you go on and write mean jokes about celebrities,” recalls Adam. “I tried and I failed horribly. About a year later I was onstage with the Muppets in Montreal, and that was a reminder to me that I do what I do. What works best generally, is putting out a bit of positive energy. Literally, try and be a bit happy. That’s the genesis of the show.
“That original American TV show I was on was called Chelsea Lately. What you do is slag off whoever’s in the papers. They were recording in Australia for a week and I was invited on. It’s not gonna come out well in print, but basically I made some jokes about Megan Fox. She was having trouble putting on weight. I went on a bit of a rant about that. I don’t really care about Megan Fox. I’ve no beef with her, so to try and construct negativity around someone who I’m not particularly annoyed by... that’s the problem.”
On the only occasion I saw Chelsea Lately, Kirsten Dunst was the guest. Who was Adam on with?
“Rihanna was the main guest. We did our bit and then she came out. It’s not like we crossed paths,” he reflects. “Backstage, there was a moment when people were going, ‘Chelsea was harsh tonight’, and there were other people saying, ‘Dude I can’t believe you made that joke’. There was another weird thing – and you forget this – in that American mainstream comedy is a lot more benign than the British or Irish or even Australian equivalent. I’ve said things onstage in Britain that get a laugh. When I say them onstage in America, there’s an intake of breath.”
There’s another strand to Happyism, which involves Adam’s encounter with a prominent international figure.
“I hosted a concert for the Dalai Lama two years ago in Perth,” he explains. “We got a private audience with him and he said, ‘If you have a microphone, you should use it to say something.’ And I think that’s what I didn’t do on the Chelsea Lately show. Meeting the Dalai Lama was amazing. It was weird, because it was a concert, and not just with Australian musicians. Luka Bloom was part of it as well. He has worked quite closely with His Holiness and, I think, has written a couple of songs for him.
“So as part of this concert, Luka Bloom got up and played a couple of songs, then he took off and it was Australian bands for the rest of the afternoon, and I was hosting it. Basically, the Dalai Lama came into the backstage and we all had an audience with him. It was lovely but also weird, because he said, ‘Are there any questions?’, and we hadn’t prepared any! So there were people going, ‘Oh shit – what do you ask the Dalai Lama?!’ I actually walked onstage holding hands with him and introduced him to the audience.”
Adam has appeared on numerous UK TV shows including Nevermind The Buzzcocks and Mock The Week. Does he have a favourite moment from those programmes?
“Weirdly, my favourite moment of Buzzcocks was somehow ending up with Mark Lamarr at the Groucho Club after the show, and both us admitting that we wanted to be in musicals,” replies Adam. “That’s my memory of that – it was quite a hazy, drunken night. I remember Mark being quite emotional at one point cos Joe Strummer had just died. We were in the Groucho and the last time he’d seen Joe was in the Groucho. And then I remember standing in the street hailing a taxi, both of us admitting that we wanted to be in musicals (laughs).” What’s the Groucho like?
“It’s a club like any other,” responds Adam. “I quite like hanging out there because in the middle of London, it’s a nice, quiet place to get a bite to eat and a cup of tea, to be honest. So I’ll often go there in the middle of the afternoon with a friend and have a coffee and a bit of a catch-up. There was one night after some gig that I was at with Rich Hall and Mike Wilmot, and we ended up at the Groucho. As we left, Rich stopped to talk to this guy, and it was Jason Sudeikis, the American actor.
“He was with some woman that I looked at, and I smiled and said, ‘Hi, I’m Adam’ and she said, ‘Hi’. Then we wandered off, and it wasn’t until after that I realised the woman was January Jones from Mad Men. Then another time I was doing a photoshoot in there with a mate of mine and the director John Landis was around. So it’s ridiculous place, and whenever I go there with my mate, who’s a photographer, we just look at each other and giggle and go, ‘We know we’re not supposed to be here.’”
Hills’ TV career has really taken off in the last year thanks to his successful anchoring of Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage. The slot he presented, The Last Leg, has now been given its own series, and indeed later on tonight he will front the latest episode, where the main guest will be Boris Johnson.
Hills himself has a prosthetic foot, and legend has it he once took it off and passed it around at a gig.
“I’ve done it more than once,” he notes. “Last year at Leeds, I recreated what I thought the Paralympics opening ceremony would be by sending my foot to one end of the room, and then crowd-surfing towards it and meeting it in the middle!”