Nick Capper – Comedian

“The first show was good, the second show went great, the third show… I really, really bombed! It was terrible, like awful,” says comedian Nick Capper, recalling his early days in comedy.

“There are still people who don't talk to me and that was 12 years ago!”

Nick, who finished a tour of regional NSW in Orange earlier this month alongside fellow Melbourne comedian Matt Stewart, sat down with Orange City Life to talk about what it takes to be a working comic in Australia today.

Comedy was never originally part of the plan for Nick, who grew up on a cotton farm near Boomi, a town of 200 people north of Moree on the Queensland border. It’s a town at the end of the line, he says, real country — people don’t go through Boomi to get anywhere.

“It was great place to grow up, although I didn’t always like it,” says Nick. “I was kind of a city boy at heart — I liked my art, my heavy metal music, all that sort of stuff — but then once I left, I found myself loving going back and I really saw how beautiful it was.”

He attended Farrer Agricultural College; a great school if you want to milk a cow and play rugby, he says, but in hindsight he also considers his time there as a kind of ‘comedy apprenticeship’.

“It was a good experience and it made me who I am, it is what cemented me as a comic. You always had to be on your guard and my year was especially known for really ripping into each other…  you were either the king of the bus really owning somebody, or someone made a good joke on you and you bombed. It taught me that resilience,” says Nick.

Following school Nick went into cotton farming, working for his father, but quickly found the routine of farming wasn’t for him.

“You know what you are going to be doing at the same time each year and also you have to work your guts out — you'll never have a good Christmas as a cotton farmer. You never see a cotton farmer on Farmer Wants a Wife, because they're working!” he says.

But again, even cotton farming was all part of his strange path into comedy.

“When you work in shifts, you put all the utes together before you do a change and you tell jokes. I didn't know it at the time, but I look back at it now and I was particularly good at it. They were all other people's jokes that you read in Ralph Magazine or wherever, but I found I could always put a bit more flair on it. So, in a way they were my first stand-up shows.”

Nick’s first chance to actually get on stage came while studying graphic design in Sydney. At the urging of one of his friends, he got up at an open mic for a bit of fun and a creative outlet.

And for the first few years, comedy was mostly a hobby for Nick, a chance to get out, meet people and travel.

When he really decided to pursue comedy for a career, it was almost more out of necessity than anything else.

“I was going to quit. I'd done all the stuff I wanted; I'd travelled around Australia doing it, but then I was at a bit of a low point and all I had left was stand up,” he says.

“I’d moved to Melbourne and was like, ‘that's it, I'm going to find a career’, but then I broke up with my girlfriend, I was only working part time and I thought what else am I going to do at night?  Plus, I had to try get money from somewhere.”

Not that financial security and comedy go hand in hand.

“It was hell, I had to take terrible gigs, I was hustling for $100 I was always stressed, and that stress took up part of my creativity, I was always stressed about money… If you had given me an out, at my most desperate times, I would have out,” says Nick, who can reel off a long list of odd jobs he’s had in his time.

“I worked in a bank, I was a travel agent for a couple of years, just anything so I could keep doing comedy… I was a dishy in Sydney and I became a travelling salesman for about three months selling children's educational products door to door.  I work on a children’s farm as well every now and then, taking kids around and showing them how to milk a goat all that kind of stuff. Even last year I was helping a friend who works cleaning up meth houses and checking stolen cars for needles…

“When I took up freelance graphic design again and really pushing comedy hard, it took me five or six years and it’s really only now I worry about money a lot less and I haven’t really had to hustle as much.

“Once you get that word of mouth, you are reliable and people know you can do the job, then they call you in and that's really good… but next week could be a different story!”

Although Nick has been pursuing comedy for 12 years, he still can’t imagine where it might take him.

“No, I don't even know if I'll be doing it next year. You never know when people are going to get sick of you and when people are going to stop coming to shows,” he says.

“And anytime I've wanted to quit — it has been a bit of a curse — but anytime I've wanted to quit, someone who I've really respected in comedy has told me not to. If it was just your mates you wouldn’t care, but there have been people, successful people that still believe in me, so you kind of just have to keep going.”

Nick Capper puts out a weekly podcast, the anxiety-inducing The Phone Hacks, where he along with co-host Mike Goldstein and brave guests, go through each other’s phones and then try to out-embarrass each other via awkward social media posts.

He has just filmed his first comedy special and also makes regular appearances on The Little Dum Dum Club Podcast with Tommy Dassalo and Karl Chandler, and Dave O’Neil’s podcast The Debrief.