Greg Fleet - Where's My pony?

By Daniel Hedger

Greg Fleet

Greg Fleet is much less confrontational than I’d assumed. For some reason I’d misjudged the kind of performer I was seeing and I was happily surprised. Far from making anyone uncomfortable, Fleet put the audience at ease early on by telling us that he wasn’t going to mock anyone for getting up to go to the bathroom or the bar and he disliked comedians who do that. 

Not only was this a good-bloke kind of thing to say, it actually primed everyone seated to feel free to laugh out loud.

After all, the thing about insult comics is, if you’re too worried that someone is going to make you the butt of a joke, you’re less likely to want to laugh, especially if you have a distinctive guffaw. 

Fleet enjoys his audience and is very relaxed on stage. I suppose you have to expect that after 21 years at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Less a tightly scripted show than a series of freeform true stories punctuated by some pithy gags, Fleet’s 2009 show is very fun and way too short.
There is basically no mention as to what ‘Where’s my pony?’  is supposed to mean, other than what it says in the Comedy Festival program, which is something about Fleet deserving to get something for all his work over the years. Someone should have baked him a cake, at the very least. 

So less about ponies and more about things people say, Fleet’s 21st comedy festival show revolved around things Fleet has overheard or had said to him that were unintentionally hilarious. Usually I would argue that words in themselves aren’t funny, but he had a few examples of out-of-context, out-of-this-world sentences that were mind boggling. I won’t give away what the homeless man said about a certain hotel chain.

At one point, Fleet got the audience to yell out their fears and he seemed to genuinely enjoy hearing the responses. Nobody yelled out ‘Speaking in public’, which was appropriate, but there were a few gems. There was the girl whose friend was afraid of the word ‘moist’ and the lady who was afraid of driving across the Westgate Bridge. This led to what felt like an impromptu bit about Fleet finding a spider in his jocks that is actually much funnier than it sounds.

Also, in this story he revealed that he’s the yellow dog in the Hardware House ads.

Somewhere along the way in preparing for this show, Fleet decided to give a ten minute spot at the start of his set to up and coming comedians – a different one each night – to show off their stuff to an audience that probably hasn’t heard of them. This is a great idea and really giving of Fleet.

However, I would have preferred that we got ten more minutes of Fleetie (and I sensed the audience agreed). On our night we got Harley Breen who was energetic but wasn’t on par with the man with 21 Comedy Festivals under his belt. Harley talked about public transport and how there’s always ‘the guy’ to avoid on trains. I have to admit I didn’t understand the premise of this joke, so I couldn’t laugh when he broke out his ‘retard’ voice, which he did at least once too often.

I actually feel kind of bad because Harley really committed to the joke and threw his whole body into the performance. But two minutes later I was still scratching my head going, ‘I’ve missed something important about this joke; I just know it.’ So, I apologise for that.

But Fleet was great. Go see him. 

"Greg Fleet - Where's My Pony?"
When: 2nd - 26th April (Tuesday - Saturday 7.15pm, Sunday 6.15pm, no show 14th and 15th)
Tickets: $32 full, $28 concession, $28 (Groups of 6 +), Previews $22
Where: Roxanne - 2 Coverlid Place (off Lt Bourke St, btw Russell & Exhibition Sts, Melbourne)
Bookings: Ticketmaster & at the door