The Little Dum Dum Club with Tommy & Karl - Episode 146 - Frank Woodley

Episode Date: July 9, 2013

Beard Talk, Dead Camels and Stolen Hubba Bubba.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, mates, it's Dasolo here, just dropping in at the start to let you know I'm doing my show Pipsqueak in Melbourne from August 6th till the 11th at the Butterfly Club. I'd love it if you could come down. You can get tickets right now at thebutterflyclub.com. And if you're a friend of the show and you enter dumdum, that's D-U-M-D-U-M, two words, when you check out as a promotional code, you are going to get a sweet discount for being a friend of the show. So come on down. I'd love to see you there.

Hey, mates. Welcome once again into the little dum-dum club for another week. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Tommy Dasolo. Sitting opposite me, the other half of the show, a bearded Carl Chandler. Yeah. G'day, dickhead. Look at us, just a couple of blokes with big facial hair.

Yeah. Feels good. Yeah. I mean, going away is a good chance to sort of let it all hang out and grow a beard. I quite like it. But it's that thing when you get back and I have to get rid of it quite quickly, especially this time because there's just way too much grey fleck in my beard this time around.

Because you can make a call from here of whether to get rid of it or you can just – because you've pretty much – you've done all the grunt work of growing a beard. Part of me would like to see you just really let loose and make it a big thing. I don't know if I'd get too much more than this. I'm sure it would get greyer. So I'm not real –

But grey beard's good though. No, is it? I think it'syer. So I'm not real. But grey beards are good though. No, is it? I think it's good. Yeah, it's good. It's good in your 20s, isn't it? Because it's a bit of a novelty. Yeah. I remember my cousin in his 20s tried to dye his hair grey because, you know, how funny is that?

No, I don't mean. Not in your late 30s. I don't mean funny. I mean it's like a look of distinction. I think it looks good. It's got nothing to do with being on the other side of it. I think it looks good. It's got nothing to do with being on the other side of it. I think it would benefit you. I think having a bit of grey in your beard would offset the childish way

with which you compose yourself most of the time. Yeah, maybe. Just remind people that you are actually a functioning adult. And look, I've got a proper shirt on and everything. I don't even dress like a three-year-old today. Normally you come around here topless to record the podcast. In a diaper. And sandals.

Thailand's changed you for the better. Yeah, but then there's that thing of, you know, I sort of think, oh, this is good, you get a beard, and then there's just way too many people as soon as I've come home going, oh, you should keep that beard, you look good in a beard, which is of course saying it covers half your face. That's a better thing than what you normally have. But it's a good novelty, because it's funny, like a lot of the guys that I went to high school with, they immediately after high school, they all kind of went straight to uni and

then, you know, got serious jobs straight after that and a whole bunch of them have just gone overseas together and I've been looking at them on Facebook and they've all clearly done the whole, well, we're on a big overseas trip, let's have a bit of a silly time and just grow big beards while we're – imagine that. Imagine us having beards. How silly is this? Which is like, you know, with our lifestyle, you just let your facial hair go whenever you want. Like I went through a phase earlier this year where my rebellion was actually shaving every

day. I'm like, this is so naughty. Like I don't have to do this for – I don't have a job. I don't have to do this for anyone. Watching Ready Steady Cook in a suit. Like that's you thumbing your nose at society. Yeah, exactly. And because we've just come back from Thailand, you know what?

And you'll have picked this up as soon as I walked in, but I ate really healthily the whole time because I was with my girlfriend the whole time, which means there's no sort of mucking around. We're both team healthy eat. There's no me sneaking out to get mousses or anything like that. It was all just nice, fresh food all the time. And I literally got to the end of the holiday and went, I can do this from now on.

I'm a changed man. I've changed my genetics. I'm not going back. I'm going to eat like this the whole time. I've been home for three days. I've eaten McDonald's three times, including on the way in here today. Yeah, I opened the door and you had half a cheeseburger just hanging out of your mouth already.

Yeah, well, it's one that's quite close to you. And to be honest, I'd never been to that McDonald's before and it's in this big, elaborate, nice building. Yeah, it's like an old bank or something. It's a weird one, yeah. And I didn't know. I thought the whole thing was McDonald's and it wasn't. And I actually walked in the wrong door in hindsight.

I walked in the wrong door and it was another building. And then I walked in and went, this isn't McDonald's. When I walked out, the sign on the door was the Clifton Hill Child and Adolescent Therapy Group, which I thought was quite appropriate. Well, luckily you had that beard

so they didn't mistake you for a child. But that's such a good trick. You know, you're going to McDonald's. You do need that. You do need actually the services. Well, it's like the whole, you know, like that old trick that you see in sitcoms and stuff of parents tricking their kids into going to the dentist by saying, we're going to Disney World.

There's no trickery. It's just all in the same building. They've done a genius move there. Today on the program, very special guest, two years in the making. You know him as half of Lena and Woodley. You know him as 100% of Woodley. Please know him as half of Lano and Woodley. You know him as 100% of Woodley. Please welcome into Little Dum Dum Club, Frank Woodley. Yay!

I wooed myself. That was a bit... Hello. It's good to be here. Yeah, great. Yeah, thanks very much. This has been close to two years of back and forth emails and... Yeah, the pressure on this particular little chat in the Dum Dum Club is pretty high,

but I've decided to sport the neck beard for the occasion, which not a lot of people can grow the neck beard. You know, a lot of people, you know, their hair starts, it sort of fades away around the bottom of the jaw. Yep. But whereas because I'm so hirsute, I can grow a neck beard, and so I shave the rest. Do you think it's a good look?

It's fine. You know what? It's better than the last time I saw you because I saw you a couple of times. This will be good. No, I saw you a couple of times. This will be good. No. I saw you a couple of times during the comedy festival when you did your show and your level of her suiteness was very – what would you say? It's like a chopper.

It was a little bit like – yes, like Chopper had gone away on holidays and asked me to look after his pet while he was away. It was a bit like that. Because you had a shaved head as well. Yes. So it was quite a shaved head as well. Yes. So it was quite a mean-looking look. And I saw you a few times walking down a dark alleyway with your children. Or you know your children.

Some abductees. Children in some description. Because you look so mean in that haircut and your facial hair and everything. I'd see you on the way to my show, you'd be sort of walking away at like 10 o'clock at night with children down a dark alley and I'd be like, this looks really bad until I heard the Frank Woodley voice. I'm like

wow, this looks like it's been dubbed or something like it doesn't look right at all. I'm going to punch your faces in. Right in. We're going to go right in. And you'd be accompanying that on the ukulele. Neville Bartos, I'm going to stab you in the guts. It was an interesting thing how I did find having, you know,

because all this stuff is very symbolic, you know, when you adopt one of these looks. And without a doubt, if I had a scarf on and a hat on i felt like i was you know a middle-aged art teacher who'd been living with his partner gary for a long time i was just a lovely guy you take off the scarf take off the hat and it's like i may not have killed someone but if i do nobody will say you know really, really him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing, the power of that. I just like the links that you went to changing your entire facial appearance for your comedy festival season.

There's not enough method stand-up comedy, is there? I think next year I'm going to go a little bit further and actually get plastic surgery just for the show. And then try and get it reversed at the end, yeah. What would you need plastic surgery? What sort, yeah. What would you need plastic surgery, what sort of comedy festival show would you need plastic surgery for? If you were doing, you know, those shows that people do where they portray someone else.

Oh, yeah. It's that guy that does that Bill Hicks show. Like Frank Woodley as Joan Rivers. Yeah, let's do that. One of my most, like, a story that I find the most fascinating about plastic surgery is, and it's probably going to be in this new Liberace film that's coming out. I just bought that.

Have you seen it? No. Behind the, behind the can, no. What's it called? Behind the candelabra? Yeah. Is that the one? That might be it.

But there's a, there's a, because I saw a documentary about Liberace. Apparently he got, as well as getting some plastic surgery himself, he got his lover to get plastic surgery so he would look like him. I love it. That's so good. I don't know about you, but I can't really imagine – like if I rolled over and I saw myself looking back at me, that wouldn't be the most rousing experience for me.

Like that's, I find that uncanny. Yeah. I find that weird in that, it's probably been covered on our show before, some would say a reluctance to get married on my behalf, but other people like me would say I'm just, you know, just making sure and things like that. But I find the concept of like getting married weird when the wife changes the name because you're expected to be attracted to someone with the same name as you.

Like that's a – isn't that a weird – I mean you're married. What do you mean though? Like once you get married then your now wife is walking in the door and going Chandler's home. But it sort of makes them feel a little bit more like your sister. That's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. Ever so slightly more. She's got the same last name as your mum does now.

Yes. I'd never thought about that. I'm sorry for ruining your sex life. Not the first time you've had to say that to someone. Me and my girlfriend, we'd been dating for not very long and we bumped into a friend of mine in the street and I introduced him to her. I said, this is my girlfriend, we'd been dating for not very long, and we bumped into a friend of mine in the street, and I introduced him to her. I said, this is my girlfriend.

And he goes, oh, you guys look like you could be brother and sister. Don't say that. Let's think that and maybe say that to people later on. But not at – and this is like – it's a very new relationship. I'm amazed it survived past that night. Yeah, that's not a very nice thing to say to your pretty girlfriend, to say you look like him. Yeah, there's a lot of different strokes that are wrong with that,

saying that to someone. I mean, it could elevate you in a sense to a sort of – I was just thinking that the Egyptian pharaohs would often marry their brother or sister. So you could think of it – it could just make you feel ever so slightly more regal. Yeah, or he's just trying to say, it's a subtle way of him saying, you look Egyptian. It's just him trying to call out my ethnicity.

Maybe. I love that when things like that get brought up because people that are quite religious go off ideas that have come from that time and then you bring something like that. That's the same brain that's come up with the idea of yeah marrying your brother that's on yeah that's all good they must have felt like um like the because the pharaohs could do anything yeah you know they could just go see that guy his left nostril is slightly lower than his right nostril, that annoys me. Put a horse on him until he dies or something.

They could just do anything they wanted, you know. That's a great way. That's a great version of the death penalty. A horse stands on you until you die. And plastic surgery came out of that because you want to change your nostril unless you want a horse on you. Yeah, the options. Is that where the phrase horse-faced came from maybe?

Yeah. I just think they must have – like it must have been a thing where they went, you get this, you can do that, you can do anything, you can do that, you can do that, you can do that, you've got to marry your sister, you can do that. Yeah. This one little glitch. Yeah.

But really it all unravels at that point. How did that drift away, that whole thing of Pharaoh and the idea of a guy who can really just go out and do anything? Like how did they... The god-king sort of thing. Yeah, given that they were the ones in charge of everything and all the power and the choices being made, how did it slowly shift to that not being a thing anymore

when they were the ones in control of it? I mean, you know, we've still got Queen know a lot of countries have kings and stuff like that yeah it's probably only been 100 200 years that where that's been a bit diluted hasn't it yeah i mean politics and whatever has been a bit more powerful over only a couple of lifetimes whereas probably two three hundred years ago you could still do all that stuff yeah that's why i think the queen is really taking full advantage of being the queen. Like I'd love it if she just woke up one day and went, you know what, I'm going to go out on the balcony,

just point at a civilian and just have them killed. I'm just going to point at them and go, they're dead. Well, I don't know if this is true because, you know, these things often, you know, are myths and you watch QI and then you find out that it wasn't true after all and it really annoys you. But I remember hearing a story that in the Middle Ages and then you find out that it wasn't true after all and it really annoys you. But I remember hearing a story that in the Middle Ages, like the aristocrats could apparently, they could,

I don't know if they could do it willy-nilly, but if they were out hunting and their hands were cold, they could kill a serf and put their hands into the body of the serf to warm their hands. Wow. Like Luke Skywalker at the start of Return of the Jedi. Does he do that? Yeah. When he guts that, I haven't seen it for ages, but.

That thing. That thing. That animal. Oh, the nerds are going to be angry. 100% of our audience is going to be angry. I didn't even know he did it. So there's a spectrum of, you know, annoying nerds. Yeah.

Yeah. See, that's great. I love that as a thing. I remember seeing on a Bear Grylls thing that he said, if you're in the desert and it gets cold, climb into a camel. Climb into a camel? Get into a camel. Like, it's got to be a dead camel.

Oh, right. That you kind of get a sword or if you have a sword, it'll take a long time. You're walking through the desert get a sword or if you have a sword, it'll take a long time with your little skis on. You're walking through the desert with a sword. But you slice the camel and then you climb into it and you wear it like a sleeping bag sort of thing. Wow.

That shows my knowledge of biology where I was legitimately thinking, oh, there's a way you can climb into a living. I'm sure there is. No, that was in the raw edit before they went back and re-dubbed it. There were just a lot of people walking through the wilderness just doing unspeakable things to camels in the urge to stay warm. Well, he was probably alive when they started climbing into a camel, to be fair.

Now, you guys have got a bit of history. We've been waiting a long time to get you on the show, Frank, because young Tommy here has been an employee of yours in the past. If we had have been in the Middle Ages, I would have been... I'd be dead. When you were walking down that dark alleyway with those children, your hands would have been very warm. Tommy worked on Bewilderbeast, I think.

Yes. Bewilderbeast and had a kind of a cameo role. And I was actually just watching, because I've got a, I've just started up a YouTube channel and I'm kind of putting up a few little best of bits. And I was just looking this morning at a bit when we did the,

when we reshot it for the warehouse comedy thing. And there's a great bit where Tommy just comes on and wheels off a table and it's just got the most beautiful i mean it was neither of our performances that made this particular bit work but just a beautiful squeaky wheel that's right yeah it's just this fantastic thing of just wheeling off the table got about a minute's worth of laughter. Yeah. It was just this great thing of I think you just on the first day just going, oh, is there like a thing? And it didn't need to be tricked up. It didn't need to be played over speakers.

It was just the first table that someone found with wheels on it. One of them was just perfectly rooted that made that over-the-top Tom and Jerry-esque squeak. It was great. It was kind of, I don't know how Tommy felt about it, but it kind of shat me a bit. The funniest thing in the show. No, I was fine with it because I was the one pushing the table

so I could kind of pretend that the speed with which I was pushing it was contributing to the laugh. Like that's how I looked at it. He did do a lovely thing of taking it to the, you know, upstage and to the edge of the curtain and then just stopping so then there'd be beautiful silence and just looking for where he was going to go and then wheeling it again and just a very simple little thing, but lovely.

Because there was one moment, yeah, so I did this little like cameo role at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. This is in 2010 for a week and then at the Forum in Melbourne during the Comedy Festival. And I think about the third night in at the show at the Forum, I had like kind of three little walk-on bits that I would do and I would just sit at the side of stage for the rest of the show. And there was one night pretty early on in the run where you went to do a song and you realised that you had left your capo for your guitar backstage. So I'm just there just checking Twitter or whatever I do,

and you've looked off stage and gone, Tommy, I'm so sorry about this. And I'm going, is this a new thing that I didn't get told about? And you've just grabbed me and pulled me into the centre of the stage and gone, I have to run and get something for my guitar. Can you just stay here and kill time while I do this? So you run off and then I'm there in the main forum theatre with no microphone so I can't do anything. Doing all that mime stuff you're famous for.

Without even a squeaky wheel to entertain the masses. So I think I just said something like, I just said something like, I'm just meant to be the work experience kid or something like that, which got enough of a laugh. But then because it wasn't mic'd up, you just heard the laugh, but you couldn't hear what I'd said. So then by the time you get back on, you're just trying to say to the audience, what did

he say? And like, no one would tell you, which just made you suss that I'd like bagged you out or something. Are you sure this is not your elaborate way to like that you still did bag me out and this is the story you're holding to for years and years. Yeah, I went around the entire audience and got them to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

You were gone for a very long time. You realise if this was on the DVD you could just go back and check. Yeah. I don't think we were filming that night. But the funny thing was it was like that, because I lived in Melbourne my whole life and the show was at the forum theater which i've gone and seen a lot of bands and it's my it's my favorite venue to go and watch shows at and it's always been a thing in my head of like oh imagine getting to do a show at the forum one day and what a dream that

would be and then you know i get asked just by circumstance get asked to be in this thing and then i'm i'm doing these little things i'm like oh but i'm like watching you going man imagine standing out there on your own just in front of the crowd and then you pulling me out and my head going, oh, no, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I don't want this at all. But there was also a bit in the show where I, you were playing like a smoke, like a jazz, jazzy kind of song

and you would say to offstage, can we get a bit of smoke in here make it kind of a smoky jazz kind of vibe and then a smoke machine would come on and the joke was that it would just go on way too long and drench you in smoke and then you would say oh that's a bit much can we get some of that taken out and then i would come out with a vacuum and kind of vacuum up the smoke and then at the end of the show every night you very kindly would plug my comedy festival show and i would stand out front of the venue and hand out flyers and uh there was one night where someone came past me as I was handing out a flyer and said to their friends oh look it's him the gay vacuum dude which right I don't know where how the sexuality got bought into it well the fact

that you were having anal intercourse with a man while you vacuumed up the smoke, which I did say, I gave Tommy a lot of leeway. I said, you can do whatever you want with that little moment. It's just a little moment, but feel free to improvise or whatever. And I must admit, even I was a bit shocked by that, but I thought, well, fair enough. Does he come up as gay vacuum

dude on the credits of the DVD? Did he have a name in the show? No, I think it's Tommy. I don't think we went with... I'm Method. I'm really Method. GVD? No. I just like it's a mark of how polite you are that you used the term

anal intercourse. Never heard it phrased so eloquently before. You're hanging around the wrong people, obviously. Yeah. And then this comedy No, Comedy Festival last year I worked with you again

I helped you out With your You were signing posters at the end of the show So not in the show Kind of demoted a little bit Couldn't help but notice Gay poster dude But you were still there

People were still seeing you as they left the theatre. And next year you're going to be completely behind the scenes. And the year after that I'm going to skin you and wear you as a jacket. Next year I'll be busking out the front of the theatre. But it was really interesting getting to sit there with you every night and watch people kind of line up and get stuff signed. I found it very fascinating, like, the very different approaches that people have to meeting someone like you.

Like, it ranged from there were a lot of parents there with their kids and, you know, the parents had kind of seen your stuff with Llanow and Woodley when they were younger and now the kids are watching the series that was on ABC at the time, your new show. And then I just found it fascinating, like people, which I'm obsessed with, like people kind of just this kind of like entitlement that people have. Like I remember one guy coming up and going, mate, great show, loved it.

Look, I'm coming again tomorrow night with my girlfriend and can you just, it's her birthday, in the middle of the show just wherever you like wherever's convenient if you can just yell out happy birthday belinda can you do that and you're like oh look i'll try to do it but i just i don't know if it's really gonna fit or just really gonna work that well and him going nah but nah come on you can do that it's not a big up like just that thing that people have where they just go this is all all right, this will be all right, won't it? Well, I think one of the things with comedy in general is that it's so, you know, it's ultimately like it's so friendly and intimate

and you have to make it look effortless that there is a general feeling that it's like that thing how lots of people think that you're making it up as you go just because you act like you're making it up as you go. Yeah. Just because you act like you're making it up as you go. Yeah. People are amazingly sort of, I don't know, trusting, I suppose. Especially when it's a show that has, like, a lot of sound cues and, like, props and a set.

I've got an amazing sound guy who's just sifting through files. We've got a hive mind where he can just tell what I'm about to do. Well, anyway, if you want to say happy birthday, Belinda. I don't mind saying it. I'm not precious. But I've had shows before where and this is not

often, but I've had people come along and really enjoy a show that I've done and go, I'm going to go again. And then you go, really? Because, okay, well, you do it if you want. And then they come again and you can see them very clearly. And I've seen them in the audience very clearly go, oh, this is the same show. And it's like, yeah, yeah, you know how I do jokes every night? It's not mucking around.

It's a scripted eight-word joke. I'm not going to think of another 200. I wish that it happened as literally as you'd said it, like someone just out loud, not even yelling, just saying, oh, this is the same show. Yeah, like three jokes in. Awesome heckle. Oh, this is the same show.

Not even hanging shit on you, just a disappointed statement. Yeah, but you can see them just, I've seen them in the crowd, especially when they're big laughers the first night, and they've come the second night, like back to back. So they've been, oh, and then of course, if they're there, if they're a big laugh at the second night, you can hear them not laugh anymore because that first night they were very loud. But maybe they're just appreciating the craft the second night. You can't hear someone stroke their chin. Unless they have a very rough beard.

In fact, hang on. Yeah, can we do, can we? Oh, let me see. Oh, yeah, that's coming up. You can hear that. That's good stuff. That won't be there on the next episode, so I appreciate that, guys. Yeah, just that smooth, the sound of the microphone just gliding off your cheeks.

Can you hear the grey in that? Oh, God. Yeah, it sounds like an old gramophone all of a sudden. I had a pretty shocking experience with um people coming up and signing things one time when uh somebody somebody put yeah like a young boy put his um dvd forward and he said you know i said oh you know g'day what's your name he said james and i said okay and two james and then i heard a woman over on the side go, and Andy? And there were two brothers there, you know,

and she wanted it made out to both of them. And I kind of glanced over and I went, that's your lucky Andy that your grandmother's looking after you like that? And I just felt the whole audience do exactly that. And she went, mother. And I looked over and I went, oh, sorry. And I should have just stopped there, you know, should have just gone, sorry.

I didn't, I don't know why I said that. Yesterday someone, it was a grandmother yesterday, had pushed on or something. But I went, sorry, just out of the corner of my eye, you look older than you do look now that I look directly at you. And she went, I'm 39. And I went, I heard about a grandmother who was 32. And you could just feel the audience all just going, no, don't.

And she goes, she just said really quietly and calmly, so you glanced up at me and you thought that woman looks about 39 but she looks like a 39-year-old grandma. It was a shocker. You're looking over at me going, Dazzler's meant to be helping me from this kind of stuff. I'm just pissed in the corner. Yeah, where's gay heckler helper out of a dude?

That's a very reasoned argument from the girl in the crowd, though. Wow. She's been very calm. It's great when a similar thing happened in terms of just that reason thing where when I was going through customs once and I accidentally, it's a bit of a long story, but I'd take my dog for a walk and he'd done a poo and I'd picked up the poo in the plastic bag and then I'd put the plastic bag in my pocket

and then I'd hung the jacket on the wall and then the next day I'd gone to New Zealand and he was going through, they actually, I'd put my jacket into my bag and they went through my bag and he pulls out the plastic bag full of poo and after he said, he just looked at me and said, is that poo? And it went on for quite some time. And then he said just the most beautiful thing, just so calmly again,

where you go, you should be a comedian because you're poised. He just said, at what point in time when you were preparing for this overseas trip did you say to yourself, mustn't forget to pack the poo? Which was just, you know, exemplary. So just out of curiosity, not that I'm going to act on this, are you allowed to take a poo through customs? No, they took the poo. Oh, they took the poo.

Yeah. Why wasn't that on border security? That's got everything. That's got... See, I'm so disorganised, I would forget the poo on the way to the airport. So you've literally got your shit together. Checklist. You've got to get a checklist happy, Carl.

I also liked – one thing I noticed about you with the whole signing and thing, because obviously you've done a lot of it, I loved your approach to people, because you're making stuff out to people, like people's names and stuff, just your approach to the kind of interesting names that come across like just the real kind of um i don't recall the process to getting people to spell their names or or not knowing the name or not really and and you also there are a lot of times when someone would come with a bit of a peculiar name and you'd go oh and spell it out like that and then they'd, no one's ever gotten that before, which is just this amazing kind

of like beautiful mind style of just how to put people's names together. Yeah, right. I mean, I think it is something that I learned from doing it for a long time that originally I thought people would want me to be funny when they're meeting me like that. So I just do sort of little jokes like I'd sign something and I'd say, this signature might not be worth a great deal now, but if you hold on to it for a few years, I can guarantee it'll be worth absolutely nothing. So I'd just do some little joke like that or I'd sign something and be nice to people

and then I'd throw the T-shirt in their face and go, and now get out or something. But it became apparent quite quickly that people don't want you to be funny. They just want you to be friendly. They probably don't want the T-shirt in their faces. Like I could have picked that one. But I would have thought, because if I was meeting someone like that, because I heard, you know, somebody said they met the chief from Get Smart.

Really? Edward Platt. Edward Platt in a restaurant in Sydney. And they went over and they said, oh, look, I've just got to say I love you. I've always been a massive fan of Get Smart and I've always loved you. And the chief looked up and he said to her, get back to your seafood, Max. Which was kind of a perfect little thing, you know. She got what she wanted but he also said, leave me alone, you know.

It's like if you met like Gordon Ramsay or someone. You'd just want him, you'd just be doing everything you could to get him to just let loose on you. Yeah, but that's right. But that's what I kind of thought people would want, some kind of joke. But actually, as it turns out, the vast majority of people, they just want you to kind of acknowledge them and say hello and be friendly. If I was in your position doing the kind of comedy that you're very well known for, I'd be worried that when people meet you,

they want to push you down a flight of stairs or something. Break a hammer over your head or something. When my family family moved to warrandyte we're living out there and um and i should you know make it very clear that i only did this for a very short period of time and i don't want to make it sound like i've been this amazing volunteer but i did join the cfa for a brief period out there and um and one of the things that the CFA do, as well as fighting fires, if there's a fire, is if there's a car crash in the area and somebody's trapped in their car,

they'll set off the alarm and kind of the volunteers will go there, get there quickly, and they'll cordon off the area because there's a lot of windy roads through there, make it safe until an ambulance can arrive or then the jaws of life, I guess that's what they're called. They cut people out of the cars. And I was just thinking, I never had to do it,

but can you imagine if you'd seen a lot of, you know, the adventures of Lena Woodley and you're trapped in a car and then the person who arrives is me in a CFA uniform, that would not be comforting, would it? It's like they've tried to spin off the clown doctors, the clown firefighters. Also, your fellow firefighters, like if there's a fire on and then you've got the guy next to you in a pork pie hat

with a hose up his own nose or whatever, that's not going to help. Or you're coming in to put out the fire and you've got, like, the little flower on your lapel squeezing water out of that. Yeah, no, it's not good. Well, going back quickly to what you were saying about people, you know, meeting you and what to expect and that sort of thing, I brought up on the show a little while ago that when I was a child, I met Rolf Harrison.

I was quite annoyed that he wouldn't sign an autograph. He just said no to me. I was about four years old, five years old, and I'd drawn a picture for him. Oh, wow. And he wouldn't sign anything. And since then, there was a bit of a scandal after that in the paper, and it was then subsequently brought up to me by quite a lot of people that I shouldn't have complained. I got on quite scot-free considering the circumstances.

and I got on quite scot-free considering the circumstances. I did have a – I got a text message, like an email. What do you call it? Someone posted on my Facebook page. I did a thing out at Bundura Park where there was a scarecrow competition for schools out there, and I went out and kind of hosted this event and somebody posted a thing afterwards saying something like I've lost a lot of faith in you man I brought my two kids you know who were five and six and we waited for an hour to talk to you and then you just wouldn't give us the the time of day you you know I don't respect you anymore

you bastard or something wow and it was like And it was quite upsetting to go, look, I don't know what happened. And I can remember on the day I spent about an hour talking to people after the gig. Was Frank really badly dressed? Because that may have been a scarecrow. That's why he wouldn't talk to you. Possibly. It's a weird one.

So, look, because I think, I don't know what's happened with Rolf in terms of that scandal. I'm going to say that we don't know yet the details. So I'm going to go to bat for Rolf and say that possibly on that day maybe something really unfortunate happened to him. He was rushing to help a friend who was hanging from a something. Jake, perhaps? Or something, you know.

Or maybe if child Carl Chandler was anything like adult Carl Chandler, he's gone up and gone, I did this drawing of you and the drawing is just Rolf Harris having anal intercourse with Humphrey B. Bear or something. Gay Rolf dude, I've written on the top. Sign this, fuckhead. He just looked at it and gone, oh, thanks. It was upsetting for a written on the top. Sign this fuckhead. I think I slipped it in God's eyes. It was upsetting for a three-year-old or something like that.

I mean, you know, that could have caused what I am today. Yeah, that was the thing that broke you. That could be him. He was responsible for a lot of future this. I signed away and got a signed autograph, a life-sized signed picture of the Phantom. Oh, wow. And when it came in, and it took like about six months to come,

and when it came, I had no idea that the Phantom was so small because it was a life-sized picture and his head was about as big as a grapefruit and I've never forgiven them for that. What came first, the Phantom comic strip or the commemorative Phantom plates that you see advertised every week in the back of the TV guide in the newspaper? Have you ever seen them? that. What came first, the Phantom comic strip or the commemorative Phantom plates that you see advertised every week in the back of the TV guide in the newspaper? Have you ever seen them? Do you know what I'm talking about? I can vaguely

see it in my mind. I remember always seeing ads for these little, you know, the special commemorative plates you can send off and get. And they'd be a range of different ones. I just remember always seeing the Phantom and going because I didn't know, I knew, like, everyone I knew had heard of The Phantom, but, like, you'd never meet anyone who's like, oh, bloody The Phantom.

I've got the commemorative plate. Yeah. You know when you're a kid and you get those things into your head really quickly? I think when I was a child, like, my mum and dad ran a delicatessen in Maribor and I was like a street kid in the, not the street kid that lived on the street, but I would be labelled as a street kid because my after school time would just be walking up and down High Street, Maribor, hanging out the back of shops and all that sort of thing.

So I would just watch cartoons out the back of the deli and I think my mum made a passing reference like, oh, Popeye's on TV, that's my favourite, just trying to be relatable to a four-year-old, five-year-old or whatever, which then became for the next 12 months me coming out of the back into a busy delicatessen at lunchtime every day going, hey, mum, your boyfriend's on TV. Mum, stop. Stop making that salad sandwich. Your boyfriend is on TV.

You know, we've got a bit of a bond because I grew up in a milk bar, actually. Oh, really? A similar sort of thing. And there was a similar thing with my, because when I was a wee lad, I would plop my jocks, you know, as is wee lads want. As the street kids want. Yeah. I was all over that.

And it was considered a bit unsavoury to come out and say to my mum, you know, serving in the shop, Frank's plopped his jocks. So there was, you know, the little euphemism of saying there's been an emergency. Plop eyes on TV. Your boyfriend's on television. Your brown friend is on TV. But then for years because of that, I thought the emergency stopping lane was the place where the cars could just stop and you could just take a poo. But we've got that whole Milk Bar Deli sort of thing.

Yeah, I used to be at the back as a child of the deli and a coffee shop and a shoe shop. Wow. Pretty abrupt turn there. No, it did go. It was a rollercoaster ride of High Street Maribor for my parents. It was a deli, a coffee shop, a shoe shop, a health food store. And in my later teenage years, which, you know, could have been better timing, a reject shop, which, yeah, I could have, that could have been earlier on in my childhood

where people weren't evolved enough to hang too much shit on me. But yeah, no, that happened when I was 16. It does sort of suggest that when they were running the health food shop, it was just another shop. Yeah. Like, you know, when you go into a health food shop, you expect the people who are running the shop to be really health conscious and concerned. But it does sort of suggest that they went from the shoe shop to the health shop to the reject shop. It was just another business they were running.

It was. You picked it. It was. It's like when people started finding out that vitamin water is just owned by Coke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, this isn't good for you. That's exactly it. I think the guy, this is actually true,

the guy that ran the health food shop He ran it within a building that my mum and dad owned And then he sort of got run out of town And then they sort of went Okay, well all the stuff's here We're running it now, okay Why did he get run out of town? I don't know, there was a rumour that he fell off a ladder

And it went up his arse Wow Now for your next comedy festival show if you need someone to have a ladder go up their ass i am available wow i heard about a guy who fell off a ladder and had an irish accent for the rest of his life that happened to the that doesn't get you run out of town though like apparently um apparently it's a true story happened to a person in Bendigo, and, yeah, their daughter ran up to them and said, Dad, are you okay?

And he said, no, I'm not fucking okay. But do I look like I'm okay? And he talked with an Irish accent for the rest of his life. Wow. Got a head injury, and it's weird. It's a real condition. Oh, well, that's good it's a head injury, because he could have fallen on his ass and had an Irish accent.

That's insane. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I'm bewitched by you guys, the growing up in a shop. Because I remember being, when I was a kid, that was like, I'd look at that and go, man, that must be the coolest way to grow up. And now that I'm a bit older, I think, man, that'd be, I'd like to do that when I'm older.

Because there's a milk bar that just was closed when we moved into this house that's just reopened up around the corner and it's the classic, like the door out the back just leads into the house. And I went in there, hung over a few Saturday mornings ago and just stocked up on stuff. And they just reopened so they still hadn't learnt how much things cost.

So I go in and I've pushed the bell. There's not one in there. I've pushed the bell on the counter and this kid comes in in his basketball gear from Saturday Sports and he's like looking at all the stuff and then he's had to lean in the hallway and go, Dad, how much is a packet of grain waves, a Redskin, a Pepsi Max, a block of coon cheese, a bag of twisties, a curly whirly, a lemonade. I'm just there going, this is horrendous. You did your whole week shopping at the corner store?

I was in a bad way. I needed as much fat as I could get. We went to our local milk bar. This is a few years ago. And bought a little square of butter, you know, in the paper wrapping, and took it home. And when I went to use it, there was a little bit of sticky tape on the end. They don't normally use that.

And opened up the little paper and there was one, you could see the serrated knife mark, one little run had been taken off. So the people had obviously made some toast or something out in the back and gone, oh, we haven't. Oh, Emily. Wait a minute. But they put it back or was it, I still can't quite work out,

was it like the babysitter or something who just wanted some butter on their toast and went out and like it just. Just pay the $2 and have the stick of butter. It's not like in Breaking Bad when they start skimming bits of meth off the top, like just buy the butter. It was extraordinary. I loved it. Because for me, like when I was a kid and I would see kids that lived in milk bars or

whatever or the parents owned milk bars, for me the big attraction was, oh, you must just be able to just go in there and just grab lollies and have whatever you want and just run amok. Is that, but I feel now like that's not the case at all. Well, there were two issues. I do remember I had to become sort of wary of Dairy Queen friends, like we made Dairy Queens. Oh, really?

You know, and there were certain kids who didn't really want to have much to do with me at school, but then they wanted to walk home from school. Oh, yeah. You know, and I think there's something in that, you know, that I've taken through my life, be on the lookout for Dairy Queen friends. How do you use that throughout the rest of your life, Dairy Queen friends? Like not Fairweather friends, but Dairy Queen friends. Yeah, that's right, Dairy Queen Friends. How do you use that throughout the rest of your life, Dairy Queen Friends? Like not Fairweather Friends but Dairy Queen Friends. Yeah, that's right, Dairy Queen Friends.

You've got to be careful. But then I have another quite vivid memory because we weren't allowed to just have lollies as, you know, whenever we wanted. But they're all there in front of you, you know, so it's kind of a cruel, torturous thing. I don't know, in a deli it's a little different. It's like olives or something. Not quite as enticing.

Yeah, there was lollies there. Right. Chandler, what was your favourite of all the shops that you inhabited when you were growing up with your parents? What was your favourite? I imagine for a kid the reject shop probably would have been the most interesting in terms of like variety of things. It just came at the wrong point in my life though, like reject shop.

It was just like old enough where everyone else in my class would be like, rejects? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, is it all, did someone take a shit in your shop or something? Yeah. No, no, no. No, it's cheap, guys. It's just, no, no, no.

What's wrong with it? Did you, are you a reject too? Yeah, not even an Uncle Bucks or a Hot Potatoes, which have a bit more credibility about them, the reject shop. Yeah, and it meant just like, and this might be the case with you as well, Frank, but there was always this thing of being in shops where people that didn't get much attention in society found a safe haven in shops because people have to talk to you in shops.

Yes. So it would just attract sort of the lower ebb of society maybe, I'll say that politely. Or possibly lonely people or whatever. My parents ran a general store in Mount Macedon for years and they had this thing where, this was before I was born, so I didn't witness it,. But they were allowed to sell alcohol, but only if they had to get a license where people could drink alcohol in the shop as well.

And in order to do that, they had to have a little table. They kind of had to run it as almost like a – not a bar. They didn't have a bar, but they had a table, like a cafe table sort of thing and a chair. And there was just one guy. So it was purely there for like legal reasons so that then they could sell alcohol like a bottle shop sort of thing. But there was one guy, the local drunk, who just sat at that table all day, every day.

Nobody else, you know know nobody else came and joined him it was just his little spot yeah well there was a guy in the you're saying about the favorite shops i think maybe we had a coffee shop where it would be like that you'd get your regulars and whatever and then people that just didn't have anywhere better to go and whatever and there was a there was a guy like that would just come in the same table every day, but he was really quite offensive. He was an older guy. And people would walk, women would walk by, and he'd, like, pinch them on the ass and, you know, say really bad stuff.

And it got to that point where my mum and dad didn't want him in there anymore, but they couldn't, they would just, you know, get sort of looser and looser as time goes on and be like, well, if you don't, you know, he'd go, oh, the ham in this sandwich is not much good. Oh, why don't you piss off home then? You know, just... Slowly trying to edge up the level of abuse. They ended up throwing face washers at his head.

Like, I remember that. That was a point where he went away for a day, but then he came back. They signed a T-shirt for him, threw it in his face and said, now get out! Yeah, take your wobble board and fuck off, mate. And that explains it. Yeah, so again, maybe that's a hint of why I behave the way I do.

I've just seen my parents treat strangers like that. Did your family's milk bar have the thing, which I used to love, which you don't really see anymore, the milk bar that would just have a shelf with like eight videotapes on it? I don't know, and sometimes milk bars would try and dabble in being a video rental as well. But they'd just get one new release every eight months. Yeah. I didn't.

You didn't? We never had it. That would have been great because my dream was to have something to do with videos. Or I begged my parents to run a newsagent. Yeah, yeah. Because that was me reading comic books every day after school. That would have been my dream. Yeah.

Well, the reason why I was into the Phantom was because we sold the Phantom comics, but we preceded videos. Actually, they would have had to have been like reels of film stacked up on the thing. The old school milk bars. There's a lovely story, though, about my dad where he was serving in the shop and he saw a guy who was probably a truck driver was on springvale road in glen maverick so a lot of truck truckies stopped

there they sold chicken lunches and stuff as well so but he saw this guy come in and he got a newspaper and then he slipped a magazine into the newspaper and then he paid for the the newspaper and he left and my dad was serving someone else and didn't want to make a big scene but apparently about three years later the guy came in and bought like a packet of twisties and a can of coke or something and dad just said to him okay that's uh you know a dollar for the twisties and you know a dollar fifty for the can of coke and uh three dollars twenty for the magazine that you stole last time and apparently the guy just paid it and left. It's like this guy's heard of double jeopardy.

You can't be done for the same crime twice. It's just completely gotten it wrong. Yes. I did that. I stopped. I remember very, very vividly stopping a shoplifting one day in the coffee shop because they were doing a, like for a bunch of 12-year-old kids, they had the mark and they had the whole crime set up.

They had someone up the front counter saying to my mum, oh, and how much are these one-cent lollies? Oh, how much are the two-cent lollies? You know, distracting, and meanwhile up the back there's this kid going, oh, do you reckon my sleeve could fit a red skin? All right, how are we going to do this? And I was just watching him, and then he was doing it in front of a mirror. So I was sitting there watching it all happen.

Yeah, great. And then I had a moment like that where the guy sort of went at the end of the desk, like had gone, okay, yeah, I'll just take the one cent lolly, thanks. And then mum going, oh, well, that'll be one cent then. And then me going, and the packet of Hubba Bubba for your friend here. And then him just dropping the Hubba Bubba and just running out. And the kid up the front going, I don't know. I just wanted a one cent lolly.

I don't know what happened there. I've got no idea what happened there. I get one cent pocket money. Me and a friend, Peter, we did a thing we got caught um must have been it was primary school so we must have been you know 10 or something and uh this was at the the local milk bar just around the corner from where i was living when we it's a bit of a long story but we lived at the milk bar for half the time and then we bought a house elsewhere and i was living elsewhere not not remotely interesting but around the corner there was another milk bar for half the time and then we bought a house elsewhere and i was living elsewhere not

not remotely interesting but around the corner there was another milk bar and we got this scheme going where um we climbed over the back fence into the into the milk bar and took one of the 20 cent return bottles you know and we took it around to the front of the milk bar and went in and got the 20 cents but you know once again like greed you know it does a we thought we can do this again so we just went around the back and climbed over again and uh went in and got the 20 seconds i think we used a different bottle we weren't too stupid and uh and we went in but you know i i don't remember seeing it i thought we just got away with it perfectly but obviously you can imagine that little glint in the eye of the of the shop owner you're going hang on a second

and then how much milk are these boys drinking and then we're climbing over the fence for a third time and he's just waiting and three dollars twenty for the magazine if only we had been happy with 40 cents you you know. And do you still keep in touch with the rest of the little rascals? Yeah, we have a cart with a goat that pulls us around. I remember being that age where, like, the idea of shoplifting first enters your head and it just seems like the most adult thing you can do. And I remember me and my friends just...

But it seems like like at that age, it seems like it's on par with like killing someone. Oh, for sure. And just that thing of going, well, we've got to do this because this is how you become an adult. Yeah, right of passage. There's no more barriers after doing this. I remember stealing, I think I've talked about this before,

stealing a six-pack of eggs from the shell service station near my house. Just me and a mate just going, look, it's like losing your virginity. We've just got to get this done with. We've just got to steal one thing and then, but also in the back of your head going, what if this unlocks something in my head and then this is it? This is like the... I don't think I ever did that because I had the shop in me

where I'd seen that happen. Basically, you're essentially stealing from yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd seen all that happen and go, no, I don't want I ever did that because I had the shop in me where I'd seen that happen. Basically, you're essentially stealing from yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd seen all that happen and go, no, I don't want any part of that. And I've always had a thing in my head because of having the upbringing around the shop. So if I walk into a shop, I feel extremely guilty if I don't buy something. If I walk out and walk past the shopkeeper, I'm sort of on the verge of going, sorry, and then walking out.

Right. You must have spent a lot of money in Thailand if that's your thinking. I want shops to go back to Thailand. Speaking of Thailand, it's just like a simpler time back there where you've just got a couple of walls and a person in there and a stool. It's like you saying with the liquor license before, it's not complicated like it is here. It's just literally someone with a stool and a bottle of beer on it. It's like, you know, you saying with the liquor license before, it wasn't, it's not complicated like it is here. It's just literally someone with a stool and a bottle of beer on it. It's like, that's a bar.

Come and drink the bottle of beer. I remember when I was in Thailand years ago, over 20 years ago, we went to like a fancy Indian restaurant in Bangkok. Not super fancy, but it was more fancy than just the street stall sort of thing. And a proper sit-down restaurant basically. And we went in but the kitchen was on the street outside. They're all squatting in the street with pots on gas stoves doing the cooking but it was kind of a fancy room to sit in and eat it.

It was a lovely kind of midpoint. What I'm fascinated is there's an opposite spleen bar in the city. There's three Indian restaurants side by side, three next to each other. All with very similar names. All with similar names. You have Red Pepper, Green Pepper and something else, Pepper. I imagine a colour at the start of that maybe. And to my knowledge, they all have the same kitchen.

So it's just one kitchen out the back. Right. So why isn't it kitchen out the back. Right. So why isn't it one big restaurant? I don't know. That's the fascinating thing. Do they cook a meal and then go, that's more of a green pepper meal, I think. That should go into that store there.

I don't know how it works. I'm tempted to hit them up a lot and try and work out what the subtle differences are. Like if there's just one where the staff are more rude, what if it's some social experiment where they're just trying to condition people into certain, I don't know, that fell apart. It fell apart really quickly. No, I'm thinking. No, I'm thinking.

I'm thinking. We'll think of an answer for you, Sanders. No, that makes sense. They're going to open a restaurant and they want to work out what kind of service is going to be the most effective if being rude will work or if being really nice or even just

serve yourself or something. I think that, no, once again, I'm not really helping you make it funny. Pulling me out of this is one of the most selfless things you've ever done and I really appreciate it. There is an experiment happening there which makes sense. Maybe it's one of those psychological things where it's like they done, and I really appreciate it. There is an experiment happening there, which makes sense. Maybe it's one of those psychological things where it's like they say, well, this is the sort of person that's attracted to green pepper,

and this is the sort of person that's attracted to red pepper. Yeah. Possibly there was just a thing like, imagine there's three sisters who are going to run this thing, and one goes, let's call it red pepper. And one goes, no, more people come if it's called green pepper. I reckon more people come if it's called beige pepper. And then they go, okay, well, let's find out.

It's like an Indian Goldilocks. No, yeah, Goldilocks and the three Indian joints. I would like to go to an Indian place called beige pepper. I don't think that would be the spiciest one of the three. Frank, just getting back to the milk bar thing, do you know if that milk bar is still operational? No, it's been knocked down, actually. i think it might be a bike store now um there was a bank there as well and i think they've combined those two but for years afterwards um it was it

was still a milk bar and there was a thing that my mum had written up on the you know um behind the counter some kind of handwritten text or thing about I can't even remember what it was, a list of the things that were sold. Frank, stay away from the lollies. And it was still there and I would go in and go oh, that's my mum's writing. Yeah, that's really nice. But no, it's been knocked down now.

The deli for years and years and years later was still called Chandler's Deli. Yeah, right. And then there was that horrible thing where one day I came back and it wasn't Chandler's Deli anymore. No. A little piece of my childhood had been taken away from me and it wasn't by Rolf. It was by that.

Was it still a deli? Yeah, it is. It just changed hands, right? It is. I was going to say, what if they'd knocked it down and there's just like a public toilet in there? Yeah. That would be the worst.

And they'd rename it Chandler's Dunny. Well, guys, that's just about all the time we have for today on the Little Dumb Dumb Club. Frank Woodley, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Two years in the making. It really lived up to the expectations. Yeah. So you just mentioned before you're doing a bunch of stuff on YouTube at the moment.

Yeah, I've set up a YouTube channel called Woodley YouTubular. Just a bit of an experiment because I want to sort of... I was putting up little jokes on my Facebook page, but I feel like if I do videos, it's sort of a little bit more reflective of what I love doing. So it's a bit of an experiment. I've been doing it for a couple of months

now and some people are enjoying it. Great. Some people from Scarecrow competitions, not so much. Not so much, but there's a few people who are looking at it and then saying thanks

in their various ways. Well, I'm launching my YouTube channel, Gay Vacuum Dude, at YouTube this week. I'm also doing my show, Pipsqueak, at the Butterfly Club in Melbourne from August 6th till 11th. Come down and check that out. You can get tickets at thebutterflyclub.com, and if you enter dumdum as a promotional code, you're going to get a cheaper ticket for being a friend of the show.

We've also got, still, how many t-shirts are left? We've got not many. We're getting through them. 30? 30 t-shirts left. littledumdumclub at gmail.com. If you are extra large, don't bother. Too late.

They are gone. Too late. You could buy two and get out the sewing machine. Yes. Fashion something. If you are extra large and want a really fucked shirt, please hit us up. Guys, thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time. See you, mates.