Food For Laughs

Jim Gaffigan’s life sounds like a US sitcom. He and his wife, actor/writer Jeannie Noth, have five kids under ten years old. While the comedian wrote about family in 2013’s Dad Is Fat, a New York Times bestseller, he won’t focus on that when he brings his White Bread Tour to Australia as part of Just For Laughs Sydney.

“I definitely talk about my kids,” he admits. “But I made a point that I didn’t wanna be the guy who talked exclusively about being a parent, just because, when I started stand-up, I would see people talk about their husbands or their wives or their kids and I remember thinking, Well, I can’t even get a date – I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Instead “there’s an awful lot of food stuff” in the show, as Gaffigan’s main obsession is infamously trashy or “guilty pleasure” food (such as Hot Pockets). This year he published another collection of essays, Food: A Love Story. “I always describe Food: A Love Story as the last book I will ever write or read – because I just don’t have time. [But] I probably was more prepared to do a food book than a parenting book. The parenting book was very intimidating. The food thing is just something I know. I’m just a glutton – I can do it.”

The Midwesterner moved to NYC to work in advertising, only to start performing stand-up in clubs. Since the early ‘90s he’s forged a multi-faceted career in comedy. Gaffigan notably doesn’t swear in his shows, The Wall Street Journal proclaiming him “The King Of (Clean) Comedy” (he ostensibly deems it lazy). He’s also acted extensively – appearing in TV shows (Sex And The City), films (the Drew Barrymore rom-com Going The Distance) and on Broadway (That Championship Season, alongside Kiefer Sutherland). Gaffigan has over two million Twitter followers. 

Gaffigan played the film critic protagonist in Shia LaBeouf’s initially acclaimed short Howard Cantour.com, the young actor-cum-director subsequently accused of plagiarising Dan Clowes’ comic Justin M Damiano. “It was pretty uneventful,” Gaffigan recalls of the shoot. “You know, Shia was a delight to work with. There were a couple of scenes – and I think they were mostly improvised. He had written a script. Then, later on, I recorded a voiceover, a monologue, at the top that he had scripted – which later on we found out was very derivative [laughs]. I didn’t really know what was going on. But my experience with Shia was very good – he was great to work with.” Next Gaffigan will be seen in Staten Island Summer, starring Twilight’s Ashley Greene. “My parts in the movies are never that big,” he demurs, “[but] I’m probably kind of doing a classic undersell.”

On his first trek here Gaffigan plans to sample Vegemite and local junk food. The American is bemused when told of proposals by heath lobbyists here for a fat tax. “You can’t really legislate behaviour, right?,” Gaffigan posits. “It is kind of like a sin tax, right? I think that’s unfair to some of those businesses, isn’t it?”