Fleet named most seditious comic

Greg Fleet has won the inaugural Golden Guy Fawkes Award for the most seditious routine at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

His prize as ‘the comedian most likely to blow up Parliament’ comprised a sack of fertiliser for bomb-making and the plans to Parliament House in Canberra.

The award was set up in response to new government legislation against activities seen as un-Australian, including attacks on the constitution and the government.

Most of the comics who performed at the awards show last night quoted sections of the Act, before deliberately flouting them. They were then judged on how much jail time they might expect to serve for their subversion.

Fleet was the runaway winner, with a potential 45-year term, for his routine vowing to personally kill Prime Minister John Howard.

Three acts were given special mentions for sets that could have earned them each 28 years, including Joe Dolce - of Shaddupya Face fame – for a bizarre routine in which he took a chainsaw to a pile of beer cans while dressed as an Arab.

Gerald McCulloch and Andrew Horbin were also commended; and the bill also included Wil Anderson, Duff, Corinne Grant, Eddie Perfect, Kieran Butler and Wendy Little.

The event, hosted by veteran political comedian Rod Quantock, was held in the 1850s-built Melbourne Gaol, beneath the scaffold from which infamous bush outlaw Ned Kelly was hanged.

It was the first time the historic National Trust building, based on London’s Pentonville Jail, has been used to host a comedy event.

Published: 25 Apr 2006