Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Little Turd – a title that will be amusingly being downgraded to Little ‘Scallywag' when it hits the Edinburgh Fringe in a few months’ time – is pretty much how Brett Blake was portrayed in the media two decades ago.

Then just a teenager, he was charged with instigating a riot, disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer in the Perth suburb of Kalamunda. Being tried as an adult, he was staring down the barrel of a ten-year jail term.

Here he tells his side of the story, putting a human face to being the lost-cause product of a social underclass so often dismissed as bogans – or demonised as worse. 

There’s a kernel of truth to some parts of the stereotype. As a genuine working-class voice – a rarity at any comedy festival – Blake has no airs and graces, with a boisterous delivery of an earthy story.

He’s frank about what it means to grow up in a shit suburb, attend a shit school and exhibit shitty behaviour as something of tearaway. The lack of ​impulse control from his undiagnosed ADHD is part of the issue, as is an environment when hard-pressed parents can’t stop their kids running amok since they are so often  left to their own devices.

Blake is brilliantly funny at depicting this rough-and-tumble life and the characters that inhabit it through a series of unvarnished stories. He runs a delicate balancing act of letting the audience vicariously appreciate the appeal of running amok with mates – there’s a great story about his mum being pranked with a fake murder – and the tough realities of the environment that made him who he was.

While the mulleted comedian sometimes steps back to offer a broader social context from his now informed and intelligent adult viewpoint, he instantly undercuts anything too thought-provoking with a sharp or bawdy joke. This is definitely a laugh-a-minute comedy show, not a sociology lesson, though audiences are likely to learn plenty.

At a time when Netflix show Adolescence is proving such a global talking point about youngsters turning bad, Little Turd seems very timely, even if the triggers and the crime are very different between Blake’s story and the TV fiction.

Eventually, the young Blake found redemption thanks to an unlikely source showing faith in him – seeing that he was a kid who could turn his life around, not be condemned to decades of crime and violence. This will come to the chagrin of the ‘flog ‘em all’ brigade, though those with empathy will see a happy ending to this story.

For Blake now is a top-drawer stand-up, managing to turn this bleak episode of his early life into inspiring, powerful and hilarious comedy gold. It’s chilling to think how differently things could have turned out.

Review date: 8 Apr 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival