I have never seen Joel Creasey live before and had never been much of a fan until I saw him at the live recording of a TV show he happened to be a guest in recently. Creasey was genuinely quick and witty, nothing like his tv persona, very funny and so I was a convert and pretty much literally changed my mind on him overnight. Well, he is kind of like his tv persona, just funny in person as well, I thought. I follow him on Twitter, have enjoyed his tweets for a while and did have an inkling of a liking towards him for quite some time, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it, what was right, or wrong. And I must confess I have been curious to see this legend of a gay comedian live for the entirety of his career, despite my past misgivings.

Joel Creasy, Drink, Slay, Repeat – Melbourne International Comedy FestivalI had a sense that I might have been missing something and I was happy to be proved right. It’s difficult not to envy Creasey, his achievements and career to date at age 28 are quite phenomenal. The only way I can cope with it as I sit through the generous by comedy standards 70 minute show is by the clear impression he was born to do it and that Creasey is an incorrigible, unstoppable force of nature as he races through his dizzying series of glamorous celebrity encounters. It is clear also that he has just the right combination of personality type and talent to do it. Creasey is down to earth and not elitist or up himself either, he evidently considers himself one of us and takes us through his glittering whirlwind of stories in an inclusive, gleefully naughty fashion.

Joel’s affection for his audience and gratitude for our appreciation are genuine and it adds warmth to a lively, engaging evening. He’s also someone I’ve always wanted to be a hero as a gay who’s succeeded, done so on his own terms and smashed through the pink ceiling. And tonight I was able to do that and relax in the discovery that he does actually live up to the hype and his talent level is commensurate with his reputation. The show starts with a video package of an amusing, intentionally over-egged video package of a partly confected scandal about Joel Creasey having called someone a cockhead on tv. Which is followed through later on in the show when Creasey tells the story of the incident, which occurred at Eurovison. I remembered the story once he’d started it and it was fascinating to hear Joel’s inside account of the whole mirthful fracas.

Which resulted in an astonishing, approving tweet from big Eurovision fan, none other than JK Rowling. You can tell when Creasey saunters out onto stage he’s confident, out to entertain and crank up the mischievous fun to fever pitch. And to be good, you can’t really have tickets on yourself. Stand up comedy is a ballsy world where you have to be real, human and connect with the audience, which is their stock in trade. He’s an old hand, having played the stand up circuit for twelve years and it’s clear that like all performers, he does it because he loves it. However, it is fascinating to see someone who enjoys a career of apparent privelege on multiple tv shows, most of them high value and enviable, in real life and see how the three dimensional person acts and talks, and Creasey is disarmingly genuine.

On one level Joel is a naughty gay man who loves to take us along for the ride of his shenanigans. You can’t really tell whether some of the stories are embellished but that seems almost to be part of the joke, though you desperately wish for all the outlandishness to be true. Such as the stories about his encounters with Kylie Minogue during the Mardi Gras broadcast, again, fascinating to hear the inside story after having seen it on tv and his uproariously farcical brush with Meaghan Merkle at a royal reception. Creasey is a different kind of gay to me, more what you might call a classic Australian scene queen or a screaming queen, in a fun kind of way. Having seen people like this in all sorts of nightclubs it’s all the more remarkable that one has made it so well and is the only one of his type who has transcended the scene and become a star.

Creasey is 100% one of those very real kinds of gays and it is quite extraordinary that one of them has managed to become a very good comedian. On a small number of occasions the humour didn’t quite gel with me but most of it was very funny, light, breezy and entertaining. Joel is from a different gay world to mine, but it was very interesting to see his perspectives and hear the stories from one such a person. Joel Creaseys is gracious and sweet, charming and very appreciative of his audience, a real gentleman. He is selling out the 790-odd seat upstairs auditorium at the Forum which is a big deal and I can only say success has never smelled so sweet.