I’d seen Nick Cody on the ABC’s ‘Comedy Up Late’ show, filmed at the Festival Club each year, showcasing a wide variety of comics in 6-minute slots. I have watched numerous episodes of ‘Comedy Up Late’ and it is car crash television, showcasing sometimes terrible or at least mediocre comedians, and yet still I watch, can’t look away, perhaps in the ongoing hope that I’ll unearth a good comedian, which I sometimes do. One of whom was Nick Cody, who while happily is not a hipster, sports a bushranger’s beard and at least on the show, a flanelette shirt. So in other words, he’s a good old Aussie bloke, but with intelligence and a rapier wit, if his performance on ‘Comedy Up Late’ was anything to go by.

So, Cody was a must see this comedy festival in my book, for the simple fact that from what I could see on tv he was very funny and in my experience most of the big names in Australian comedy are underwhelming and if there was a genuine talent in amongst them, I was going to see him. Nick’s show was in the quite large basement auditorium at ACMI, for once the attending crowd fit the performer. With the remarkable variety and specificness of middle class subsets in society, this was what I call one of a few iterations of ‘good Australian middle class’. Not too bogan or suburban, not too uppity or conservative, quintessentially Australian but switched on, culturally aware and while mostly Anglo-Saxon, at least there was enough of a representation of other nationalities so as not to be embarrassing.

Thus there was an upbeat vibe in the near-full theatre, a sense of cultural focus and social agency. So when Cody took to the stage, it was a natural progression into easygoing repertoire and well-honed humour. The laughs were frequent and hearty as Nick regaled as through his life anecdotes through the generous 75-minute length of the show. Which seemed quite exhaustive, though not exhausting, maybe so for Cody. It’s a very thorough show, covering topics such as onboard etiquette on flights, the likes of passengers who recline their seats on one-hour domestic flights and married life at home bringing up his baby, the amount of mileage Nick could get from which was remarkable and highly entertaining, never dull.

Cody is now one of the MMM breakfast radio presenters, a fact I was not aware of, which is a reflection of his stature now in the entertainment world and that he’s well and truly entered the mainstream Australian zietgeist. Which, as the show progressed, I realised that was what he is the embodiment of in general. More Aussie than I realised when I saw him on ‘Comedy Up Late’ and in reality not exactly from my world to be honest, but with a brain and a heart. Anyway, Cody is one of Australia’s superior comedians, he gave a highly entertaining show and I can safely speak for most of the audience when I say we came out having had a very enjoyable evening.