What were your food influences when you were growing up and what kind of food did you eat at home or with your family?
I ate chops. Sometimes I ate spaghetti bolognaise. Burnie in Tasmania is the home of meat and three veg. There were some variations on this, such as meat and two veg and three meats and no veg (sometimes called a barbecue). My Nan cooked a good roast. She had a vegetable garden and made wonderful soup. She still does, sorry about the past tense.
What dish or cuisine do you most like to eat on tour and why?
Pad Thai, because Thai restaurants are the only places where you are assured to get something that isn’t a schnitzel, or asian food that looks like it’s been laminated. When your band are semi-vego it wipes out, say, 100% of your options in regional areas.
What type of food do you hate, and what is the most disgusting thing you’ve ever eaten? Tell us the story.
I once ate savlova. It’s a meat based dessert. You cream up the saveloys with some coconut cream and let sit for several weeks. It gets this film on it – I always enjoy a good film, but this was a bad film. Almost as bad as The Future. Never trust food that comes out of a thermos from a caravan in Canberra at 2am.
What type of food do you make sure to avoid before a gig or going on stage?
I avoid Indian and passiona. Both tend to repeat on me. Seafood also disagrees with me. I once ate some bad prawns and had a hallucinogenic experience where the seafood was disagreeing with me about Miranda July’s the Future. They argued that it was a seminal breakdown of Gen-eXistentialism and tech-exhaustion, while I countered that the dialogue was contrived and there weren’t enough car chases like in Drive.
Imagine for a second you can request anything on your rider at a gig. What food do you put on it?
I would request Nan’s vegetable soup. If my fantasies are correct, this would require them to fly Nan to the gig to prepare the soup. Walah! I just got my Nan into the gig. Uh-oh, Nan goes to bed at 7pm, this was a terrible idea. Okay okay, even in my fantasies the whole thing has backfired and I’m so worried about getting Nan safely back to the hotel that I’ve put on a bad gig. Thanks a lot Tone Deaf! Why did you have to give me so much power! PS – In my fantasies the venue manager has turned around at the end of the night and said they’ll be charging us for Nan’s hotel expenses as they weren’t included in the original fantasy deal.
What has been your biggest cooking disaster to date?
When I was thirty, I attempted to make chocolate chip cookies for the Tote Fundraiser. After carefully measuring all of my ingredients and pre-heating the oven, I set to work on creating my very first cookies. I followed the recipe step by step. When it was time to add the cocoa powder, it didn’t seem to be mixing in very well. My solution was to turn up the speed on the mixer. The cocoa exploded out of the mixer and was all over me and the kitchen. I was house-sitting for Guy Pearce and his dogs were running over to lick up the cocoa and I was yelling at them as I’m terrified of life. After ingesting too much cocoa two of them suffered heart attacks and had to be put down.
When you tour overseas, what food from home do you miss the most?
Sunzest orange juice. When am I touring overseas?
This is your last day on earth, what is your final meal?
Psychedelic stir-fry
The Bedroom Philosopher will be performing his ‘High School Assembly’ show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from 29th March until April 8th, tickets can be purchased here
