Dave Hughes has spoken out about a “bizarre” incident that occurred during a recent live comedy show, revealing a member of the audience attempted to “censor” part of his act.
The Australian comedian took to Instagram on Monday night, posting a short clip showing a woman in the front row standing up to confront Hughsey before turning around to address the audience as venue staff arrive to escort her out.
“For the first time in my 33 year stand up comedy career, an audience member in the front row attempted to censor my act,” the comedian wrote.
Hughesy said the show had been “going great” until about 20 minutes, when the woman stood up to object to him joking about his teenage son.
“She stood up, yelled ‘Stop’, then turned to face audience and said that I must not ever make fun of my son on stage,” he said.
“I tried explaining to her that he gives me a hard time too, and we mock each other constantly, and it’s all love, and I’m proud of him, but she wasn’t having it.”
The woman left the venue after the incident and the comedian said he found out after the show she had only been there because she was a “carer for another bloke”.
“She probably had no idea what my act was,” he said.
“The bloke she was a carer for also had to leave a few mins after she walked out, cos she was giving him a lift home.
“If I’d known that while on stage, I would have told him to stay and that I would give him a lift home in my hire car.”
The comedian was happy to provide the man with a refund or free tickets to another show.
The father of three regularly uses his family life as material for his comedy, and fellow Australian comedian Lindsay Webb noted in the comments of the Instagram post that plenty of people knew “how good you are to Raf mate”.
Webb then noted that if the heckler’s standards were to apply across comedy, he would have to take “all the material about my kids” out of his act, despite them having seen it and thought it was “good comedy”.