{"id":906944,"date":"2026-09-27T03:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T03:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906944\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T03:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T03:44:09","slug":"sammy-j-wouldnt-it-be-fascinating-to-see-an-earthworm-the-size-of-a-border-collie-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906944\/","title":{"rendered":"Sammy J: \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it be fascinating to see an earthworm the size of a border collie?\u2019 | Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your show Hero Complex is based on your childhood obsession with the Phantom. The comic book character doesn\u2019t really have superpowers, so what was it about him that you were obsessed with?<\/p>\n

This is a question I\u2019ve asked myself for 30 years, Emma, because everyone else in school liked Batman and Superman and X-Men and for whatever reason I was drawn to this naff, kitsch little black-and-white comic of this dude with no superpowers. His main skill was that he could shoot the gun out of his enemy\u2019s hands without killing them, so he was basically like a good guy. And he was the cheapest comic; $1.50 at the newsagents in the 90s.<\/p>\n

It was a very lonely experience for me as a Phantom fan at school, but then I saw my school gardener wearing a Phantom T-shirt and that led to a friendship. I reckon I was close to disowning the Phantom until that moment because he was giving me no love whatsoever, then a year later The Phantom movie came out with Billy Zane so suddenly the Phantom was cool for about two weeks before people saw the actual movie.<\/p>\n

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?<\/p>\n

My superpower would be very niche. I would want the ability to time travel back to all the specific moments in my life where I\u2019ve said something stupid that I then stayed up all night regretting. I can\u2019t remember some of my close friends\u2019 birthdays, but I can remember with encyclopaedic knowledge all of those moments in my life dating back 30 years, so I would love to be able to scrub those ones out specifically. That\u2019s a selfish superpower, Emma. I should have said \u201cworld peace\u201d or something, but that\u2019s what I\u2019m going with.<\/p>\n

In 2008 you started the 50 Year Show<\/a>, a comedy spectacular that\u2019ll run every five years until 2058. During the show you predict what might happen in the future. What\u2019s something you\u2019ve predicted that actually happened?<\/p>\n

So many things. The fact that the first show was only seven years after September 11 speaks to how old I\u2019m getting; the iPhone had only been out for a year. There are heaps of guests on the show, and in 2018, at the third instalment, Claire Hooper basically predicted Covid. I asked her to spend $20 on an investment for the future and she did this hilarious rant about how the world\u2019s going to end soon and to stock up on toilet paper. Little did we know two years later all the predictions came true.<\/p>\n

What are you secretly very good at?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably not a surprise, but I\u2019m very good at administration of digital files and life organisation. So if someone asks for a copy of my birth certificate or my passport it\u2019ll be with them in seven seconds. If I see someone using their phone and I\u2019m not happy with their home screen or workflow, I will grab it off them and within 10 minutes I like to think I\u2019ve changed their lives. They probably think I\u2019ve just taken their phone for 10 minutes, but sometimes people can\u2019t appreciate genius until after the fact.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s your superpower? Admin.<\/p>\n

Maybe! Admin Man! I feel like it doesn\u2019t roll off the tongue \u2026 the long-lost X-Man who just does their files for them.<\/p>\n

What is the oldest thing you own and why do you still have it?<\/p>\n

I own a Sonora gramophone, which I inherited from my dad about a month ago. Dad is not dead, but he wanted to get rid of it because he\u2019s downsized, and it was something he had when he was a child, passed down to him. It\u2019s from 1924. It\u2019s this beautiful gramophone that was in worse for wear shape, so I hunted down a lovely man named Charlie who happens to specialise in restoring gramophones \u2013 I don\u2019t think there are many of him in the world, so I got very lucky that he lives in Melbourne \u2013 and he\u2019s polished it up and given me a lesson on how to use it, and I\u2019ve suddenly fallen into this deep-dive rabbit hole of gramophone records, which I knew nothing about, but it\u2019s completely analogue. There\u2019s no electricity, no batteries, and this is how people enjoyed music in their homes from 1890 until the 1930s when radio killed the gramophone star. And you have to replace the needle every time you play a record! You get one needle per record! So I had to buy like 500 needles on eBay, but I\u2019m just loving it and the fact that it is so old brings me great joy. The kids not so much. I think they could do without Dad playing creepy haunting 1930s jazz standards.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve written a very relatable song for fans of a certain vintage, The Nineties (You\u2019ll Never Know What It\u2019s Like)<\/a>. What\u2019s a skill you acquired in your youth that\u2019s now obsolete?<\/p>\n

I was not just good, I was incredibly good at high-speed dubbing audio cassettes. I had the double cassette boombox and I would take the song off the radio that I wanted to hear more than once, then I\u2019d put a second cassette in and I would dub it, but not just normal dubbing \u2013 high-speed dubbing \u2013 which meant you could dub it twice as fast so when you were making mix tapes for your friends you could slam through five copies like a little factory in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

I was spitting out these cassettes, and then I moved on to videotapes. I was effectively quite a bad pirate. I illegally \u2013 and I\u2019m not afraid to say this in public \u2013 pirated the Spice Girls movie; I pirated Jurassic Park, and I pirated the sequel to Aladdin, The Return of Jafar. I bought the actual original one but I didn\u2019t think the sequel deserved my money at the time. These days I\u2019m a living working artist so I don\u2019t condone that behaviour, but it was the 90s. It was a different time.<\/p>\n

What was the first physical media you purchased with your own money?<\/p>\n

Tom Lehrer\u2019s collected songs. He was an American satirist who used to sing political songs on piano in the 1950s and 60s. My year seven music teacher gave me a copy of his tape and it just blew my mind. I was in my bedroom listening to all these weird specific American political jokes from the 60s. I didn\u2019t understand any of it, but I just loved it \u2026 and you don\u2019t have to draw much of a line between what he was doing and what I started to do for a job, in terms of writing political songs on piano. So that was the first because I ordered an official CD of his.<\/p>\n

If you could have a sandwich named after you, what would be in it?<\/p>\n

Damn it, I thought you were gonna ask me what the name would be and I thought it\u2019ll be really hilarious to say \u201cSammywich\u201d. What would be in it? I\u2019m vegetarian, so it would be cheese heavy, or salad \u2013 and then just with a little twist of excitement, a Caramello Koala popped on top, just to get people thinking.<\/p>\n

If you could change the size of any animals to keep as a pet, what would it be?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to be subversive and dangerous here and I\u2019m going to change the size of an earthworm to make it the size of a border collie. See, most people want to shrink their animals down, but I think wouldn\u2019t it be fascinating to see a small animal that large? Maybe a caterpillar would be better, because it\u2019s furry so you can pat it more like a pet.<\/p>\n

Tell us about your most cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity.<\/p>\n

How much time have you got? In 2005 at the Melbourne town hall during the comedy festival I saw Rove McManus standing around with a group of industry people, and I\u2019d just started and I was so starstruck and excited to see the Gold Logie-winning Rove McManus standing there right before me that I bundled over with one of my flyers and thrust a flyer at him \u2013 and I remember he physically recoiled in shock at this weird, lanky 21-year-old nerd accosting him mid-conversation. I did have the chance to apologise to Rove when I interviewed him on radio, and he said, \u201cSammy we\u2019ve all been talking about it ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your show Hero Complex is based on your childhood obsession with the Phantom. The comic book character doesn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-906944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}