Claire Hooper on tackling MICF without her friend: “This is a month of remembering Cal"

There was a point, early in 2023, when comedian Claire Hooper was considering chucking in the chuckle-serving and finding a new gig. “It’s an odd thing to keep doing, stand-up comedy,” she says. “It really feels like a career where 20 years should be enough to get it out of your system.”

It was the ever-supportive and sorely missed Cal Wilson, the beloved colleague, friend and mentor to so many who tragically passed away late last year, who convinced her to stay.

“She was quite insistent that I shouldn’t,” Hooper says during a deeply generous chat about her first Melbourne International Comedy Festival without Wilson around. “I don’t know if that’s because she believed in me, or because she just wanted to have our pre-show hugs.”

Hooper, like many of her colleagues, shares Wilson’s passionately held belief in sending the elevator down. On top of presenting her latest show, So Proud, and live podcast, I’m The Worst, Hooper has a hand in guiding five shows by emerging comedians Laurence Driscoll, Grace Zhang, Lauren Edwards, Nicolette Minster and Bron Lewis.

Wilson unfailingly helped work up the material of emerging comedians and old hands alike. Hooper hopes to do so too, even if it means juggling multiple tech runs in one day, all in different venues, plus popping up in the opening night gala. 

“It feels like a really important part of the industry, because I was helped a lot when I started out, so it feels right, at this stage in my career, to serve the other end of the process,” Hooper says. 

“There must be something really selfish to it,” she adds. “The more you talk to others about the craft, the more it improves your own. But for me, it’s just when I see somebody whose comedy I already love, and I believe that they’ve got a great show in them, then it feels as exciting to pull that show out of them as it does to pull it out of yourself.”

Hooper recalls being aided by comedy triumvirate Tripod (Scott Edgar, Simon Hall and Steven Gates), Wil Anderson and unsung hero Brad Oakes when she was starting out.

“Brad is one of the hardest workers, and I’ve passed on so many of his comedy insights to people I’ve worked with,” she says. “Classy little titbits like ‘Why don’t you try saying that with an eyebrow instead of words, or a facial expression’ and ‘When you first hit the stage, convince the audience you’re funny by doing three jokes one after the other, and then you can do what you like, because they trust you.’”

Mentoring is a two-way street. “Like dusty old vampires, we drain the lifeforce from those young people,” Hooper says. “It makes you look at your own work differently and gives you fresh ideas. But also, let’s be honest, our lives are too busy to have time for work and friends. So when you work with friends, you get both simultaneously.” 

Wilson’s guidance will be sorely missed. “We would watch each other’s trials and give each other notes, and Cal was generous in every way,” Hooper says. “Her note-taking was copious and helpful. She would punch up jokes in the kindest way, because it can be really annoying when other comedians suggest a funnier punchline, but it never was when she did it.”

There are lines that Wilson gave Hooper in her latest set. “It’s a very strange feeling, in the middle of a half-hour performance, to be like, ‘Oh, that was one of Cal’s’. Not that you have time to dwell on it, but she’s so present for so many of us.”

Hooper says she’s surrounded by a luxurious amount of supportive friends and colleagues and they’ll get through it together. “It’s a joyous time of year, the Comedy Festival, and it is a strange thing to mix that with missing someone terribly.”

She’s glad she decided to do the show. “I felt like being silly for an hour a night would do me good. And I’m so glad that I am, because I can’t wait to go in and see all of those lovely faces every night and do that job I enjoy. This is a month of remembering Cal in a place that I love, and that is a nice way to keep her in my heart, rather than hiding from a place where I will notice her missing.”

You can catch Claire Hooper’s So Proud at the Melbourne Town Hall’s Portico Room from March 28 until April 21 and be a part of her one-night-only podcast recording I’m The Worst With Claire Hooper Live in the Town Hall Powder Room on April 6.