Tim Minchin thinks we’re doing ambition all wrong

Published Aug 31, 2024, 12:00 AM

Eleven years ago, Tim Minchin gave a speech that went viral. The Matilda The Musical composer, who was being awarded an honorary doctorate at The University of Western Australia, shared his nine life lessons with the graduating class – and to say it struck a chord with the world is to put it mildly. It has since clocked more than five million views. 

Now he’s turned that speech into a book called You Don't Have To Have A Dream. He joins Sarrah Le Marquand in the studio to discuss luck, micro-ambition, the poison of social media, compassion and infidelity. It gets a bit philosophical, but the thing about Tim is, he bares his soul in everything he does. And this conversation proved to be no different…

You Don't Have To Have A Dream by Tim Minchin (Penguin, $36.99) is out September 10, and available for pre-order now.

Something To Talk About is a podcast by Stellar, hosted by editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand.

You can find more from Tim on Instagram.

Find more from Stellar via Instagram @stellarmag or pick up a copy inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).

Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About Mastella podcast. I'm Sarah Lamarquod, your host, and every week I sit down with some of the biggest names in the country, because when Australia's celebrities are ready to talk, they come to Something to Talk About. Eleven years ago, Tim Minchin gave a speech that went viral. The Matilda composer, who was being awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Western Australia, shared his nine life lessons to the graduating class.

So I will, now, at the ripe old age of thirty seven point nine, burstow upon you nine life lessons to echo, of course, the nine lessons of carols of the traditional Christmas service, which is also pretty obscure. You might find some of this stuff inspiring, you will definitely find some of it boring, and you'll definitely forget all of it within a week.

And to say it struck a chord with the world is to put it mildly. Having locked up more than five million views, and it's something that the actor slash composer, slash writer slash comedian gets asked about a lot, which is why in twenty twenty four, He's turned it into a book called You Don't Have to Have a Dream. As you're about to hear, Tim's life lessons are maybe even more relevant today than they were in twenty thirteen. He joins me in the Something to Talk About studio to talk about luck, microambition, the poison of social media, compassion and infidelity. It gets a bit philosophical, but the thing about Tim is he bears his soul in everything he does, and this conversation proved no different. Tim mentioned, welcome to Something to Talk About. Your new book is your first nonfiction book, You Don't Have to Have a Dream. It's inspired by a speech you gave when you were awarded an honorary doctorate in twenty thirteen. How was it going back and revisiting that through the lens of your life eleven years later?

It was good. I mean, I'm proud of that speech. It's a weird thing to of all the things I've spent hundreds of hours trying to hone and create, and I've brought all my skills to weirdly, of all the things I've done, the thing that's gone most viral, the thing that sort of tens and tens of millions of people have seen is this speech that I wrote in you know, thirty six hours in the two days before this doctorate ceremony. And I'm glad I didn't overthink it. And I'm glad I didn't know it was going to go viral, and I didn't know it was one day going to be a book, because I think you can get scuppered by the weight of expectations. But it's interesting because I guess I have a broadly sort of humanist worldview based on sort of old liberal values, critical thinking and stuff. And it's nice to look back and go, oh, yeah, it still stands because it's not a worldview that gets very easily tossed in the seas of changing rhetorical traditions or changing social justice focuses. It's a broader thing. It's a broader philosophical lens through which I try to see the world and try to act. And so I'm proud that it holds up. It should given what I'm talking about, which is base ideas, not specifics, and then getting someone Penguin Random House wanting to publish into a book. I then thought, well, making a speech into a books a weird thing. But I've actually done three of these speeches, so it's now a collection of speeches. The other two didn't go superviral, but I think they're still They've got similar underpinnings and discussed similar things, but through different sort of avenues. And I loved it. And I got the opportunity to write essay reflecting on how my thoughts have changed or not changed, and that process was nice as well, just to go does it all hang together the way I see the world and the way I make my work? And felt all right, I'm not sure who wants to read it, but I'm never sure who wants any of my work. It's not how I think about it. I'm just like, here's some stuff, here's an offer.

Well, it's a bit like what you were saying when of all the things that would go viral, that's not necessarily that original speech something you would have expected. But I imagine as a creator, and you're obviously working so many different mediums a composer, stand up comedian, actor, there's so many different forms apart from writing that you communicate and connect with audiences that if you overthink too much the reception, that's almost like the audience's job. Isn't it.

Yeah? And what's been interesting for me, and I think I've negotiated okay, is that I didn't you know, I wasn't a wunderkin. I wasn't eighteen. No one spotted me and went, you're so handsome and good at singing, Let's make you a pop star. You know. I did the graft and did the ten years or twelve or fifteen years of just working for free and doing, and so when eventually something hit. And what hit was my satire, my comedy, which was always much more music than comedy, but it was it was its own thing, it was its own phenomenon to use it pretentious word. But that I got that success because I didn't sit around thinking what does the market want from me? I, at some point in my late twenties went, bugger it, I'm just gonna do me on stage. I'm going to be quirky. And I didn't set out to make comedy. I just thought, I'm just going to do my songs and I'll do my silly little monologues and it just really worked. And so having gained success there, I then got asked to write Matilda the Musical, and that I also didn't think too much about what the audience wants. I just thought what would I want? And that went so well that I then had such an established career that it's tempting at that point to start thinking, right, I've got a market, now I've got a profile, what do they want? How do I get another hit like Matilda? And how do I feed that audience who wanted me to do comedy? And at that point I went, that's not how I got here. I got here by doing what I thought was cool. And so I've never I've sort of as a philosophical stance, never tried to make art market backwards, identifying a market and going I'm going to reverse engineers. Something that they'll consume is how much popular art is made. But I, and I'm not being a snob about it, I just don't think i'll do that well. I don't think that is my thing. I think my thing is like, what do I think about now, and what's a fun way to do it? And what would I like to see? And so I think I'm still doing that. I hope I'm still doing that. I want to keep doing that. I want to keep going ideas out, not market back.

We won't have time to unpack all nine especial to go and read them. Well, I guess people have to go on and read the book available where all good books are sold or listened to these days.

End of podcast.

The first life lesson though, is the same as the title of the book, You don't have to have a dream.

Yeah. I think of all the things that popped out of that first speech that people related to or got some solace from, I think is that it is slightly a reaction to what in the tens and still now in the twenties, is this rising sense of this sort of individualism thing that has all sorts of effects, and they're not great. The gen Z is the most pessimistic generation that you know. Statistically they don't and I think it's partly because they've been told that what success is, what they should aim for is something huge, and they get it all the time. On Instagram there's some virtuoso ten year old playing guitar and they feel and my kid, who's a really good guitarist, he feels like, what's the point Like that Japanese kid is that you're like, oh my god. And so what I was reacting against, which has only got worse is the idea that to have a satisfying life you have to be a black swan, you have to be an outlier. It's statistically not going to happen. And that, of course is rich coming from me, because I got to be an outlier, like I just mean, through luck. And that's another thing I talk about, is luck. I got to be an outlier. I got to do this unusual thing. So it's weird that the advice is coming from me. But I observe that aiming for some massive dream that you can be an astronaut or the president of the United States is actually not how you get happy. The way all the data shows happiness is most likely is they talk about a meaningful contribution to your community, right, And how often do you hear some pop star or whatever say to kids you should aim to make a meaningful contribution to your community. That's all kids should ever hear, because that's what makes you happy and it's achievable. And that doesn't mean you don't end up with a dream. It just means that in the moment, you're not distracted by the idea that you're going to punch the ceiling out, you know. So what I say is be micro ambitious. And that was the thing that really hit in that lesson, is this idea of micro ambition, work with passion on what's in front of you, and then who knows, the next job might be bigger and you might end up on Broadway. But when I was writing music for theater, when I was eighteen nineteen for You Theater for Free in Perth, I wasn't thinking this is a step to get me to Broadway. I was thinking, how do I make people cry in this community theater version of Love's Labors Lost? How do I make them have the best night ever? So that's the only lesson I can bestow. And if that had landed me as a high school music teacher, I would have been happy. I think it just happens that I had this other path.

It's not we tell people live in the moment and it sounds great, but we don't know how to do that. Just focus on what's in front of you. It helps. I also think you mentioned luck there, Tim, and there's another chapter. Remember it's all luck. I think it's actually got so much power coming from somebody like you, because it's a little bit like having a very very wealthy person talking about wealth, inequity, and the problems with distribution of wealth in our world. It probably has more impact coming from somebody who's like, well, I'm not just saying this because I could really do with a little bit of money. I think if you are somebody who has achieved a certain success, it's actually got more impact to say to somebody it does not have to look like this for you, and I would have been okay if it didn't look like this.

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you say that, because I think it can be the opposites, like, screw you, bro, you had all your dreams come true. Don't tell me that it's all luck. It's like come it's sort of a bit twee or something. But so that it's all luck. Chapter is just a toe in the water of a much bigger discussion that I may one day write a book on, which is really that I'm a determinist, which means I actually think we're just emergent entities of the universe, and that every single thing that we do or say that the fact you're blinking now, the air temperature in the room is all they all are things that come at the end of an unbroken chain of causality that started at the Big Bang, right, So I don't really believe in free will. So that's a really when people say that and they haven't really looked into that, and they hear someone say I don't believe in free will, they just go, don't be an idiot. But I actually really really believe I'm a genuine determinist proper, and that means that I don't think people can really be blamed or credited for their actions, which comes with the whole raft of ethical and philosophical problems and also solutions. It's not one that we can get through now. But what I say in the speech is if you understand that people are the way they are because of where they come from, what their genes and environment was, basically, then it increases your empathy and hopefully increases your humility. Now I know there'll be people listening to this who don't think I'm very humble, and I don't really care, and I don't know if I am or not, but certainly philosophically, I genuinely don't think that the fact how hard I've worked is to be like particularly people like I go it's all luck, and they go, but you've worked so hard and me, yeah, but I did not realist people have worked harder who I haven't got where I've got. And I don't just mean luck as in, you know, I got a break. In fact, I didn't really get many breaks. I'm just I got born with this brain that loves doing this stuff. When I sat down when I was fourteen and taught myself piano, basically, that's just like obsessing over how fast I could play a blue scale that I didn't do that that was just a it came out of me. It's just luck, you know. And I do think empathy an intellectual framework that helps you extend empathy to people who are suffering or doing bad doing even acting badly immorally, and an intellectual framework that keeps a lid on your hubris. When you do well, it feels good to me. And for me, that's determinism. And that's a big, big topic. But I like talking about.

I find the topic of luck an absolutely fascinating topic. A few years ago, there was quite a movement, particularly among millennial women, to really say to other women ever, just say that it's lucky. I remember being on radio one time and saying I've had like a lot of lucky in my career. I was being asked about something and somebody actually had texted me and they were like, you're not lucky, Like you work harder than anyone, justice, you're.

A female, and you think you don't deserve it.

It's like and I understood their intention, and I understood that it was seen as though I'm you know, diminishing myself, as I'm sure people feel the same for you. But as you said, Tim, you've worked so hard and you actually are really talented, and there is a view that you are backing away. But I said to this person, that's true. It's one of many different things. And also I've also had bad luck, and I think the people that deny luck are often people that haven't had terribly bad luck.

That's such a beautifully articulated observation. I don't think I've ever framed it quite like that. But yeah, if you don't know what it's like to have just been given a circumstances just completely frickin unfair, that certainly humbles you and makes you realize that the circumstances that were unfair on other people but fair on you. People are soleabpsistic by nature. We or I am we are. We see the world through our lens. We are always building narratives in our head that maintain our centrality and our narrative in our story. Right, I am the hero or the victim of every moment you listen to people talk. I told him and he said to me, and you're always either the hero or the victim. And that's totally fine and normal. But just a bit of awareness about that, and a bit of awareness that I love. Sorry, I'm just explaining what you said back to you, and unnecessarily it's really really true. And also the idea that you're letting down the sisterhood by acknowledging the role of luck is it's just as that stuff doesn't feel right to me, Like, I don't think. I think all humans, regardless agenda, should be aware of the circumstances by which they are privileged. And if all the women don't acknowledge their luck, then all the men start feeling like, well, I'm going to take ownership of minus, like just not a binary.

One final question on luck. You are somebody who travels the world. You've been successful in our Broadway West End, of course in Australia. How does this particular philosophy go down in the United States because I obviously hate to generalize any country or culture. But we all know, and our listeners will of course know that is you know, just you can make it. It's just hard work. It's this every week American myth.

You know, So the American dream. Not not all cultural stories we tell ourselves have to be strictly true. I'm very interested in the utility of our narratives, our personal and national and cultural narratives. So the American dream, you know. I studied arts during the sort of beginning, the real beginning of postmodernism, that everything that can be deconstructed should be And I have grown up and realized that probably you shouldn't deconstruct every single cultural norm, meme, or narrative without considering the possible unintended negative outcomes of such deconstruction, you know. So one thing we could deconstruct is the idea that, you know, the American dream, that we could that it's bollocks. There's not that much. Not many poor people get rich with hard work. Most poor people work really really hard. But the barriers to getting out of poverty are just are so great that the stories we hear about ah, the kind of oh he was six foot nine. He worked really hard, but he was six foot nine, you know, like, oh, that shows the American dream that he was six foot nine. He's a really good basketballer, but he was six ft nine. So mostly you don't break and yet up until recently, it's been functional for that country to tell its people that it's possible and to try. It was only when, you know, when greedy people stopped, you know, started doing things that made income inequality so great that it became laughable. But in the second half of the twentieth century, maybe it was a really good narrative. Maybe it got more people out of poverty than a different narrative, than a more a narrative that I would have signed up to more as a progressive lefty that you have to give people lots of help and you know, social which I still believe, but I could be convinced by data that the narrative was useful. It doesn't mean to need to be true to be useful, right, But you're absolutely right. The Americans really like to They really still believe their country is the greatest country in the world, even as it just turns into an absolute circus, and they really they still believe in their national narratives and it's quite interesting to watch them clinging on to them as they become less and less functional. And that's a massive generalization.

And up next, Tim talk's infidelity, family life and why he thinks social media is poison. Your book is described as a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking, and compassion.

I didn't write that, but that's nice. I think that's what it is.

I guess I do. And that's why I wanted to ask you about it, because these are values that are so important and possibly to your earlier answer just then about talk him out a country like the United States. September now very interesting couple of months ahead as we head towards the US election, even for those of us in Australia. The tone of discourse, the hyper part artisan, the anger, the vitriol that so many of us are feeling, whatever our engagement or otherwise in our political issues. I did want to ask you, particularly about compassion, a word I don't know that we think about properly in modern Australia. It has a little bit of an old fashioned sense to it. How are you feeling about those ideas. Are we allowing one another's space for compassion, for creative thinking, for critical thinking.

I think that social media is a mechanism for suppression of compassion, and I think social justice through a social media portal, social justice forced through social media, which unfortunately is where most of it exists. I think we will look back and decide we did as much harm as good, even though really good things have happened out of the mobilization of previously suppressed voices. What I saw every day and that distressed me so much that I have finally got off all of it, and it has, for the record, definitely improved my mental health and my capacity to do good in the world because I'm not getting sucked into other people's drama and pain and bullying and nastiness and illogic. And what I observe is that social media allows you to not extend your compassion past what you perceive to be your tribe as designated by an algorithm that you didn't design. So the way I've been treated on I mean, I'm not crying, you know, but even me, you know, a nice, moderate guy who mostly writes musicals. But yes, I've said edgy things and I've hurt people's feelings and stuff in the past, so I'm not complaining. But the way people talk to you, it's just like and having a thousand people call you a whatever, any whatever you and you don't recognize it in yourself. You're like, oh, hold on, no, that's not me. It's it changes your brain, you know it. It's really poisonous, and it makes you think those people your enemies. So social media creates we all know this, a mechanism by which people can justify the suppression of compassion for people who either don't look like them, or have a different gender, or have a different sexuality, or have a and it and and it's bad whichever direction it flows in. I'm not saying racism, you know, towards white people is the same as racism towards black people. But I'm saying the harm done by suppressing your comp for the what you see as the other is consistent, not quantitatively consistent, but qualitatively it is harming to society if you have a mechanism by which you can just say they are the other. Therefore, I don't care. I don't care how they feel or whether they lose their job. I don't care about them. Why would I care about a straight white guy. I mean, I don't care about straight white guys. You know when I went to school, When I got to UNI, I was like, thank god, you know, women and queer people and everything. You know, it changed. You know, I'm a theater guy, you know, but it just doesn't help to have this machine that so allows us to go that faceless person is not a human to me, It's just poison. So I would love to contribute something to that conversation through this book or through my work. And I do talk about it a bit, and I don't want to be an old ex gen bore, but I talked to my kids a lot about it, you know. You just our job is to extend our empathy as widely as we can bear. And for some people that will be harder. If you're Aboriginal Australian who's got terrible intergenerational trauma, it will be hard to extend your empathy to some suited, rich white bloke. But most of us, most of the time, should extend our empathy as far as we can bear to people who are suffering, to criminals and to angry people, to men and women, to people who don't look like us to Jews and Arab Muslims. To open our arms as wide as we come bear. And if everyone does that, we'll still have lots of wars and fights, but it won't be the norm.

I love that, So I really do love that, and I think that this book does certainly help progress that conversation. And I think it's actually a really important cross generational conversation. I mean, I'm the mum of Generation Alpha kids and they're feeling it, and I think the Gen zs and millennials and Gen X and boomers. I really do think this is a hate to be or the burning issue of our times. But it's got to be, isn't it. The lack of compassion, the lack of empathy, and the hyperpartisan You don't think like me, you don't look like me, you're not saying exactly what I think or what I want to hear. Then you're the other.

And it's the means to the end, is that people who want change go that suppression of compassion is a means to an end, and I simply don't believe they're right. I simply do not believe putting aside your compassion for your fellow humans, just for now, just because we need to get this done. We'll bring our compassion back once we've got equality in the workplace, or once we've got no pay gap, or once we've got more people of color on stage, or whatever your thing is, which is these are all my things as well. Like there's no philosophical gap between between some of my peers and me about what we want. But they're like, and therefore I'm going to I think it's okay that I'm going to put aside my humanity just for now. History is riddled with means to an end errors, just for now. Look, mostly we want we want Germany to I'm going to do it. I'm going to bring up nuts. We want Germany to be great, and normally we're a great country, but we just got to get rid of this disease. Just got to get rid of these horrible, controlling people, and then we can be the fine, upstanding Germany we want to just don't do means to an end?

And when does that day ever even come? That's a thing, When does the end even come? That justifies the means.

You've done damage? If you're I always think, I always say your philosophical ideas should do work in as many different places as possible, you know, Like, so I want that person not to be able to post a swastika on you know, the states. Many Australian states have passed laws saying you're not allowed to post swastikers. I want because that is hateful, and I don't want I want a law. And then you go, right, well, okay, you've now made a law that sets a precedent for your government to say what symbols you're allowed to post. So this black power fist and on a poster saying fuck the police. I mean, with a different government, why can't they make a law about that? That is hate, but it's justified hate to you, Like, maybe we should have a thing where the government doesn't really get involved in what symbols we can post, even though we all agree that swastika is sickening. Like so that's just one example, and I'm going to be accused of being a free speech bro of, Like, you've got to make rules that extend across different ways of viewing the world and being compassionate. It has to cut both ways. If you want that conservative Christian to be compassionate to your need to marry a same sex partner. Then they find that abhorrent and they're wrong, but they find it abhorrent because of where they've come from. And you're asking them to even though they find it abhorrent and they believe in a god that doesn't like it, which is just bollocks, But you're asking them to put aside their beliefs out of compassion for you and your love for your partner. You have to be unfortunately compassionate for their beliefs. I mean, I disagree with them. I've been absolutely slammed in the right wing press in this country for expressing my disagreement with those people. But unfortunately, you can't hate them if you want them not to hate you. It's really hard work. But we have to do the work.

It is hard work, and that's why unfortunately, historically humans we haven't done the hard work and it ain't working.

Yes, and I don't know how to usher. Yeah, well, oh my god. And the big thing when we talk about this thing, I'm sorry, I'm just on one now, but in Australia, you look, you know, I want to say to some of my peers who sort of just want to tear the whole thing down, which I understand. I'm very very privileged. Who am I to say you shouldn't want to tear the whole thing down, you know, to to you know, fuck capitalism, decolonize And I understand where those words and desires come from. But don't you sit here and look at America becoming more and more and more divided and just unsustainably no one listening. And don't you look at Israel and Gaza and look at what happens when too different peoples with different sets of beliefs, and it never dehumanize one another. I'm not drawing equivalents in any direction. Don't you just go, fuck, let's not that's not like, you know, perfect is the is the is the opposition of good whatever that phrase is, like utopianism, like it's not perfect, Let's tear it down. It's like, ah, I don't know, Like I think maybe we just need to try and just really get closer to one another rather than further apart from one another, if we possibly can.

I totally agree. And I think it's also ties in a bit with the first principle we were talking about about, you know, waiting to have that dream and waiting for that perfection. I think the saying is that enemy perfection is the enemy of that's right, and it is so true because it's the same there. There's so many civil rights advancements and advancements against climate change and moments in history where we could have taken action but because it wasn't perfect, it was often shut down by progressives as well, which is like a political example of something where if you're waiting for perfection, whether it's your own life, for culture, it's not going to happen.

History also is peppered with instances where incredible urgency you got it done as well and protest and so you know, I'm not broadly obviously a conservative person. But the other the thing I was saying on stage recently is in my back tour, I had a line that I sometimes would throw out, which is, if your only acceptable outcome is utopia and your only acceptable timescale is now, you will do more harm than good. And history definitely shows that trying to impose radical is only war, only war. The other thing I throw out is the counterfactual is not utopia. You know, like, look at this a terrible country. You're like, oh yeah, and there's that if you ran the experiment of the rise of humankind on the planet Earth one hundred thousand times. You know, there's worse ones, there's better ones. I mean, how many mammalian civilization that grew up to have consciousness would end up in a multicultural democracy like Australia. I'd say it'd be very few. I think mostly we'd chopple our heads off many many, many millennia ago.

True.

So yeah, but again, unbelievably easy for me to say, sitting pretty at the top of the pile, you.

Know, but it's an important point, and none of them in that experiment would have ever been utopia, So surely we've got to accept that.

It's proposed the long arc of justice.

I want to make a massive gear shift year and talk a little bit about family if I can. You are happily married with two children. I met you two years ago. Timawatt was lucky enough to moderate a panel with yourself and some of the cast and creatives at the premiere of Upright Season two, and your wife Sarah was there, and I remember we're backstage just about to go on. Look, I hope you don't mind me telling this story, and we can edit it out, so if you're listening to it all means Tim, No, it's nothing bad. It was just very sweet and you were talking to somebody just saying, oh, Sarah got her seat, your wife Sarah, because there was a seat for her. And it's just it was really sweet and it might not sound like a really big deal, but they're just those really organic, warm insights into a person that you're always an event like that. You know, that was nothing unusual for you. It was probably an ordinary Thursday night, but front of mine for you before it started, was just making sure that your wife had found her seat and she was there, and you were going to go and sit with her once the Q and A was over, to actually watch the show. It's really long.

I'm glad you caught me getting it right. I mean, it's I mean, I said, Sarah's not not the same personality as me. She's not. She doesn't find opening nights like they're not her favorite thing. And the fact that when I turn up to an opening night, suddenly I'm surrounded by people, you know, putting me on a red carpet doing this, and she just feels like such a dick, you know, she feels so like, what am I even doing here, no one, and every now and then we get a photo together and then of course they won't use that one, and she's just it's all humiliating being the partner. And she's also not an extra of it, so she's obviously you could have a patage just like oh whatever, I'll just talk to you know, Sarah. And so I've learned. I'm always very concerned that she's not being put in a position where she just feels like a you know, spare prick at a wedding. So but also we've been together for so long and I've done enough stuff now that the initial flush of oh my god, look at me go has gone away. And when that goes away and it becomes more procedural, not that I'm ever not grateful and excited. When I do it a night like that, it's hugely exciting. But when you've done it a few times and a red carpet's no longer the most exciting thing ever, and you of course revert to you know, what are these regression to the mean? You revert to your norm, and the norm is when you have space then to go right, what do I care about? Oh, Sarah's on her own, right, so it's nice. It's nice to be a bit older and not to be so tossed on the sea of fate. You know. I feel a bit more in control of stuff now, and the way you do that is not get too swept up.

Famously, one of your songs, A'll Take Lonely Tonight, was inspired by, really, I suppose, the challenge of staying faithful, and Sarah spoke about it when you were both on Australian Story years ago.

She's so amazing on those things, like she's an introvert, but you stick a camera on she's like, oh okay.

She was absolutely amazing, And it was so great because she was saying, and I know you've spoken in the past about how when you're coming home, she's going to tell you what's what? That obviously a little bit what you were just saying there. It's about this world that you live in. It's so easy, understandably maybe for some people to get a bit caught up in it, but to have that real grounding at home. And I think we all saw a glimpse of that on a Stranding's Story and she's like, well, really that song is really just that he's not cheating on me and you know, like Bravo, And I wanted to ask you about that, tim because do you ever want a self censor? Because obviously that transparency, that vulnerability is at the heart of a lot of great artistic work. But then obviously there is that's something that is a really genuine, raw insight into someone's thinking and their battles and thinking about things. Is there a part of you that thinks, oh gosh, am I going to get pushback? What did she think when she first heard that song? Do you recall she.

Didn't love it? But then because it feels very personal, And there's two mitigating things. One is when I write a song, I think when anyone writes a song, you have a seed of an idea. Oh, no, one's really written that song about that feeling of really wanting to shag someone and they're not. And I had the conceptual idea of a sort of the orgasmic release of waking up the next morning having not screwed up. And I also, I'm very interested in I sometimes talk to especially my female friends, and I think I'm I'm a bit of an evolution head. I understand some women have sex drives like some men, but I think as a graph. When I talk to my female friends, I'm like, oh, I don't think you know what I have felt like, what do you think do you think the my brain in the times in my life when I've wanted to sleep with someone, it's like, and I'm not making any excuses, and I've made good choices in my life, but the battle is like, I've got an ape in me. And I wonder if sometimes the discourse about men and women is like we've moved past this. Oh yeah, but anyway, yeah, what do you think women have an ape in them? I mean I have met women who.

I think women definitely do and look like. It's it's such a huge and great and complex question because it also then comes to versus nurture and not to go into a whole other tangent.

But dangerous sight of all this, it's just not really what I was talking about. No.

I also think because sometimes a conversation that I've had with a few people about often if a father might abandon his children, which is something that obviously does happen, where mothers will abandon all maybe not even abandon, but just a strange if there's a separation. We do find sometimes it's still happening, even in this time where fortunately we're acknowledging, thank goodness that you know, being a father is just as important as being a mother, But it still sometimes seems to be slightly more common for a man to sort of disconnect from his children than a mother. And I don't have the answer to that either, because I'm like, is there some sort of sociological underpinning or is it more? And I think it's the same with.

Such a huge because the other thing is people want to separate culture from evolution, but culture has evolved too, so culture arose out of evolved attribute. So some dude didn't one day go I'm going to do a patriarchy like people like people talk about the patriarchis if like a dude one day like rota a thing, Like I've got an idea, let's like oppress all they're not strong enough to stand like it's just emerged, right as no one's fault. It wasn't. It's not like it's certainly not the fault of contemporary males that there has been a patriarchy for so long. It's certainly the obligation of contemporary males to mitigate it. But the idea that yeah. So it's like the idea that we're like, well, is it culture or is it nature? It's like, well, they're very woven together. Culture came out of nature and they've never really been separate. So I find that conversation interesting. Anyway, you come up with an idea for a song that taps into something you've experienced, but from that point forward it's craft. So lonely tonight, is it really? If I may be so bold, it's not a pop song. It doesn't go to a chorus. It's a story. It's very much a me type of song where it has repeated phrases, but it's on a journey. You're never like, okay, I've got the full measure of you know, most pop songs you're like, okay, I've got it. There'll be another verse, but it will basically say the same thing with different words, Whereas I try to write songs where you haven't got story till the very last note, and it's craft right. So I'm trying to write a song about a person who's trying to not have sex with a woman. I'm not writing a song about me. I'm tapping into some a feeling I've had. I mean, it's pretty, it's definitely tapping. It's autobiographical, but it's not specifically so it's like, what's a good song about this experience I've had? And so the song is in service Sorry, the details are in service to the song. The song is not in service to bio biography. The other thing is, oh, I can't remember what I was gonna say, but I guess, I guess. Oh about sharing the self, about being so open. So even though there is craft, I definitely have made my living out of being quite open, even in interviews like this, and I just don't know how else to be. And I'm lucky enough to be married to someone who's like but really it's still a brand. I don't tell anyone. No one really knows who Sarah and I are. I mean, the old docco was pretty revealing, but you know, you can hold It's weird. We have a lot of privacy. I mean, do people really know anything about me and sir?

Really?

And that's my choice. And a huge part is if I was like super hot, I would be fodder. But there's something about the fact that I got known as a composer, so I didn't get known as like, I'm a pretty good actor and stuff, but if I look like Brad Pitt, it's to be all over us all the time, because that's what people want to feed off. They want to feed off this sort of camelot myth. And I've never fitted into the camelot myths simply because I'm I'm not a Hemsworth, and they just don't feed off people like me because I'm a pseudo intellectual composer with a funny head, you know. And it just means.

You also don't play it for I don't know if fall into the trappings of fame is a fair way for me to put it. But you've come into the studio today completely on your own.

I have my security.

Escala is waiting in the way. I just didn't know about it. But I think also that and this is certainly something that honestly some of the biggest stars in the world I've talked about. I mean, you mentioned Brad Peter. I think he has, for instance, commented that sometimes you can make a choice to maybe walk through an airport and maybe not be noticed, even if you are Brad Pitt, if you don't necessarily have the entourage, And that's what I meant by the sort of quote unquote trappings of fame. So I think that's probably something you've also, I imagine, consciously helped.

Without aim, and I've done. I made lots of decisions in my life. I've written about this before. I'm very ambitious in a kind of like I want to have a career that no one's ever had, where I get to make a TV show and write a book. And I'm sort of pretentiously ambitious as a polymath, right, I want to be, like what else can I do? I'm not ambitious to be super famous and rich. And I can say that because I'm famous enough and rich enough. So it's all very well saying I've capped myself, but I've capped myself very comfortably. But like, it all feeds into it. So my choice not to shag other women in your hotel rooms, which is what that song's about, is part of it. Who do you want to be? Because temptation, gender aside and everything. What you're being tempted by is a life that you didn't think you'd ever That's what happened to me at twenty nine, spending my thirties like I'm a self taught music from Perth. I never got a grant, never got a scholarship, never got an agent, saying I see talenting. You just crawled my way up, just hour after hour after hour of not being very good until I got reasonably good at some stuff. And I don't suddenly being offered a life that you might have fantasized about when you were eighteen, and opportunities with sex and just having famous friends. It's like, you have to make your choice, because the most common thing to happen to someone if they get famous at thirty is they leave their partner. It's got to be seventy percent, right, and I don't blame them. It's discombobulating. I'm so lucky that Sarah just happened to be the sort of personality is like, okay with this, now, fine, what do you need me to do? Like, we're so lucky and I don't have She's not someone who had a big career ambitions for herself, so she folded herself into this mad world we ended up in, but not She didn't give a shit about famous people or the money or what car she was going to drive. She was just like, well, we want to have kids and stay together. So what do we do? And I'm like, well, ill tour and you do anything else? And she's like, got it, And we've been doing that and that's just luck. It's just luck. But I also really love her and I hate to heard her, you know, So that's luck. That's luck as well that I've got those feelings. If she annoyed me more, I would have cheated on her. I mean, Jesus, it's just life, right, And if I had annoyed her more, she would have cheated on me, if I'd taken the piss like this.

Is chic that made ye made before I let you go, and I do have to let you go.

I do.

I have to ask you about musicals. I know we mentioned Matilda and of course Groundhog Day. I mean they were massive, massive, massive hits.

One more than the other. But thank you for ground of Days, a big critical hit.

And you also played Judas in Jesus Christ, superstar favorite musical, mine my.

Favorite after Matilda, I imagine.

Yeah, of course in twenty twelve, that was an arena to your opposite spice girl melt c who played Mary Magdalene. How was that experience, you know, playing that's a musical that was written in the seventies. Obviously, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Tim Rice, So you're coming in, you are not composing that music. You did not write the lyrics, you did not write the book craft the narrative was that liberating? And are we going to see you in another musical soon?

Well? All my life, I've wanted to play Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, Like I used to just sit and sing the whole. I wanted to play Jesus as well, but I really wanted to play Judas. And I would just put the record on in my parents' lound room while everyone was out and had a high ceiling so it was forgiving and tiles so it's nice and echoic, and I would sing the whole frickin thing. And then when I was like eighteen nineteen, I did a amateur version at the Quarry in Perth, and I understudied Judas and so I got to like do a couple of rehearsals. And then two years later I did another version with Angry Anderson in it, not the big one, but he was still doing it, and a guy called Rick Herbert played Judas, and I understudied it and that was a pro am one and we did it is His Majesty's in Perth and I understudied Judas again, but this time the whole rehearsal period I played Judas because Rick wasn't flying in. They were parachuting him in from the same production in the East, and I thought, I'm never going to and I never got to do it. I never I never went on as Judas, but in the rehearsal room in Perth in nineteen ninety six, I could. I made the rest of the cast cry doing I don't know how to love him, and I thought, I just know how to do this guy. I don't think I can sing it. It's too high for me. I can't sing at seven shows a week. I'll never get to do it. I just want to do it once. And then I was behind Lloyd sitting in front of Lloyd Weber at the opening night of a Canadian version of Superstar that went in onto Broadway when I was over there doing Matilda. I went to the opening and the guy was good, but I was like, I can do that. And it took me weeks, but I eventually wrote to Andrew, who I had a relationship with because Matilda is in one of his theaters. I knew him quite well by then, but it took me weeks. I wrote the email and it sat in the things. I went, Oh, if you know I'm a comedian, I can't really sing like that. I wrote him an email. Eventually I sent it and went, Andrew, I just want I like seeing you at Superstar. I just want you to know I've always wanted to play Judas and if you ever get another version up, can I just have an audition, just an audition? And he wrote back and went, I wish you'd told me this two weeks ago. We've just cast Seal in an arena version, and I went, A part of me was like Doult, but also I'm like Seal. I can't sing like Seal. It's an arena version, as if I'm going to get to do that, And then the best phone call of my life, like this is given all the things I've got to to do in my life. Literally, I think the most excited I've ever been because it's so uncomplicated. Right, that's a dream, as a dream I dared not have. I didn't really I dreamed of a little version, and that's that's what is worth, noting I dreamed of a little version. The dream I got was the big version, but that wasn't because I aimed for it. I got this email from Lloyd Webber's kind of CEO, Barney, saying, Seals dropped out. We start rehearsal in two weeks. I don't suppose you can still do it. And I said, I mean, I'm available, which was unbelievable that I was available, but you have to audition me. And Barney's like, oh no, you know, they just wanted a celeb, you know, and I'm I'm not doing it without your auditioning me, and they went, okay, come in to Lloyd Webber's office this afternoon. So I go down and the pianist musical director Nigel. They've had a little piano in a glass vestibule in Lloyd Webber's office, and Andrew's there. They're all just dragged in because I insisted they didn't want to be there. And I do Judas's death to a piano on the on the paving stones of their office, which is my god, I saw him. He looked through Card's dad and it ends with the suicide and I'm just doing it. And on the ground crying, and they're all assume, theyre going, we didn't need you to do this, but I'm like, I'm not doing it without you. I'm not doing it because I'm a celeb. I need to do it because you believe. You've got to see what I'm going to do. And then you know, I turn up the first rehearsal, of course I know every note and a couple of the ways I sing it. They're like, that's not how it goes, and I'm like, is now now, guys, And it was just the best experience, the best experience. I just it changed my life because it gave me trust in my voice. I've always had a really complicated relationship with my voice, and it's still complicated, but it kicked me through to just believing I believe in what I know now that I'm good at, which is I can tell stories in songs. I can't sing like you know, but I can tell the truth in a song, and telling the truth in a song on a massive screen in front of ten thousand people, like crying and tearing yourself apart. It's just it's why you do It's it's it's an active empathy, you know, It's an active compassion. What would I feel like if I was this guy who's gone so wrong? You know that he needs to kill himself out of guilt like such an amazing It's a difference between an actor and an actor. Is that that we get off on that ship.

It's you know, Superstars being revived on the stage this year, So you know, I think you could got another few performances of Judas in you I do well.

I think when they would like to direct it, probably I should spend my time.

Writing and could I audition then Mary Magdalen. My moment of mailing Lloyd wherever an amazing. It's that for people that aren't familiar with Jesus Christ, Superstar going it's on online. You can get there was it was released.

Yeah, I just remember watching a taped version of a theater show that is a musical about the death of Christ. It will take you a few minutes to uncringe. Just sit with it and you'll be in it.

I mean, it's true, I like you, have loved that my whole life, and sometimes I would like explain it to people, exactly explain what an opening I mean when you hear I'm sorry apologized. Yes, it's so good, and then the because obviously Judas then comes out and does Heaven on their minds and it's like that last too, well, it's so good, it's so good. I'm sorry. I just completely musical theater out on you, because I would do a whole Tim mentioned thank you so much for coming into the studio today. I'm so fabulous to talk to you. It really has to be again.

Let's do it annually.

Let's please do, Please do. And Tim's new book, You Don't Have to Have a Dream is available to pre order online now and will be available in bookstores and online this Tuesday. He's also going to tour around the country from the end of the month, and you can find more details about that. A conversation with Tim mentioned there as well. I would actually should have asked you, are there any questions you're hoping to be asked on stage? And I didn't get to.

I don't know, but what I as you can tell, as you can tell from this podcast, I'm easily drawn on the things what did you call the issue of our time? And it's very hard when you're our age and you've had teenage kids to not gnash your teeth about where you feel things are going wrong right now. But one of the lessons in my book is find yourself by what you love. And that's the one I find hardest because it's very easy, especially if you're engaged online, to notice what's wrong and compare yourself with others and spend your whole time just rubbing up against the dissonance. And although there's good in that, because you need to agitate for change if you see, as Matilda says, if that's not right, you've got to put it right. But you can't live your whole life just defining yourself in opposition to things. And that's the lesson I'm trying to take. So when I talk on stage, I want to go in with the attitude that my job in this book and when speaking to people is to remind people that engaging with their passions and with the beauty of the world is really, really important, especially for late millennials and Gen z. Statistically, they really don't know how to do it, to be optimistic, to look at the beauty in the world. And so I really want to try and go from being a bit of an agitator myself to aging into a more Vonnegushan sort of loved up old hippie.

Or well, we will revisit that on our and next your podcast. Thanks to you.

Again, see your next September.

And you Don't Have to Have a Dream by Tim Minchin is out on September ten. It's available for pre order and now we have a link in our show notes. Thank you for your company. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you did, please make sure you're following us because we'll be back with another exclusive guest on Something to Talk About next week.

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