Justin Heazlewood

having almost nothing to compare yourself to and not really any blueprints for how something should be done.

So if you want to put on a gig at school or if you want to make a funny play up in your bedroom and record it on tape and bring it to school, you could just make all that up in a way that suited you at the time.

I like to think that there's this sort of theme of

The smaller the town the artists grew up in and the more cut off from everything else, just the more interesting stuff they came up with.

I've always thought Tasmania has a unique sense of humour.

I think the northwest coast of Tasmania, you know, some of the people I was getting around with at school, Josh Earl, who's gone on to lots of big things in comedy.

You've got people like Hannah Gadsby coming from Smithton.

There's definitely been a vibe of, like, we're just a little bit different to our mainland counterparts, a little bit more of a wacky, inventive edge.

Oh, it was...

It was a wild adventure.

I'd had this nickname, Fonz, my whole life pretty much.

I picked it up in grade 8 and it just never left and I spelt it P-H-O-N-Z-E just to be different.

I think it might have been ironically used perhaps.

In grade 8 I was sitting next to a kid called Elvis.

I don't know how many kids called Elvis in the world, but Elvis Connelly.

was like sort of my friend slash rival.

We were hanging out in the back of the bus and I had my hair slicked because I started using mousse and this grade 10 kid turned around and goes, oh, look, it's Elvis and the Fonz.

And from him saying that once, it just spread like wildfire and I basically had my name taken away from me and no one called me Justin ever again and I was just Fonz.

And I got to Canberra and I was probably Justin again.

And it lasted all of a few weeks.