David Quirk: Skater & Standup
All Photos: Josh Sabini
David Quirk is the only person to ever perform a show at an international comedy festival in a skate shop.
According to Wikipedia: David Quirk (born 15 February 1981) is an actor and stand-up comedian based in Melbourne, Australia. This is all true, but I think it’s also necessary to add that he is a great skateboarder, a great friend, and probably the world’s biggest fan of the band Ween. David has also won multiple awards for his comedy, including the Golden Gibbo and The Piece of Wood. This year he’s back with his new show, Cobra, which follows Astonishing Obscurity, a standup performance that was nominated for Most Outstanding Show at the 2021 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. To commemorate his new show and the beginning of this year’s comedy season, I spoke to David about Cobra, his career and a bit about skateboarding.
Cobra is your new show that you are set to launch at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Let’s go into it. What can you say about the show?
It’s a story of where I have been and where I will be.
Why is it called Cobra?
I called it Cobra because I have a cobra tattooed on my chest, which is ridiculous. I got it at a very punk wedding; they had their wedding paid for because they won some competition. This guy Rob Ting was there doing free tattoos, and the bride, who I think had no tattoos, got her knuckles tattooed, which explains how wild the wedding was. I can’t remember what she got, but it was on her knuckles nonetheless. I had a few drinks and I remember saying to Jemma [his partner], ‘I mean, it’s there, I’m a cheapskate, I may as well get something’. Then I thought, where would I get it and what do I get? It’s weird to not know you’re getting a tattoo. Cobra was just on my mind, and I got the word cobra, and he took artistic license and did it in his font and put the umlauts over the O, which I quite like. Cobra is a thing I say all the time, it’s just a stupid term of endearment like ‘Mate’ or something. I got it from working in the skate shop, which I explain in the show, its origins. I think it is like an alter ego for me and the fact it’s tattooed on me in that particular place is my way of pretending that I am cool. So, there are all these stories in the show about me being young and there are stories about me not being cool at all, and there’s a crazy story about me being brutally constipated. There is a lot of stuff about the future, me as a comedian, what I haven’t achieved, and death, my own death. But hopefully, it’s all funny.
“I’ve always drawn on my shortcomings and how I view the world, but my stuff never seems to be about changing people’s minds”
So, the show is about yourself and your world?
Yeah, well, most of the comics that I really like, they might do some personal stuff. The more I do comedy, the more I realise—whether I like it or not—it’s not political, it’s political in the personal, I’ve always drawn on my shortcomings and how I view the world, but my stuff never seems to be about changing people’s minds, necessarily. Even though I’ve tried to do that in the past talking about veganism. It’s always personal.
What do you think it is about the personal that people enjoy?
I don’t know. I don’t know if they even do.
Well, people come to your shows.
I guess they do. I try to do the kind of comedy I’d like to see done because no one else is going to do it. That’s what I draw my ideas on. I kind of try and imagine something that hasn’t been said or done as best as I can and try to go out and do that. It sounds selfish but I try to keep myself happy and interested in my own stuff, from there I think people come because it’s original.
Your last show, Astonishing Obscurity, was centered around a story sports journalist Russell Jackson wrote about your brother. Did he ever find out that your show was about him?
Yeah, he did, because my friend who I mention on the show, Declan Fay, knows him and he gave me his phone number. It dawned on me that I should call him because Melbourne isn’t that big of a town and he will hear about it. By the time I called him, which was two nights into the show, he had already heard about the show. I spoke to him and invited him; he was very cool and very busy writing his Walkley award-winning story. He couldn’t make it to that comedy festival, and I let him know every time I was doing it throughout the year. Then I had to do this audio recording for the ABC, and it was the last time I was doing it in Melbourne, and he came. I wasn’t sure if he was in the room, and at the very end I said, ‘There might be a chance that Russell is here tonight—Russell are you in the room?’ and I just heard this deep ‘I am.’ The crowd went wild. I’d just told this whole story about him, and he was in the crowd. I chatted with him and got a photo with him after the show. He respected the show a lot because he was like, ‘I go out there and write about people that I don’t know very well and attach my thoughts to them, and you’ve done that to me, so I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t appreciate and understand it’. He also said the photo I used in the show was very unflattering, to which I responded, ‘Yeah, no shit’.
“ I wasn’t sure if he was in the room, and at the very end I said, ‘There might be a chance that Russell is here tonight—Russell are you in the room?’ and I just heard this deep ‘I am.’ The crowd went wild.”
You are one of Australia’s two God-tier skateboarding comedians. Is there ever a little rivalry between you and John Cruckshank?
No. I don’t think a rivalry. Just jealousy of his marketing ability, I can’t do what he does in that regard. His prowess. He is also naturally cool, whereas, I need to have ‘Be Cool’ tattooed on my hand to remind myself to try. We are quite different as comedians but comparable in that we don’t do shit comedy—can I be that bold? He has an amazing turn of phrase that not many people can do. We love skateboarding. Another reason I am jealous is that he has a trade, he’s an electrician. I have no skills other than comedy and acting and maybe a bit of skateboarding, and that pays me even less.
You worked in skate shops for a long time. They can be funny spaces at the best of times. Did working in skate shops ever inspire your material?
Yeah, when I started comedy, I’d already worked in a skate shop for years, and I remember thinking, ‘Don’t ever talk about your day job, it’s lame, it’s shit,’ but then sometime after that, I realised how many things were genuinely funny, and I just started to put it in. I still do, especially at out-of-town gigs where I have to perform to a non-comedy-savvy crowd. I bring these stories up.
You did a show in Fast Times. Do you think you’re the only person to ever be a part of an international comedy festival and your venue be a skate shop that was also your workplace?
Yes! Definitely!
How did that idea come up?
There’s this grant that you could apply for if you have a crazy idea that might need financial backing to pull off. I pitched it to them, and it worked out. I thought it would be cool to do a show about my working life, that was set in the shop, inside the actual shop.
“There was a Red Rooster across the road, so we would have to shit in the Red Rooster every time we needed to take a crap. That was pretty grim. ”
Did you have to convince the people at Fast Times to let you do the show there?
I had to have a meeting with the higher-ups about it, but they were really cool and encouraging. It was crazy, they had to put all the normal staff who were all my friends, on later, after the shops opening hours, until 8 o’clock for the show. The shop had to pay more wages for a month.
Was everyone over it?
Yes, they started calling themselves ‘Dave Slaves’.
Did you use the shop as a prop?
Yeah, the shop was basically a prop I moved around throughout the show. It ended on a Sunday night, and the next day I was just done with it, I didn’t think about it ever again. I couldn’t tour it, I thought about doing it in Edinburgh, trying to get in touch with a shop over there, but I never ended up doing it.
Do you feel as if there are any similarities between skateboarding and comedy?
Half the time, both are really mainstream, but I sort of see them both as strange lifestyles and valid and interesting ways to live a life. In that regard, I see them similarly.
What’s next for you?
More skateboarding. I am going to go to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival this year and do the last show because no one saw it there. I am excited. And after that, I will be listening to more Ween.
I’d like to end by asking a story about an exploded toilet. Would you please tell that story?
Yeah, my friend Dean—who is now rich because he invented a scooter company; it's fucking outrageous—he dropped out of school, but he always has had this business brain and determination. True grit as they say. But he is still a fuckhead. We lived together in a share house in our early 20s, with two other people. They were all into these penny-banger things, they were the size of a watch battery and were explosive. He was obsessed with fireworks; it was so arrogant. One day he just decided to put one in the toilet and completely blew it to pieces, he thought it was the best and everyone was laughing. I was like, ‘Yeah, cunt, this is our only toilet. What were you thinking?’. There was a Red Rooster across the road, so we would have to shit in the Red Rooster every time we needed to take a crap. That was pretty grim.
To see Cobra at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, buy tickets here. If you’re in Sydney, you can buy tickets to his Sydney shows here. Get in quick before Cobra fades into obscurity.
