WHEN YOU'RE A mother of five children you learn to be efficient with time and money. But stand-up comedian Fiona O'Loughlin has devised an ingenious way of cutting the workload at breakfast.
'Every morning I give my kids Weet-Bix, and it's so hard to clean the dishes afterwards,' O'Loughlin says on the phone from Australia. For those who didn't grow up with Weet-Bix, it's a whole-wheat cereal cluster that, when mashed with milk, becomes a gooey mess that sticks to the bowl. 'I give them the Weet-Bix separately and ask them to go outside of the house and eat it,' she says. 'Then when they've finished that they come in and I give them a glass of milk.'
O'Loughlin's own clan may not be completely dysfunctional, but the joy, and sometimes pain, of motherhood has helped this comedian from the Australian outback produce some of the best and most honest laughs around. 'My family's given me much of my material,' says the 39-year-old from Alice Springs. 'It [comedy] has become really a part of our lives, my kids just beg me not to mention their name on television.'
Don't get her wrong, O'Loughlin explains in her animated voice, she loves her family and enjoys being a mum. But comedy has turned an otherwise dull life as a rural housewife into a colourful experience. 'I was pregnant at 22 and my husband had a job in Alice Springs so we moved there,' she says. 'It's just right in the middle of the country and there was nothing out there.'
She dabbled in nursing and acting but discovered she had a funny streak - and began doing 'stand-up comedy without even knowing what it was'.
O'Loughlin was a remarkable storyteller. While raising her growing family, she applied for a grant so she could go to Melbourne to hone her comedy skills. 'I wrote to the Northern Territory government and told them I'd like to see stand-up comedy and they sent me A$600 [HK$2,700],' she says. 'So I went to Melbourne and watched a lot of stand-up.' She had her first show in the late 1980s and it wasn't long before her performances were selling out from Melbourne to Edinburgh. Most recently, her creation From Here To Maternity - which makes it debut at City JanFest at the Fringe Club next week - has been a hit across the globe, including at last year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The show is peppered with tales about her household, her siblings and a variety of stories in which, by strange coincidence, O'Loughlin as the protagonist always ends up in a hilarious situation.