Puppetry of the Penis still a hit, 20 years on

Simon Morley and David Friend, penis manipulation superheroes.

He speaks with characteristic Aussie understatement. In 1998 he unleashed his meat and two veg upon the world of entertainment, since when Puppetry of the Penis has played to acclaim and astonishment across 35 countries and in five languages, not including the International Language of the Little Guy.

Now, on its 20th birthday, the original show that turned Mr Happy and the Boys into international comedy superstars is back.

Going all origami on your twig and berries is, I discover, very much a ‘thing’ in Australia. Few males achieve Australian adulthood without the ability to turn Percy and the Piglets into a credible windsurfer.

“It is not so unusual for guys, after a few beers, to kick off their pants and entertain their friends, in fact I think you’ll find most men in the world have slipped out of the shower, looked in the mirror and thought … oh … now what does that look like?” says Morley. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Morley clearly remembers his first ever penis puppet: a hamburger. “Mindblowing,” he remembers.

He was 17 and the puppeteer was his 12-year-old brother. “It was one Saturday afternoon in my mum’s house, I was sort of watching sport on the TV, and he’s like ‘check this out’ and I just gasped in shock and awe,” he remembers, fondly. “I mean, 1) he had his pants round his ankles entertaining me in our mother’s house and 2) he made a perfect little slider – it was amazing!”

For those of you lost by American culinary terms, a ‘slider’ is a tiny version of a hamburger. A cocktail version, one might say.

Morley is warming to his memories. “I thought, OK, what have I got for him. I came back pretty quickly with a windsurfer … a hot dog … and before you knew it we had a healthy repertoire. We were always sneaking round corners, popping our cocks out at each other.” He pauses “Which is a little weird when you think about it.”

But the genuine innocence, the lack of sexuality, is one of the marvellous things about what Morley calls ‘dicktricks’.

“What I have learned is that the male genitalia in its flaccid form is the most ridiculous part of the human anatomy ever,” says Simon, “but it turns into something very different in its erect form. No one laughs at my cock when it gets huge and angry.”

I am not going to argue with that.

“But when it is flaccid it is hilarious and harmless.” Not everyone is as wholly at home discussing Percy and His Pals as is Morley.

“In some parts of the world if you laugh at a man’s genitals you would be killed,” he says. “We didn’t know that when we started this.”

It is, I suggest, one of the fundamental tragedies of the human female, to have been given bits and bobs with so little comic potential.

“The main reason there is no female version of puppetry is men,” says the Geppeto of the Genitals. “We look at a vagina and go “whoarr!” He shrugs. “ And I think it is not funny because we see so much of the female breast and vagina. Even in porn you see the erect penis but you never see flaccid male genitalia … and that’s what makes it funny.”

Puppetry always had female comics supporting them in Australia. Bev Killick was one of the first and she went on to create – “with our blessing” says Morley – Busting Out, which attempted to do for the boobies what Puppetry had done for the family jewels. It didn’t.

But from those early days of brotherly tackle trickery, it was many years till the puppets were fully formed. At 19 Morley managed pubs. And into every pub he managed he put a comedy room. From those comedy rooms came comedians like Jimeoin.

“He does a pretty good hamburger” says Simon “If he wasn’t such a f***ing good comedian he’d be getting his cock out all the time with me.”

In fact Jimeoin and his Little Jimmies were in the first puppeteering video, at the Fringe in 1996.

“We were in the Gilded Balloon downstairs in the toilets,” says the Maestro of the Manparts, “we were drunk and we showed Jim Rose a couple of dick tricks.”

Which, given Rose’s propensities, was a little like showing black pudding to a vampire. “Jim Rose got his camera out and got me in one cubicle and he’s in front of the camera going “OK this is the Dick Circus ! Look at him go!” So we shuffled a couple – me Jimeoin, Jimeoin back to me – and then I went away thinking about it.”

His first thought was a calendar. “Very arthouse – grainy, black and white shots of 12 dick tricks.” He put all his money into it, launched it on New Year’s Eve, pulling back the cover on the last stroke of midnight to reveal the January Hamburger.

“Half an hour later people were saying ‘would you mind taking your cock off the wall, it’s a little upsetting’,” says Morley. “Disaster!”

At the 1998 Melbourne Festival, Morley finally took his performing bric-a-brac onstage. His co-puppeteer was David Friend, another enthusiastic goolie juggler. “He arrived with a printed-out list of dicktricks. We were like ‘woah, you are taking this a bit too seriously!’ But he dropped his pants and showed us his wares at 6:30 in the afternoon in a beer garden.”

Friend understood the basis of the art of penis puppeteering – “This could be the most confronting experience of people’s lives. We want them to gasp, and laugh like crazy but also to be going ‘oh, but he is such a nice boy’. There is a fine line between being standing naked and charming and being a little bit creepy”.

Little Simon will be on stage this week at the Gilded Balloon in all his glory, but Big Simon, fully dressed, will be squeezing more laughs out of his old fella and their adventures together in his own comedy show. Which is certain to be the nuts.