Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

First week back in Melbourne and I've spent most of my time pottering around my empty house with no clothes on. I also did the feature spot at one of the Raw Comedy heats on Saturday, which honestly was a bit of a big moment for me, and so rather than using my 8 years of experience as a comedian to tell jokes, I took the opportunity to lecture the crowd and impart my wisdom unto the new acts at th...

I bought a new bedspread today from this Japanese linen store called Muji, it cost $230 for two pillowcases, a duvet cover and a fitted sheet, and the pillowcases I got are the wrong size. They're too big. I'm taking them back tomorrow to trade them for the right ones. I made a lot of money in Perth and this is the sort of thing that is going to happen all the time from now on. Music: Know What I...

Last week I had sold out shows and amazing reviews, it looks like I'm going to make $10k from this run, but it's never enough is it. Even if I had the perfect run for the next few months, and even for the rest of the year, next year it all starts again. How to escape this cycle and stop running on the wheel? Music: The Things That I Used To Do - G. Love and Special Sauce

Yesterday I spent the whole day sitting in a pool eating great food and not thinking about comedy. It was fantastic. I feel rejuvenated. On Saturday I spent three hours doing my taxes and it was awful. This is life, no? Music: Before I Lose My Mind - Claptone

I didn't want to leave Melbourne on Friday, I was thinking about my garden, and my piano, and my friends and how I wouldn't see any of them for a month and it made me sad. But Perth is awesome, it really is. The beach, the weather, the fact that there's no smoke. And the first two shows have been great. It's just leaving home is always hard, especially when you've never had a home before! Music: K...

Someone messaged me and called me a douchebag because I was a douchebag, so I've tried to apologise on my podcast, which to be honest, seems exactly like something a douchebag would do. Also I discuss a business case for the continuation and expansion of the fires. Gotta keep the wheels turning, baby! Music: Way Down The Line - The Offspring

Melbourne has been covered in smoke for a lot of this week, the whole city smells like a campfire. Scotty Dumbcunt isn't doing shit, people's lives are being ruined, and every inner-city artist I know is absolutely furious. It feels silly to talk about my own emotional exhaustion when I haven't lost so much as a fencepost to these fires. But it has been an infuriating, exhausting, and sad few days...

I just got back from Falls in Tasmania, what an amazing few days of live music and great hangs. Went to MONA in Hobart before that and was blown away by some of the best art there is. Not much to complain about actually, but you've gotta try don't ya, so I did a bit of bitching about a pizza. Song: Chameleon - PNAU

I went back to Adelaide and did Christmas early, saw some family, and caught up with a bunch of mates, many of whom I've not seen in 7 or 8 years. Confronted with their memories of me and the person I've been in the past, I've been able to understand the real reasons why I stopped drinking. Also I broke my sobriety! Had a bit of 28-year-old port with Auntie Marilyn. What a card she is!! A few name...

Tonight I did my 600th gig for 2019, but Peter Jones and I are still locked in a merciless competition to do the most for the year, and it is honestly destroying me. I hate it, but I can't give up this close to the end. Maybe this has nothing to do with stamina, and is just what it feels like to get to the end of something? I dunno, I just can't wait for it to be over. Music: Tezeta - Mulatu Astat...

On Friday my boy Luka Muller asked me to fill in for him at a charity gig in Hawthorn, I showed up in pants and a t-shirt to find that I was performing for a crowd of 200-odd people dressed in suits and evening dresses. I bombed, hard. It was awesome.

I'm finding myself inspired to undertake a bunch of projects in my free time at the moment. Gardening, mosaics, hacking shit with a machette, these are all the ways I hope to pour love upon my soul. Too bad I smoked heaps of cigs on Saturday so my inspirational words sound as if they'were recorded through a cement mixer. Music: Paper Airplanes (Makeshift Wings) - AFI

Peter Jones is a stand up based in Melbourne, and writer for Channel 10's 'The Project'. He's a regular at comedy clubs across Australia, and one of the best joke writers I know. We talked about writing, and what Pete did before he started stand up, which as it happens, was writing.   Song: Fred Jones Pt. 2 - Ben Folds

NSW and QLD are on fire, Bolivia and Hong Kong are in the grip of violent riots, Venice is sinking into the sea, and me and my friends drove past a house that was on fire on Nicholson St on Saturday. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, but all I'm worried about is whether the guy who owned the pub I lived above in 2014 is still angry at me for skipping out on $600 worth of rent. Music: Boy...

Lucy Bloom is one of the most in-demand corporate speakers in Australia, and her memoir 'Get The Girls Out' was published in 2019 by HarperCollins. Lucy was CEO of a charity setting up hospitals in Ethiopia, has travelled the world doing freelance photography, and in 2015 testified in the Royal Commission investigating schools and churches in Australia and their responses to sexual abuse. She gave...

Koray Hussein is a professional photographer from London who works with models all around Europe. His Instagram is full of incredible photographs of beautiful women, and I wanted to ask him how he manages to take these photos without making his subjects feel uncomfortable. A great conversation about photography, and also kebabs. Interview Starts at 16:00 Music: La Catedral (no. 1 & 3) - Augustin B...

On Thursday my friend graciously offered me a cruisy job for two weeks, and I cannot stop complaining about it. This week I do my best to talk myself into some level of humility, and I won't lie, it was a little painful. Music: 10/10 - Rex Orange County

Caili Christian (@caili) is a Melbourne comedian and founder of the Comedy Women's Association, a series of female-only comedy nights. She also helped set up the Light The Way Home Fund to help vulnerable people in comedy get home safely from shows late at night in the wake of the Eurydice Dixon tragedy in 2018. She's been called an "angry, bitter, feminist harpy" by various morons online, but she...

Ella Nobre-Watts is a comedian and writer based in London. She messaged me when I put up my podcast about meeting my biological father and said she'd had a similar experience with her father being in and out of her life, so we met up to talk about it. She's also mixed race, so we got into that. A bit of everything really. Just two cosmopolitan, millennial future-kids talking about their feelings....

I've landed back in Melbourne and I feel sad, scared, and overwhelmed with tasks. I don't want to live a transient life of travel any more, but I'm scared to commit to living my life in one place. I don't know why. I want my life to be better than this, and that's what I talked about this week.

Caitlin Durante is an American comedian and co-host of The Bechdel Cast, a podcast about the portrayal of women in popular film. We were gigging the same week in Dublin and sat down in a cafe to talk about her podcast and feminism in general. Find Caitlin on Instagram and Twitter: @caitlindurante And the podcast: @bechdelcast Music: Alex G - Mis

On Sunday I flew to Vienna and met my biological father, Fernando, for the first time. I think I managed to talk about it fairly openly here, recounted most of the events, and reflected on what was a very intense experience as much as possible with the limited perspective I have at this early stage. Also some good laughs. I feel a lot better having recorded this, actually.

On Sunday I'm meeting Fernando, my biological father, in Vienna, so I talked about that for a bit. Pretty intense to be honest, not sure if I really made much of a coherent point here. Maybe I'll have more to say about it once it's actually happened. Music: Chopin Nocturne in C Minor (Played by Vladimir Feltsman)

Riley Quinn is the host of the Trashfuture Podcast and author of 14 published books on political theory. Riley is one of the smartest dudes I know, although at times it is hard to tell whether he's actually smart, or just incredibly confident whenever arguing a conversational point. Either way, we sat down to talk about his podcast, politics, and the world and society generally. He answered all of...

I was really looking forward to this weekend, in fact I've realised I was looking forward to it so much that I maybe invested too much emotional energy in it. It didn't pan out the way I was expecting at all, and I've been sad about that for the last few days, so I spoke about it here, and went through the story in as much detail as possible. I feel like in doing so I've exhausted some of the emot...