A Kelowna man has been performing his unique brand of comedy for 25 years, but his jokes are just as fresh as when he started.
“(My style of comedy has) changed quite a bit actually, I was young and angry and now I’m old and philosophical about the whole thing,” said Tim Nutt.
Nutt, 48, is currently a semi-finalist in the ninth annual SiriusXM Top Comic competition. Winners get $25,000, international exposure with a guaranteed spot to perform at Just for Laughs Sydney (Australia) in 2019, spots in three Just for Laughs comedy festivals and a JFL television special.
With the competition, Nutt is hoping to get the chance to visit Australia.
The long-haired, bearded, comedy veteran said with his wife and two children in Kelowna, he’s focused on his family and doesn’t travel much these days.
“I sort of want to be around and be a dad to them, so I don’t travel the world as much as I did,” he said. “I just want to keep on trucking for the most part. It’s funny because my parents are six years into their retirement and I’m sort of trying to follow the Bob Hope, George Burns plan where I try and keep doing this until I can’t.”
But to establish himself as “Best of the Fest” for his appearance in 2006 on Just for Laughs and in his Comedy Now special on CTV and the Comedy Network, he had to bounce around.
Originally from Vancouver, Nutt moved to Toronto in 1995.
“If you’re a lumberjack you go where the trees are, so in order to ‘make it,’ I had to move from Vancouver to Toronto,” he said.
His beginnings started when a friend signed him up for a comedy night.
“I’ve kind of always been the smart ass at the kitchen party,” he said, and after an OK performance, he never left the scene.
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For the past nine years, he’s been living in Kelowna.
“It worked for me because I was already established,” he said, noting the Okanagan is not a place to establish yourself as a comedian.
“It’s a little weird being out at the major centres, but it’s also a profound relief to not be involved in a lot of that,” he said. “My little joke is I live alone in the mountains and I just come out when I want to meet with people.”
And his wife doesn’t find him to be that funny.
“She thinking about starting a podcast with other comedy wives, explaining that no, he’s a human being and he’s not funny all the time. Sometimes he’s really annoying,” Nutt said. “It’s standard husband nonsense.”
His style of comedy is not to pick the low-hanging fruit, he said, and it has evolved with him over the years. He said comedian parties are really depressing.
“It’s one of those weird things where we take it really seriously, so we’re not that knee sloppy chuckles all the time people,” he said.
His role is an entertainer first, and social commentary second, he said.
“I’m not afraid of controversy, but I want to be a defensible position,” he said. “I can’t rail against things that aren’t upsetting personally to me, and that’s a whole different set of stuff, and I’m pushing 50 so… I’ve moved from angry to grouchy.”
And he keeps his jokes away from his wife and kids.
“It’s a good threatening technique, I gotta say, because if she’s does something I don’t like, like behaviour like not filling the gas tank in the car, I have an opportunity to go ‘you know, if you don’t do better on that, I’m going to tell people on television about it,'” Nutt said.
Nutt is also contributing to the local comedy scene. He’s part of the board of directors for the Okanagan Comedy Festival Aug. 22-26.
“We’re doing a bunch of outdoor shows which I think is really rare in the comedy festival genre,” he said.
Nutt and his daughter have been passing out flyers.
From July 27 to Aug. 17, residents can vote online for their favourite semi-finalist. At the end of the voting period, the six comics with the most votes will move on as finalists, as well as two additional comics as chosen by a panel of industry judges. The finale will take place in Toronto Sept. 27 at JFL42.
Residents can vote for Nutt online at siriusxm.ca/topcomic until Aug. 17.
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