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When Lizzy Hoo enters the West Melbourne restaurant where we are to have lunch, in a sequinned top and her signature glasses, the staff stop what they are doing.
“Lizzy!” they all shout in unison, like she’s Norm in an episode of Cheers.
Hoo is well known – you may have seen her on panel shows, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala and at countless stand-up gigs (including at the Sydney Opera House). But she says she doesn’t get this kind of reception everywhere (though she did get it on a date recently, when a stranger interrupted to ask for a selfie – “a little bit embarrassing, but at the same time I was like, OK, this is very good for my stock”).
“I come here a lot,” she says. She’s chosen unassuming West Melbourne Korean restaurant Misty Pot for our lunch, eschewing the glittering opportunities provided by a Nine corporate expense account. She was told about Misty Pot by a Sydney-based Korean-Australian comedian, and she’s quick to spread the word.
“It’s an Asian comedian restaurant,” she says. “We have an Asian comedian group chat. It’s been growing and growing and growing. When we first started it was so small, but this is one of the lunch places through the Comedy Festival that we come to.” Hoo spreads the word to visiting comics from interstate and overseas. “There’s a lot of Asian comics that come, a lot from Malaysia, India as well, and they’re always up for good time.”
Hoo herself is also up for a good time, but now in her 40s, “I do more eating lunches than drinking at bars during Comedy Festival because the friends I have coming from out of town, especially from Malaysia, they want to eat. And I want to eat.” And then there’s Owen, her greyhound – “he is definitely such a great excuse” for an early night.
Her audience at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival can look forward to an early night too, if they want one, as she’s booked the 6 o’clock spot.
“Six o’clock is actually great because it’s different now because people go into the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, so my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday sales are generally better than my weekend stuff,” she says. A weeknight crowd is thinking, “‘We’ll go to the office, we’ll have a drink, we’ll go see a show, and we’re home by 8 o’clock.’ I’m in my 40s. These are my people. They want to be home by nine.”
Plus, she says audiences who are out on a Tuesday night are ready to have a good time. “Tuesday night audience, they’re wild because they’re out on a Tuesday. They could be at home, but they’re out. So these are party people.”
As Hoo has been to this restaurant so often, I ask her for a recommendation for what’s good. The answer, of course, is everything, but she’s particularly partial to the soup sets, which come with rice and banchan (side dishes) like kimchi and potatoes. She decides on a Lunar New Year special of beef bone soup with rice cakes and dumplings, and I choose the chicken and ginseng soup with a side of pickled radish. Hoo washes her meal down with a house-made yuzu soda. I opt for house-made strawberry matcha, which turns out to be a pretty swirl of red and green.
It was a chance marketing email that sparked Hoo’s comedy career, and she says even she is surprised she’s stuck with it so long. She was working in Sydney in a marketing role that was, well, dull. “I had government clients, like WaterNSW, Transport for NSW. Really kind of dry stuff. So I just needed something else.
“I was going to Sydney Community College and doing all these different courses – sewing, millinery – I was making hats with old ladies at one point. And then I got an email from the college that was like, try stand-up.”
On a whim, she did – and found she loved it. The course ended with a public performance, mostly for friends and family. “The whole day at work, butterflies,” she recalls. “I couldn’t eat. All my workmates were coming, so they were nervous for me. Everyone kept asking about it.”
She ended up loving the gig and decided to keep performing – but that didn’t mean the jitters went away. “Honestly, so many times I would drive to an open mic, park and then drive away”, too nervous to give it a go. “I was just like, ‘What am I doing? I have a job, like, I have a life. Why am I doing this?’ And then, I don’t know, something compelled me to do it.”
She decided to enter Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy talent search in 2017, with a very ambitious goal. “I was like, if I can get to state finals of that, I will give comedy a go. And I did. And then I was like, OK, I’m going to do this more.” Looking back, she now thinks that was kind of a crazy plan, given she was competing against people who had been performing for years. “I think Raw Comedy was, like, my fifth gig.”
But Hoo had the talent and the passion for performing and found she loved the energy of a crowd. Plus, she’s really, really funny.
She didn’t make the switch to full-time comedy until 2021, so she had the security of her marketing work through lockdowns. It was both a blessing and a curse – she feels fortunate to have had a job she could do at home at a time when people whose fulltime living was performing found their livelihoods decimated, but she was also trying to build a profile as a comedian at a time when there was no live comedy.
“I would do corporates and stuff like that on Zoom on my lunch break because that was the time,” she says. “I would set up my room with a chair with books on that, and then my computer, and then a light, and then you would just talk into the void because no one could react to you.
“I was just ploughing. And in the Zoom message section, you’d get a thumbs up or a clap or something. And at the time, that meant so much.”
But there’s nothing like real, live audiences, and Hoo has learnt how to read and respond to their energy, even before she steps on stage.
“You have your house music, then the house music goes quiet before the acknowledgement [of Country]. But in that bit where the house music goes quiet and before the acknowledgement, there’s a few seconds, and if they start clapping because they’re excited in those few seconds, I’m like, great audience. But if it’s silent, even during the house music, I think, uh oh.”
And those “uh oh” crowds? Hoo doesn’t like to generalise, but they are most likely found in Adelaide.
“You write a joke, and it’s just not working because it’s Adelaide, right? And everywhere else it will work because generally, [Adelaide] is a little bit more conservative, it’s a little bit older. I feel like I’m generalising, but I feel like once people graduate from uni in Adelaide, they leave … and come back later.
“It’s a bit of a Brisbane like that. It’s like they leave Brisbane, they come back. So I don’t know, I love Adelaide audiences, but there are certain jokes that just won’t work there.”
That’s not to say she doesn’t like performing in Adelaide, she’s quick to assure me – though I point out that she’s safe, as this masthead doesn’t have a newsroom or printed paper in Adelaide.
“It’s actually probably a pretty good training ground for [jokes] because you get it good so that it kind of works there, and then it will work everywhere else.”
Even though she gets a lot out of performing to a live audience, Hoo is putting more energy into building her podcast, The Lizzy Hoo Show, a weekly show during which she interviews fellow comedians or other guests and then gets them to describe a “shit-uation” (it is what you think it is).
“I want to kind of make it a bit of a variety show eventually, and have different recurring guests and just have a bit more fun with it, but I feel like that is a space I’m heading to,” she says.
“I didn’t particularly love guesting on people’s podcasts, because I find, especially if there’s multiple guests, I find it really hard to get a word in, or I’m too slow or something. But hosting a podcast, like one on one, I’ve really enjoyed that.”
She wants to focus more on podcasting, but Hoo is also open to anything.
“I don’t want to be like, OK, in five years’ time I’m going to be in America,” she says.
“I’m not that kind of person. In five years’ time, I could quit comedy and be an oyster farmer. I’m not sick of comedy, but I’m surprised about that, because I have a personality that’s like, OK, next. Like, I’ve done enough, what are we doing next?”
One thing she knows won’t happen, though, is running out of puns on her name. Like Wil Anderson, she’s leant on it for her show titles – Hoo Dis, Hoo Cares, Hoo Am I.
“I think I will run out of years before I run out of puns.”
Lizzy Hoo will perform Says Hoo at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from March 26 to April 19; and at the Sydney Comedy Festival May 14 and 15.
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