Tim Minchin swept the board at the Oliviers last Sunday. The Australian’s hit musical, Matilda, won a record seven gongs at the West End’s most prestigious awards ceremony. The rise of Minchin has been stratospheric. Just eight years ago he started out on the Melbourne cabaret circuit performing quizzical spoofs like ‘Inflatable You’, a ballad dedicated to a blow-up doll. He came to Edinburgh in 2005 and scooped the fringe award for Best Newcomer.
His material mixes the topical, the cerebral and the unashamedly populist. ‘I get a huge thrill out of writers like Ian McEwan,’ he says, ‘someone very organised in their ideas. It’s what I aspire to, to be able to discuss ideas articulately and with clarity.’ And with savagery, he might have added. He penned the internet hit ‘Fuck the Pope’, whose obscenity-laden lyrics accuse Pope Benedict not only of abetting child abuse but also of practising child-rape himself.
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