Kevin Wilson was born in Sydney NSW as Dennis Bryant, fell in love with Kalgoorlie in and now lives in Perth WA, is best known as Kevin Bloody Wilson and Perth's most famous comedian and he will be performing at the Armidale Ex Services Club on Thursday, April 4.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He has made a living for decades by projecting a very anti-politically correct persona from the stage, and the stage character is far removed from the private man, but we did learn very early in the interview to expect the occasional "F-bomb" to be dropped.
You meet some good people in the country areas and I just think it's refreshing ...
- Kevin Bloody Wilson
"I did a bit of radio in my younger days, which I totally loved, because I was playing music that I liked, and that was country music. And having to reading the news on the ABC that was always interesting because you never got time to proof read it," Kevin said.
He laughed at the memory.
"They used to send you straight to air with it, and a couple of ratbag journalists used to try and trip me up. Turns out one of the journalists, who was sort of one of the ring leaders, is now the Mayor of Kalgoorlie. So, I've got a few stories to tell about him every time I go back," he said.
ALSO READ:
"You meet some good people in the country areas and I just think it's refreshing out there. I live in the city now, of course, and it's lovely to tour the world and play all these trendy places like the London Palladium, the Sydney Opera House, or whatever, but it's equally important that I get back to the bush. I love the bush."
Kevin is working on his 20th album called FUPC ("It means For Under Privileged Children - what were you f!@#$%& thinking?") Kevin was surprised to learn that one source had his audience as being mainly males between the age of 14 and 90.
"I've not heard that before," he said.
"The people who come to my shows are not just blokes. They often bring their wives and you often see three generations of families there; and again it could be grandma, daughter and grand daughter.
When you're f!@#$%& drunk it's easy.
- Kevin Bloody Wilson
"It's not just a blokey show. Most women, particularly in the country, get it."
Kevin established an online presence early by Australian standards, with his first website designed and running in 1993. It has been a major source of product and album sales.
"My office manager was a guy who had come from the education department and he was all over it," Kevin said.
"He suggested we do that, interestingly enough too, we were getting emails back from people saying please remove your site, this is not a commercial forum. Well, they got that f!@#$%& wrong, didn't they?"
He also co-wrote Genie In a Bottle with Adam Harvey and they did it comfortably.
"When you're f!@#$%& drunk it's easy," he said.
"My daughter is my support act around the world, and she is on this tour too. At the time I was touring England, she was heavily pregnant and had to go back to her home in Chicago to wait for the baby. Adam was on stand-by, so I got hold of him and asked him to join us in Ireland," Kevin said.
"We did a two week tour of Ireland (they loved him there too by the way). But we got p!@#$% one night on Guinness and ended up writing the bloody song. Neither of us remembers much about writing the song, but Adam bought it back home, recorded it and it went to number one in a week."
Kevin denied making a living from having fun, instead, he said it was all about being wrong.
"Actually Graeme Connors named an album for me," he said.
"We were up in Mackay and we'd just had breakfast with him and his wife, Lyn. We were talking about recording, and he asked what I had coming up. I'm always working on an album, so I said I had a new one, but didn't have a name for it yet.
"He said 'Wilson, whatever you've recorded, it will be wrong, wrong, wrong,' I said 'Thank you very much, we now have an album title'."
Not for the first time during this interview, we laughed.