Born in Vietnam and raised in the Sydney western suburb of Yagoona, Ahn Do isn't your run-of-the-mill comedian. In 1999 he had a big year, winning the Sydney Comic Of The Year award as well as the NSW final of Raw Comedy. He's currently in Melbourne to do his very first solo show in Melbourne. Let's make him welcome, Mr Ahn Do, and his show 'Much Ahn Do About Nothing'.

Tell us about your show?

It has nothing to do with Shakespeare, by the way. I should write a Shakespeare gag so I can legitimately have that in the title. I know nothing about Shakespeare. Maybe I should do someting on chuppa chups instead: 'To lick or not to lick?'

You could wear some Renaissance clothing.

I grew up in Sydney, Yagoona. It's the Melbourne equivalent to Broadmeadows. So you won't see me in any Shakespeare stuff, you'll see me in flannelette tights. If any tights at all, they'd be flanny. Which would be very uncomfortable. The show's an autobiographical show, and being 22, most of that is childhood experiences. Getting up to a bit of stuff. I used to cut school a lot. At my graduation dinner I won a prize for the most absent in the school year. Yeah I know that because my friend told me. [boom boom - ed] Hey, there it is! I'll throw you a few gags if you want to put 'em in. You might just go, 'no, that doesn't read well, that looks like shit on paper'. The show's about weird and crazy things that happened to me, like the time I paid my water and electicity bill together and got electrocuted. Yeah, that's crazy isn't it? Like the time I drove my Datsun over the Sydney Harbour bridge and the toll guy gave me two bucks.

I've got a bit of politics in it in relation to mandatory sentencing. Well, I learnt at school that when the First Fleet came over to Australia there were two grave injustices: the first is the mistreatment of the natives and the second was the mistreatment of the children of the first fleet. Kids as young as 12 and 14 being put away for stealing biscuits. Somehow, 200 years later we've managed to combine both of those injustices in what's happening today. I talk a lot about that, but the bottom line is the show is funny.

So, what's funny for you?

Things in life that you don't see and it's obvious to you once you point it out. Like, you wonder whether colour blind peole find the rubics cube much easier than others. I love doing comedy in Melbourne. Melbourne audiences are the nicest. No, nice isn't good enough for Melbourne audiences. They're comedy and theatre literate. In Sydney, they just want gags, in 20 seconds. In Melbourne you guys give us the time so we can show you a bit about ourselves...They tell us about ourselves and the artists really go deeper, and it's funnier at a much deeper level. I actually pump out gags really fast, that's just being a Sydney comic I guess, I've had to, that's training ground. But having the audience do that I can talk about things that really matter tome.