Jeremy Webb

Raised on bad ideas by dented men, shaped by dares that couldn’t end well, refined by the strangest strangers. I’m here to guide you past the Harmless Lunatics.

Some families pass down heirlooms; mine passed down nothing but loose screws. I grew up around people who treated impulse like instinct, who made decisions the way other families make sandwiches – quickly, with questionable ingredients and usually standing up. There’s a particular rhythm to that kind of upbringing: the noise, the unpredictability, the unspoken understanding that no one is really steering the ship. And somehow, in the middle of all that, they never let a little insanity get in the way of a nice time.

I’m a country boy from Benalla, which already tells you a few things. It tells you I grew up where entertainment had to be invented, not purchased. Where boredom was a sport and the only rule was “don’t get caught bleeding on Mum’s tiles”. Where the men didn’t talk much but somehow communicated everything anyway. Where your childhood friends doubled as accomplices. If you needed sensible role models, you were better off checking the wildlife.

Then there were the strangers – always arriving unannounced, always saying things that felt slightly detached from the reality everyone else agreed on. Some drifted in from out of left field, only to disappear into the stands again, leaving you with a sentence, a story or a lingering sense that normality is a very fragile construct. Every one of them carried their own kind of chaos, and every one of them seemed to recognise something familiar in mine.

Growing up like that shapes you. Not into something inspirational – just into something alert. You learn to clock danger without naming it, you learn which adults can be trusted and which can’t be left alone near electricity and you learn that “you won’t” is just another way of saying “you absolutely will”. Add in the Jackass era, a back-of-the-bus education and a talent for misunderstanding risk, and suddenly you’ve lived through things you didn’t realise were near-death experiences until much later, when a doctor reacts too loudly.

Benalla eventually stopped being big enough. Comedy had been rattling around in me long before I understood that’s what it was. So I moved to Melbourne – barely a plan, definitely no savings and absolutely no awareness of what I was getting into. It was the first decision I made that wasn’t a dare or an accident, which already made it foreign territory. Melbourne is a place where people actually think before doing things. I arrived speaking a different dialect entirely.

And somewhere along the way, I worked out I was gay, which cleared up a few mysteries and complicated a few others. It didn’t fix the chaos, but it gave it sharper edges and better punchlines. Being a gay bloke raised around dented men is its own kind of cultural bilingualism – you learn when to translate, when to go silent and when to politely walk away from a conversation you would’ve once laughed along with.

This show pulls all that forward – the family chaos, the rural improvisation, the reckless youth, the strange strangers, the things I survived without understanding why surviving them mattered. Not in a “my trauma journey” way. Not in a “here’s what it all means” way. Just in the way you tell something true after you’ve finally stopped flinching at the memory. It’s not tidy, it’s not softened and it’s not made inspirational for people who like neat endings. The stories land how they land.

Some of them come from childhood, some from Melbourne, some from nights where my judgment took the night off entirely. There are moments I should’ve walked away from, moments I should’ve never arrived for and moments where I nearly stepped clean out of existence because a friend said, “you go first”. And through all of it, there were the characters – family members who lived like warnings, strangers who felt like side quests and certain men who taught me every possible wrong lesson in the most convincing way.

A lot of this isn’t dramatic. It’s just real. It’s what happens when you grow up in a place that doesn’t give you fences, move to a city that expects you to read signs and live long enough in both to realise you’re fluent in chaos but passable in reality. It's looking back and recognising the turning points, the moments of idiocy, the accidental wisdom and the people who drifted in and out like poorly behaved omens.

The poster might show me dressed like a knockoff assassin with a plastic water pistol, but it’s truer than you think. Most of my life has been some variation on that image: taking myself too seriously at the exact moment I’m holding something ridiculous. And that’s the tone of the show – not quirky, not winky, not “random”. Just honest about the gap between who I thought I was and who I clearly was the entire time.

If you’ve ever grown up around people who confuse volume with confidence… or survived a childhood motivated by dares… or moved somewhere bigger trying to outrun the version of yourself you learned back home… or realised later in life that your sexuality was the twist ending to a story that always made sense… you’ll recognise the terrain.

If you haven’t, that’s fine. I’ll guide you.

Follow me on Instagramto see the continued chaos in real time, and check out my podcast Broke’n’Home on YouTube and all podcast apps for more of the nonsense that didn’t fit onstage.

Harmless Lunatic or not, I’ll see you at the show.

________________________________________________

Show acccessibility:

– Our venue is wheelchair accessible

– Tactile Tours are held 15 minutes before all sessions. Please request at time of booking, or notify FOH staff before the show

Please email any additional requirements to: me@jeremymoses.com