‘Hi. My name is Andrew Hamilton, and I’m a standup comedian’. It sounds like an introduction at a 12-step program meeting – not the comedian bit, the next bit, ‘I’m also a convicted drug supplier’.
And that’s where we meet Hamilton – a man with a self-confessed ‘pretty average middle-class upbringing in a happy household’, who ended up in Long Bay jail after a career growing, drying and selling magic mushies graduated to a life of full-on crime and a slow death á la Al Pacino’s Scarface, dipping his nose into mountains of cocaine, because, what else is there to do on a weeknight?
Hamilton realised the error of his ways when his freaked-out, soon-to-be-ex fiancé, dobbed him into the cops and rehomed his dogs (that bit is actually unforgivable), and his house was raided by Operation Raptor.
In 2021 Hamilton spent four months in two of Sydney’s maximum-security prisons for the supply of psychedelic drugs. He had a great time.
After two months in the big house and another two months in an even bigger, scarier house, Hamilton dodged a much-longer-sentence-bullet after finding comedy, and since his house arrest was dropped, he has been travelling the country turning audiences into his laugh therapy.
Andrew Hamilton: Jokes About the Time I Went to Prison is on Wednesday at The Northern in Byron Bay at 6.30pm.
‘One to watch’ – NSW Police.
For more info and tickets: thenorthern.com.au.
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