Bob Downe: Mark Trevorrow marks 40 years of high camp fun

Bob Downe, the fabulous alter ego of comedian Mark Trevorrow, is celebrating 40 years of entertaining fans.

Yep, time flies when you’re wearing polyester. And after four decades of bad wigs, loud shirts, quick wit and upbeat tunes, Trevorrow might be forgiven for sticking to a familiar groove. Most artists with that sort of longevity can rely on performing to audiences of rusted-on fans who are already in on the joke. But that’s not what Trevorrow has done. Instead in recent years, he’s taken to the seas.

“For the past eight or nine years I have been working on P&O comedy cruises,” Trevorrow explains. “And what’s been fantastic about that is to go out on stage and, out of 900 people, there might be 800 who have never even seen you live. It’s incredibly good for you as a comedian to play to audiences who don’t know who you are because you’ve got to start from zero. You have to tell them who you are, where you’re from and what you’re about. It’s incredibly good for you as a comic.

“A lot of comedians only play to their fans and they get very spoilt. It gets very self-referential. So these past few years of doing comedy cruises have been absolutely sensational for me. They’ve really sharpened me up in a great way.”

It’s perhaps not surprising that Trevorrow likes a challenge. He developed the character of Downe, an hilariously camp cabaret singer and host of the fictional morning television show Good Morning Murwillumbah with a penchant for outrageous shirts, while treading the boards of the Melbourne comedy clubs of the 1980s. It was a different era and, as an openly gay man, Trevorrow says comedy clubs weren’t always the most welcoming of places.

“I was the only gay in the village,” he jokes. “Some gigs weren’t fun because of that, both backstage with the other comics and out front with the audiences. But it really made me tough because you gotta face down the bullies, so I got really good at it.”

It was when he went to the UK Trevorrow’s career really took off.

“They were much more accepting because there’s such a long tradition of high-camp humour there,” he says. “So Bob was instantly recognisable to them in a way that really shocked me. British audiences tuned into what I was doing.”

Downe has been a staple on comedy stages and TV screens across Australia and the UK for many years. And Trevorrow continues to evolve Downe into the 21st centaury. He is bringing the beloved character back to WA in May for the Perth Comedy Festival for a new show celebrating his 40 years of performing. While he’s looking back, he says he isn’t interested in wallowing in nostalgia.

“I wanted to do a brand new show of old classics that I have never sung before, rather than do a greatest hits,” Trevorrow says. “Because honestly, if I have to sing Yeah Yeah Yeah or I Will Survive one more time I might jump off the Great Australian Bight on my way over.”

“I wanted to do a 40th anniversary show and I thought long and hard about it. And, because Bob was created in 1984, I thought ‘let’s do an 80s show with 80s bangers and power ballads from that 80s era and whack on a mullet’. It’s very much inspired by the Wham! Choose life thing, so the show’s called Choose Bob.”

He will be joined onstage by a number of performers including his long-time music director Bev Kennedy who will play keyboard and singer and comedian Rupert Noffs.

“He’s incredible,” Trevorrow says of Noffs. “We’ve been singing together for a long time. He’s a superb singer and he will be playing Bob’s nepo nephew.”

Trevorrow says looking back on the past 40 years has allowed him to take stock of how his show has evolved.

“The way I perform now is so different,” he says. “Looking back at these old TV performances I’m shocked at how shy and low energy it all was. It’s so different now, the character is so over the top. It’s very high energy. It’s contemporary comedy dressed up as retro.”

Trevorrow praised Perth audiences for always arriving to the theatre ready for a good time, and has chosen songs to get the party started.

“There will be a lot of Wham! Rick Astley, great singalong songs,” he says. “My rule is that they have to be able to (be) singalong.”

Bob Downe: Choose Bob! 40 Ridiculous Years! is at the Regal Theatre on May 1.