Five years into his stand-up career, the last 12 months have been an annus mirabilis for comedian Anthony Salame. He’s firing on all cylinders. With a couple of sitcoms under his belt already – Pizza and Swift & Shift Couriers – he embarked on a gargantuan tour of the US opening for one of its bonafide comedy colossii, Pablo Francisco – a “genuine YouTube phenomenon”, Salame calls him.

He’s also supported Maz Jobrani and Jo Koy on their Aussie tours, and even opened up for LL Cool J at the Enmore. “When the opportunity came up to open up for him and MC the start of the show, it was great,” Salame says. “I’ve been to so many rap concerts and I know you can’t just go out there and do material, you have to warm them up, but I did my hip hop material on rap music and 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg, and they loved it. Me, every time I’m onstage anyway doing stand-up, I’ve got my hat on backwards and my jeans and sneakers. People can tell I’m into my hip hop music.”

 Having opened again for Pablo Francisco at his Sydney Comedy Festival shows this year, Salame is now bringing his own solo show to the party and joining the festival with On Fire, his second festival hour of comedy. “It’s called On Fire because that’s the way I’m feeling at the minute. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I feel like everything’s just going great, the material I’m writing has been better – I just feel on fire.” But beyond that, he adds, the title doesn’t mean anything else – his show has no overarching theme. And he doesn’t believe in that anyway. “Man, my material is so diverse, it doesn’t stick to one thing. I like it that way, because I’ve got impersonations I like to do, and big stuff about relationships and ethnicity, and I touch on every single subject. If I was to do a show about a certain subject it would just hold me back a little bit. And you know what, the guys that do have a theme to their show, they just end up talking about whatever they want anyway...”

Salame started his career doing theatre in high school and made the jump to stand-up with relative ease. He says he always had a passion for comedy, spending his time drawing black-and-white texta posters of himself doing stand-up. A chance brush with another theatrical comedian who was to become his mentor kicked him off down the path. “This one play I was in, the director was Tahir [Bilgic]. He was really important when I first started stand-up. I went up to him one day and said ‘Man, I’ve written some jokes on this piece of paper, can you see what you think?’ and he just said ‘I’ve got a show in two weeks, do five minutes before me’ and I was like ‘Man, I’ve never

done that before’ and he said ‘You’ll be right’. He looked at my routine and helped me with a few things and it was full steam ahead from there.”

Full steam ahead it most certainly has been. Salame, by his own admission, is a workaholic.“I really never stop. If I’m not performing I’m writing, if I’m notwriting I’m taking down notes about something. Slacking is bad. I’ve had a lot of people give me chances and give me a bit of a boost but I’ve backed that up with hard work. It’s a little bit of luck, too – I’m not saying I’m the best comic in the world! But every night I’ll at least try a new joke, even though I’ve got my set – so it has evolved a lot. You have to do it. You don’t want to have the same hour for 15 years. You’ve got to have fun yourself. If you’re not having fun the audience won’t be having fun.”