I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: February 2, 2026] Rhys Nicholson

I have made a list of all of comedians from Taskmaster who I would like to see live.  It’s not everyone of course (some of them don’t do stand up and some I don’t think I would enjoy).  And then we started watching Taskmaster Australia and Taskmaster New Zealand, and I’ve added a dozen or so more to that list.

Rhys Nicholson was one of the funnier people on Taskmaster Australia and I was really excited when I saw that they were playing in Philly (apparently not their first time playing here).

Rhys set the tone well asking who had heard of them (much applause) and who had not (more than usual).  They assumed that the people who hadn’t heard of them were straight boyfriends/husbands.  And sadly there were no jokes for those people–they’ve had enough.

And then, geez, it was like 90 minutes of nonstop hilariousness.

I didn’t realize they’d gotten married.  Rhys joked about their husband, Kyran–which is almost a name–it’s Australian for “new money.”

And then proceeded to run through so many hilarious anecdotes.  They said that they are a liar pretty much exclusively but that they’d let us know when they were telling the truth.

Their friend Angela (it’s her real name–they can say it when they’re not in Australia) has had botox and is always asking when they’re going to have kids.  This kids theme went on throughout the show and got funnier and funnier each time it came up.

They talked about growing up poor.  A very funny joke about their parents having virtually no money but buying them Magnum ice creams which turned into Rhys admitting that Rhys would have told the kids they stopped making Magnums and then eating them all anyway.

It’s fun when a comedian from very far away who lives in an entirely different culture can show how similar things are even to us.  Rhys had a lengthy section about Christmas.  And although Christmas in Australia is during the warm months (tropical fruit is big at Christmas there), there were some very similar moments–like when the children of relatives came in and woke up Rhys and their husband at 6 AM.  Even on Christmas morning (when, come on, 5:30 Christmas morning is still Christmas Eve).

It’s hilarious that Rhys asked their niece an nephew to call them Aunty Rhys (mostly just to upset the family members). I also got akick out of his visit to Kyran’s family for the holidays.  Eight days (too long!) and how whenever the kids got them up early there was always one old man up since 4:30 who was fixing machine or rattling a can of bullets or something.

Rhys talked a lot about drug use as a teenager and my very minimal understanding of Australia is that there’s a lot of drugs being done there. Anyhow Rhys had done all kinds of things as a kid and was amused to discover that Speed actually just made things focused (Rhys has the ADHaitchD). But now pot works perfectly to make them feel just stupid enough to relax.  Rhys’ description of how to get medical marijuana was hilarious. You do to the doctor and say “my eye…..  my …   eye.”  Rhys also said that comedians in Australia were always his drug suppliers–there’s at least one on each season of Taskmaster Australia, ha ha.

The major joke of the show was about him and his childhood friend Marcus and how they used to film porn–they didn’t MAKE porn, they filmed it off of the the internet on Rhys’ camera.  And then they sold it to kids at school.  Until Rhys’ mom found out.  The whole saga was hilarious, but I really enjoyed the comment that Rhys had forgotten about the whole incident with their mom until recently.  But you just know that their mom has thought about it every single day for the last 20 years.

The whole set was hilarious.  We’ve been doing some rankings of the comedians we’ve seen recently and I don’t know how anyone will top this show.