The comedian who played to no one: Lloyd Langford on his worst-ever gigs

Comedian Lloyd Langford is famous enough that he gets recognised in the streets, usually two or three times a day. But at least one person stops the Wales-born comedian to tell him how much they love his partner, fellow comedian Anne Edmonds, whose star-making turn on The Katering Show and Get Krack!n made her a household name.

So when they were up against each other on Taskmaster Australia, he found himself at something of a disadvantage. “I wanted Anne to win, and I didn’t really care about winning,” he says. “I think the producers wanted Anne to win as well. So if you watch some of the scoring, I think they would try to make it more competitive.”

The couple were initially unsure if they would be able to compete against each other in the same series, as they were juggling childcare for their toddler. But the show is filmed sequentially – the contestants do all of their tasks separately, over the course of five days, then come together for the team tasks and review shows with host Tom Gleeson and offsider Tom Cashman.

“You get picked up from the hotel at, like, 6.30 or seven or something, taken to the location, and then you’re there all day,” Langford reveals. He was the first contestant to be put through his paces, so he was also the guinea pig to determine what tasks would not make it to air. As it turns out, turning comedians loose to come up with their filthiest material does not result in footage that Channel Ten will air in prime time.

“There was one where you had to change Tom [Cashman’s] heartbeat,” Langford says “You had to get the biggest difference in his heartbeat, so I was trying to get him aroused, and then I was trying to get him offended. I was saying some awful stuff. And I think [the producers] were like, ‘we can’t use this.’”

Despite his aversion to winning, Langford and Edmonds were the last comics standing, with equal scores. The final tiebreaker task was to estimate the weight of the show’s prize: a life-sized gold bust of Tom Gleeson’s head, which weighs 1.6 kilograms. Langford guessed 3.6 kilograms to Edmonds’ seven kilograms and won the series – not that he wanted the trophy.

“It’s very ostentatious. It’s gold, and it’s huge. And it’s also Tom Gleeson,” Langford says, eyes widening with the absurdity of that sentence.

Apologies to Tom Gleeson, if you’re reading, but Langford has not displayed the trophy proudly in his home. “It’s above a cupboard, stuffed hidden away in a plastic bag.”

But not before he pulled a prank on Edmonds with it. “I got into bed with the trophy and pulled up the cover, so it was like we were next to each other. She said I was going to get in trouble.”

Edmonds tweeted a photo of the occasion, with the caption: “I hope the head brings you comfort during our difficult months ahead.”

Making each other laugh and poking fun at each other has long been a cornerstone of Langford and Edmonds’ relationship. “We were up against each other for an AACTA award last year, and she won, and then in the speech told me to suck shit, which was the first thing she said in the speech. She kind of appeared to be saying something sincere, like, thank you, then she didn’t. Which I loved.”

He says it brought much-needed levity to what was otherwise a very dull occasion. “I find award ceremonies tedious, and that AACTAs was like five hours long, and it’s self-congratulatory. And also, 90 per cent of the room were actors, and there was a small pocket of self-awareness, the comedians.”

Edmonds is currently finishing writing her new sitcom, Bad Company, about a crumbling once-venerable theatre company, so Langford is on childcare pick-up duty today. That explains the early lunchtime – we’ve met at noon, the second Japanese CBD restaurant Robata opens. In fact, we’re both a little early, so we meet on the street outside the locked doors.

We decide on the mixed sashimi platter, char-grilled leeks and karaage cauliflower to share, and then a couple of skewers each: Wagyu beef and chicken thigh for Langford, and chicken meatball and rockling for me.

We order quickly so that Langford will be out in plenty of time to pick up his daughter, Gwen, for an afternoon of op shopping and ice-cream. Gwen is a huge fan of op shops.

“We just come back with shit we don’t need,” Langford says. “Every now and again we’ll have like a purge, where we just take half of it back again. I just have to remember not to take her back to ones where we’ve already deposited the stuff because I’ve donated stuff before and then bought it back.”

Langford loves to peruse op shops’ music collections – not that Gwen doesn’t have her own specific musical taste. “She’s really into rock’n’roll,” Langford says. “Elvis, she’s very into the Blues Brothers, so we watch Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin. She likes some heavy metal, Motorhead, AC/DC … She has a playlist that’s on my phone here” – he shows me – “It’s 10 hours and 46 minutes long, and it’s all music that she’s chosen. You’ve got Taylor Swift, Billy Joel, the Beatles, Jackson Five, Elton John. She’s big into Elton John … It can be annoying. I’ll be in a playground with her, and she’s like, ‘Put on Motorhead’. I’m like, ‘I don’t know if the other children want to listen to Motorhead in the playground’.”

Gwen makes Langford laugh all day long, and she features a fair bit in his stand-up. But he says he tries to avoid being a “dad comedian”. “I don’t want to just focus on that, but I guess I kind of talk about my life, and she’s a big part of my life,” he says.

With two comedians as parents, Gwen has even made an appearance on stage with him at the Comedy Theatre. “She walked out on the stage and got a round of applause, and then I was saying, ‘You’ve got to come backstage’. ’And she was like, ‘I’m going to sit in the audience with this person’.” Langford told the toddler that they did not actually know the audience member. “She’s like, ‘I’ll be fine’,” he remembers, cracking up at the memory.

It’s not far off Langford’s own first time in front of an audience, which was also an impromptu stage appearance during someone else’s show. He was two weeks into an arts degree at the University of Warwick when he went with some mates to see a comedy show. Comedian Francesca Martinez, who has cerebral palsy and trembles, asked the audience who would let her cut their hair. Langford found himself with a new haircut – and a new career.

He’s never done anything else, as a generous friend with a spare room let him move in rent-free to start gigging in London shortly after university finished. That’s not to say that Langford was an overnight success. He remembers one notable early show, when he played to absolutely no one.

“It was in university. They hadn’t publicised the show, and the students were on holiday. There was no one there. And I said to the bar manager, ‘I’m just going home’. And he was like, ‘Well, if you go home, you’ll just get half the money’. I said, ‘There’s no one here’. He was like, ‘Well, I’m here, and the barman’s here’. So I had to do half an hour. A group of guys came in at one point for a drink and started heckling, which made it easier because it was like something to deal with.”

It was probably his worst gig, but there have been others that rival it. “I did a gig once in Banbury or something in the UK, there was something off with a gig anyway, but after a few minutes, they were like, nah. And I was like, I’m not going to do comedy any more, I’m just going to talk about post-war Chicago blues guitar. So I just started talking about that. They were just there, just listening. I thought it was funny to be like, I’m not going to do the comedy, I’ll tell you about something.”

It’s been a long time since Langford had an absolutely abysmal show like that, but he says in every new show there will be at least one joke that he thinks is hilarious that audiences don’t get. “I’m the professional,” he says, laughing. “You’ll have to trust me on this. Those are the jokes that the other comedians normally love.”

Comedian or otherwise, you’ll have to book tickets to see Langford’s show in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival quickly, as he’s decided to only do two weeks of shows, instead of the customary four. Edmonds will have finished work on Bad Company, so they decided to go on a family holiday during the first two weeks of April. “I felt like I couldn’t really just be like, Oh well, I’m going to stay here.”

As for what’s next for Langford, he says, “nothing that I’m allowed to mention”, though he will appear on the next season of Have You Been Paying Attention? , and he filmed a guest appearance on The Hundred with Andy Lee alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“He was running late because he’d done a couple of podcasts. I was like, I don’t think you need to do podcasts any more. You’re the prime minister.” Although the episode was filmed in August of last year, he doesn’t know when it will go to air. “It hasn’t been broadcast yet. They want to put it out before Trump dies, or there’s a f—ing world war or something.”

It should be noted here that our lunch was at the end of February, before, well…

“I don’t know,” Langford says. “I’m not one of these people with, like, a five-year plan. I know that I’ve got to pick Gwen up from kinder at 3 o’clock, and that’s it.”

An afternoon of op shopping and ice-cream awaits – sounds like a pretty good plan to me.

Lloyd Langford’s show Okay, I Believe You, will run from April 7-19 in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and in the Sydney Comedy Festival May 16-17.