Apocastrip Wow!

Mat Fraser is a household name in his native UK. Born with phocomelia – a congenital limb disorder induced by the thalidomide given to his mother during her pregnancy – he’s known as an actor, comedian, public speaker, singer, drummer, radio and TV presenter; and a most opinionated one at that. In February 2011 he made a visit to Australia for the Adelaide Festival, with fiancée Julie Atlas Muz in tow. Their act, The Freak and the Showgirl, was delightfully daring, but now they’re back with a new routine that’s X-rated, damn funny, bodycentric and stuffed with more fetishes than you could shake a furry stick at.

Mat, doesn’t the old adage go that you shouldn’t work with children, animals and partners?
They say you shouldn’t, I know, but we do. Like so many things we do that are wrong, it seems to work for us, and anyway, if we didn’t do some shows together we’d never see each other. Plus we do some really rude stuff to each other in this show; it would be weird to do it with someone who wasn’t a lover.

Is it true you met at Coney Island?
Yep, I’d been working at the freak show all day and was asked to stay on to host an evening burlesque show by Dick Zigun, the boss there, on his premise that there was this incredible hot act, Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island, performing. Unbeknownst to me she’d been asked on the premise that there was this new British flipper guy hosting... it happened, we met, it was an instant attraction. So The Freak and The Showgirl really did meet at a burlesque show in a freak show!

Pictorial evidence suggests your shows verge on pornographic. Have you run into any problems with venues, sponsors or audiences who haven’t been quite prepared for the fetishy exploration and nudity therein?
We always get audience members who are shocked. We’re used to that because of what we like to do. Very rarely have the venue given us problems as we just don’t play places with this show that don’t allow nudity. In New York and London we’ve both got into trouble for springing our nude bodies on an unsuspecting event, and I am now banned for life from The Players club in NYC because of my cock in the library incident, but Coney Island is kinda off the police map, and we have been able to get away with scandalous stuff there – although they’re trying to clean it up now.

Julie’s been banned from performing cabaret in Melbourne before… what’s the status on that?
It was the Australian Tennis open, and Julie was the burlesque dancer of the associated show. On the preview night the host said “cunt” a lot so there was a scandal – and Julie being the officially sexiest one became the scapegoat, made to do a private performance in front of the panel of tennis guild ladies who were angry that their fragile sense of the world had been undermined. Thus Julie got banned from the show, poor thing; I hope those ladies come to this show and we can show them what real rudeness is.

Is there an underlying message to the show?
Yes, be tolerant of others’ bodies, enjoy all the differences, chill the fuck out about rude shit because it’s natural.

Is it refreshing to be taking a break from the political side of disability?
Fuck yes! I’ve been doing that for so long and it got awful; oppressively constraining for me. But actually I’ve come to realise that there is more inherent politics in what we’re doing in this show than anything that wears its politics on its sleeve, so to speak. The more I go on the more I see that NOT doing the politics can be more political. It might not seem political as I bark like a seal and flap my flippers or windmill my cock (not all at the same time – that’s too hard), but I think it is a deeper thing that happens than is apparent at first.

On a frothy note, you’re looking insanely good for 50. Is that purely down to the martial arts routine, or do you look after yourself in general?
Well, thank you. I eat healthy – i.e. no burgers, etc, (I’ve been a vegetarian most of my life and am now a pescatarian), usually make my own food, take lots of hard physical exercise like martial arts, stopped taking hard drugs years ago (last line of coke was Glastonbury ’95) and I like to sleep eight hours. However, the biggest thing keeping me young is my much younger bride-to-be Julie, who keeps my outlook and my body young, because she makes me laugh and service her insatiable sexual needs every night.

Your cabaret shows have been a hit in Berlin and Amsterdam. See any ‘interesting' shows when you were performing there?
The live sex shows in Amsterdam are awful. Funny, if anything, but not sexy. Our mates – the learning-disabled punk band HEAVY LOAD – did an awesome gig in Berlin. Think Bad Boy Bubby meets the Ramones.

Do you have any all-time favourite cabaret performers?
Yes: Julie, Trixie Little & The Evil Hate Monkey, The Wau Wau Sisters, Meow Meow, Rosewood, The Tiger Lillies, Jennifer Millar, Kenichi, The Skating Willards, and Captain Frodo. I think Gypsy Wood and Imogen Kelly are two really good Aussie burlesque performers, and The Space Cowboy is just awesome.

You had a Fringe Award Nomination for Best Cabaret at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2011. What was the feedback like from Australian audiences?
Aussie audiences have been without doubt the best ones, maybe because they are ready to go crazy more than others, are more liberal and less shocked by our nudey stuff, and obviously much more drunk – but they seem to get what we do more than some other nations perhaps. Our recent North Korean gig didn’t go so well, however, and the live sex show in Abu Dhabi was a positive failure.

Go anywhere good while you were last here?
The albino kangaroo sanctuary in Bordertown; we did a night tour of Warrawong Sanctuary in the Adelaide Hills (we saw a platypus!), Red Bennies and the East Brunswick club in Melbourne, Deville’s Pad in Perth, Sammy’s in Perth, and lying down high on the grass to look up at the glorious fruit bat migration at 5pm in the park in Sydney.

Both your parents were in the acting game… was it nature or nurture for you?
I guess both. I was a rock drummer for 16 years before coming into acting and performing, but when I did, it was incredibly familiar, like I had arrived at my real job. I would love to be in an Australian film. More Animal Kingdom than Strictly Ballroom though.

You're a complete renaissance man when it comes to performing. Are you a workaholic and strict with yourself?
You got it, and that’s how I do it: work hard, rest when I can, play hard and well. I’ve always got a writing project or two on the go at any one time, I watch as little TV as I can. I love my work – it’s what drives me in life.