By Adam Rafferty
Have You Been Paying Attention regular, Taskmaster Australia Season 2 winner and partner of Anne Edmonds, Lloyd Langford is probably a better-known comedian Down Under nowadays than he is in his home country of Wales. Certainly, he’s been here long enough now to be familiar with the peculiarities and pitfalls of the Aussie media landscape.
While doing the obligatory promo tour for his season of Taskmaster last year, he discovered the joy of 3AW (or 3A double-ooh, as his delightful Welsh brogue intones) and the radio host’s lack of interest in what he was actually there to promote vs what subjects his presence could conjure for call-in listeners to share their banal opinions on. Despite the DJ’s inferences, there’s plenty more to Langford than his mere Welshness.
He has a penchant for urinating in a bottle backstage and carrying it around with him to clean out and re-use later, and he appreciates a farmer’s market, including those that sell questionable pork sausage rolls, both situations leaving him in sad, yet very funny circumstances, which he is apt to exploit with his rapier wit and innate sense of dark humour.
Langford isn’t frightened of a bit of crowd work, but he’s by no means an intimidating stand-up. In fact, he’s so laid-back if it weren’t for the odd flash of a wicked smile, you’d be worried his plodding demeanour is going to slip him into cardiac arrest. For while his style of speech is leisurely at best, his thinking is as sharp and devilish as the quickest of roast comedians. Something he shares with his partner Anne, who was quite happy to skewer him on television when she beat him to the ACTA award for Best Stand-up Special last month.
Powerful energy gives Langford voice to register his dissatisfaction with many an issue, yet his easy-going style means it never feels moany, rather recognisably hilarious instead.
