‘The fandom is quite intense': Guy Montgomery on the strange success of Guy Mont Spelling Bee
Guy Montgomery was an extremely annoying child. Each night at dinner, he would attempt to get his younger sister to laugh so hard she snorted out her food. One evening, when his parents had friends over, he spent the whole meal pretending to be a South African exchange student. 'My mum was like, 'He's not, he's my son,'' Montgomery says. 'She was chasing me around the table, laughing, and I ran to my bedroom. When she came in later I was asleep.'
He once read a joke book out loud all the way from Blenheim to Christchurch, a four-hour trip, telling zingers such as this one: 'How do you keep an ugly monster in suspense?'
'How?' I ask.
'I'll tell you tomorrow,' the now 36-year-old Montgomery says, and I don't know if I'm grinning because it's kind of funny or because he's so obviously delighted.
Needling loved ones to the point where they are frustrated but laughing – 'so that the annoyance has no power' – is a comedic styling that has propelled the New Zealand comedian's career and powered his popular game show Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee, kicking off its second Australian season this week on ABC. The irreverent and absurd show contains various segments that give guests – including Rove McManus, Hannah Gadsby, Hamish Blake and Denise Scott – the chance to tell jokes while failing abysmally at spelling tasks that range from basic to impossible. Montgomery reigns over the resulting chaos like a kind of encyclopedic svengali. 'I describe myself as the protagonist and antagonist of the show,' Montgomery says. 'It's designed to be enjoyable to watch and irritating to take part in.'
Raised in Christchurch, Montgomery dipped into standup aged 22 when he was 'idling around' post-bachelor's degree. During the day, he worked as a mascot at agricultural shows, with stints as a popsicle, an orange bull and a peach-flavoured Bundaberg; at night he hit up local comedy clubs. He was already funny by then, he tells me, devoid of the self-effacement Kiwis are known for. 'I was funny basically the whole time,' he says, deadpan. 'I just didn't take it seriously. I got drunk and told a story and it went well, and I did the same thing again and it didn't. I had no control.'
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning
He needed to get better, but he didn't want people he knew watching, so he went to Canada – randomly chosen for ease of visa access – and hit the standup circuit in Toronto while working in hospitality, tallying his gigs in the same notebook he wrote his jokes in. 'It was kind of an extreme form of self-discipline,' he says.
That's when he started to learn how to get people to laugh. 'When I first started I was just copying Rhys Darby; they were my jokes, but I was in his cadence, and you overlay all of these influences until your own voice emerges,' he says. 'You're not being funny on your terms. You don't necessarily believe in what you're saying because you're just chasing the ability to make people laugh, and that's the addictive feeling. Over time, it goes from saying something you hope the audience will laugh at to saying something you know they'll laugh at.'
Returning to New Zealand in 2014, he won the Billy T award for the country's top emerging standup comedian. This led to a series of TV hosting gigs, during which he met and vibed with local comedian Tim Batt. Their podcast together, The Worst Idea of All Time, gave an indication of the kind of cult following Montgomery's comedy inspires, with 350 people filling a New York theatre in 2016 to watch him and Batt talk about Sex and the City 2, a film they had watched every week for a year.
Montgomery conceived The Guy Mont Spelling Bee in Auckland during Covid lockdown in 2020, inviting comedian friends and acquaintances – including Ayo Edebiri and Rose Matafeo – to join in on Zoom and stream the results on YouTube. 'I was always intrigued with the idea of spelling bees – there's all the pomp and pageantry,' he says. 'You'd watch the moderators reading out these quite ornate sentences just to get the word in there, and that's a pre-existing joke format.'
It spiralled out to a stage show, and in 2023 it was picked up by New Zealand's channel Three, after which Montgomery and co-writer Joseph Moore pitched it to the ABC with comedian Aaron Chen attached as co-host. Montgomery says having two seasons of the New Zealand show under their belt was an advantage, in that producers have mostly left them alone. 'Because it arrived fully formed, it means it's an accurate and total expression of a comedic instinct.' Some returning comedians are invited to help brainstorm new games for the show, but Montgomery and Moore are still the lead writers.
The recipe has proven a hit, generating rave reviews and lengthy Reddit threads. 'When people fall in love with the comedy format like this, the fandom is quite intense,' Montgomery says.
Sign up to Saved for Later
Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips
after newsletter promotion
Fans often speculate how much work must go into the show's preparation. 'You do drive yourself crazy writing this many jokes,' Montgomery admits. 'But also I love that … I want it to feel like it's brimming or overstuffed, and for people to want to know what the joke [was] for a certain word that we didn't get to say.'
The handmade, retro feeling of the set is also intentional, to spark nostalgia and a childlike desire to walk in and touch everything. 'There's a comfort food quality to these shows,' Montgomery says. 'They don't reflect any of the crazy stuff that's happening, it's pure escapism.'
This might also account for the intergenerational audience, with kids coming to the show with their grandparents. 'I used to know what my audience demographic looked like but in Australia now it just looks like everyone,' he says.
Staff in this Wellington cafe recognise Montgomery because of his partner, the New Zealand actor Chelsie Preston Crayford, who was filming nearby last year. In Australia, people now stop him on the street; audiences for his standup shows have tripled. 'I'm experiencing success,' he says. 'In New Zealand, no one knows or cares.'
Initially, that popularity brought on anxiety and a kind of guilt, which he has talked to his therapist about. 'She said: 'You're looking over the ledge of what would happen if it went wrong and you think you're going to fall all the way down, but you've got all these years of practice and experience,' he says.
These days, he exudes the quiet confidence of someone who has found not only their calling but their gift: 'What I'm really good at, the means I have of helping the masses, is by being funny.'
Season two of Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee premieres on ABC TV and iView on 4 June. Guy Montgomery is touring Australia through June and July.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Telegraph
How TV's great survivor Noel Edmonds is taking on Jeremy Clarkson
'We're not trees,' says Noel Edmonds in his new TV series. 'We can move.' Hard to argue with that as a rationale, yet hot-footing it 11,500 miles away to put down virgin roots in New Zealand was also partly so that the septuagenarian TV star could get as far away from Britain as humanly possible. But don't go thinking that means we've reciprocally got shot of the host of Noel's House Party, Deal or No Deal? and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Oh no. If there's one lesson we have learnt by now, it's never to write off Noel; he's television's great survivor. And so it proves, as he returns this week in ITV1's antipodean answer to Clarkson's Farm, Noel Edmonds' Kiwi Adventure, which follows his attempts to run a pub, vineyard and wellness centre on 800 acres of land at the tip of the South Island. But can Edmonds challenge Clarkson? Both men have presented Top Gear, yet where Clarkson's appeal could probably be summed up by this outburst in the fourth series of his hit Amazon show – 'Turns out I'm not Jethro Tull, I'm just a hapless f---wit' – Edmonds's hold over the British public is more mysterious, rather like his age-defying powers. 'People say, 'Well, what's your secret?' And I say, 'Well, I've been researching it for 76 years,'' he quips. Cold showers, ice baths and mystic crystals, it turns out, all have a role to play. Of course, Edmonds is happy to be the butt of the joke, and Kiwi Adventure has great fun sending up his eccentricity and David Brent-like self-belief. For example, his pub – The Bugger Inn – serves locally-brewed drinks, with names such as Boring B-----d, Hop Licker, Old Git, T-ts Up and Dickens Cider ('Very popular,' says Noel, 'particularly with the ladies'). The show also introduces his wife, Liz Davies, whom he met when she was a stand-in make-up artist on Deal or No Deal? This happened at 11.06 on October 6, 2006, as will become obvious to anyone who watches Kiwi Adventure. The couple married three years later, and Davies proves a likeable foil. 'Somebody's got to look after him… it's my little bit of care in the community,' she says in the show. But what exactly is Edmonds's secret? Well, let's start at the beginning, when this headmaster's son from Ilford in Essex thought he'd blown his big chance to be a DJ after leaving his news-reading job on the pirate station Radio Luxembourg. Some say it was because of the stinking fish that he'd taped to the underside of his boss's desk, but Edmonds always maintained that he quit. It wasn't the end, though, of his pranks or his ambitions. In fact, it was just early training for the role of comeback king. Edmonds would wash up at Radio One in 1969, making programme trailers, before his unruffled voice and manner recommended him as a stand-in presenter. In 1970, he took over Kenny Everett's Saturday show and in 1973, he was handed the coveted Breakfast Show, which he made his own for five years and described as 'of its kind, the most important radio show in the world' when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1978. This was the era of the superstar DJ, and Edmonds had scooped the pool. He was attractive and trendy, with his long-but-not-too-long hair and tidy beard. He looked and sounded like a young version of the suave cats that ruled the TV studios. He also had the de rigueur terrible taste in music that Radio One demanded for the daytime hours. He was, though, really good at his job, polished and creative. And he was sillier than those suave cats, more influenced by the radio comedy of Round the Horne and Kenny Everett than the laconic wit of the day. His radio show featured invented characters, such as the lascivious milkman Flynn, and playful prank calls to members of the public. Children's TV seemed a logical next step. He left the Breakfast Show in April 1978, and launched the Saturday morning show Multi-Coloured Swap Shop on BBC One that October. If the concept was a little thin – kids rang up with something they wanted to swap – Edmonds's engaging personality (and able sidekicks Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin) turned it into a phenomenon, creating the sort of magazine-style children's show that would dominate for the next two decades. It was also very polite, very BBC, in comparison with the absolute anarchy of Tiswas on ITV, where Edmonds's future gameshow rival Chris Tarrant mucked about, poured gunk over children and had punk and heavy metal bands on to play in the studio. Edmonds set his sights on an adult audience when he left Swap Shop in 1982 to host The Late, Late Breakfast Show. It aired in the Saturday early evening slot on BBC One, and took a while to find its feet, but with the right sidekick in place – fellow car-racing enthusiast Mike Smith, who'd once lent Noel his race car, which he had promptly crashed – Edmonds's rise would continue apace. Occasionally, his way of making fun of his guests could come across as charmless, as when Abba appeared on the show in 1982 and Edmonds, after receiving a kiss on the lips from Agnetha Fältskog, cheekily insulted each member in turn. When Agnetha and Anni-Frid Lyngstad professed frustrations with how they were depicted in the English press, with Agnetha declaring, 'I'm more than a sexy bottom', and Anni-Frid icily quoting, 'I am 'alarmingly ageing'.' Edmonds was soon joking about her being old and saying 'we get a little bit of sexy bottom' on Fernando. 'Is it necessary?' Agnetha replied. The band split up one month later. Then came the first major setback in a career that had made Edmonds one of the most famous celebrities in Britain. In its 'Give it a Whirl' strand, the show was playing with fire; it was a stunt segment performed by a volunteer from the public after just a few days of training. One viewer had broken her shoulder having been fired from a cannon, and the government's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had intervened to stop another dangerous endeavour going ahead. A professional stunt driver had also been badly injured in a calamitous Evel Knievel-style attempt to jump over parked cars in a Jensen Interceptor. DJ John Peel, helming the outside broadcast, fell silent after what appeared to be a fatal incident. Edmonds visibly swallowed as he tried to maintain a veneer of calm when the show was handed back to him. Yet even after that shocking example – the Jensen had no roll cage and was at risk to concertina if the jump went wrong – in 1986, a death did occur. A volunteer who had phoned in – 24-year-old Michael Lush – was killed in the very first rehearsal of a bungee jump from a box strung from a crane. No airbag had been provided in case the stunt went wrong; the connecting clip sprang loose and Lush fell to his death. Three days later the BBC announced on air that the episode – and all future ones – had been cancelled. The inquest recorded a verdict of misadventure, and magistrates in a later prosecution by the HSE imposed a £2,000 fine and chose not to refer the case to crown court, where the levy could have been unlimited. Although Edmonds was not to blame for the failures that led to Lush's death, he was tarnished by the event. He reportedly considered quitting TV but continued to host the Telly Addicts TV gameshow, to which he owned the rights, although it took another two years before his return to the big time, in 1988, with The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow. That series was directed by Michael Leggo, who saw in Edmonds a TV natural. 'He's just got a sparkle in his eyes. They come alight on camera,' he tells me. 'And he's very good at putting people at their ease. He might get up to a bit of mischief, but it's good fun, it's not malicious… a bit like a good best man speech at a wedding.' He contrasts Edmonds's 'Gotchas' – hidden camera tricks played on the public and celebrities, such as DJ Dave Lee Travis – with the crueller set-ups of Jeremy Beadle on Game for a Laugh. Edmonds had been teasing people on the radio since the mid-1970s, yet today even his gentler japes would be unlikely to make it past Ofcom's strictures on contributor welfare that were introduced in 2020. The Roadshow effected a partial restoration of Edmonds's pulling power, but the series that he and Leggo dreamt up next – Noel's House Party – which launched in 1991 and ran for eight years, would propel him to the summit of light entertainment. It was filmed live, taking advantage of Edmonds's plate-spinning gifts, which by this time were so well developed that when Leggo turned the 'Gotcha' tables on the presenter and had him rehearse an entirely fake show the day before, leaving him to wing it on air, the producer says he knew that they could get away with it. 'I wouldn't have dared do that to anyone else, because multi-segmented live television – where you've got to be able to move swiftly from one thing to another – it's hard enough when you know what's coming next, bloody impossible when you don't.' The show, set in the fictional village of Crinkley Bottom, was like a greatest hits compilation of everything that had worked for Noel in the past, with an added anarchic edge. It regularly attracted 18 million viewers, thanks at least in part the infamous presence of Mr Blobby. The character began life as a felt tip doodle by Leggo, but would gradually take over the show (and top the charts at Christmas in 1993). At first, Noel wore the pink and yellow spotted costume to catch out unsuspecting celebrities, but Mr Blobby soon took on riotous life of his own. He could later be found wrestling Edmonds to the floor of the studio and causing mayhem that would be copied in playgrounds around the land. Leggo knows it is an unusual legacy. 'I said to my sons, ages ago, when I go, you can put anything on my headstone, except for 'Blobby, blobby, blobby',' he tells me, 'And my youngest said, 'We'll see about that.'' When ratings finally dropped off, the Beeb retired the show; the Crinkley Bottom theme parks that Edmonds had set up in the mid-'90s had failed; and it seemed that finally Noel's race might have been run. Not so. In 2005, he was back with what seemed like a fairly low-rent daytime show, Deal or No Deal?, based on a Dutch format. Edmonds took it seriously, made the whole thing fun, and a huge hit was born. Along the way, he became a proponent of 'cosmic ordering', explaining it was a form of manifestation: '[You] say to the cosmos... 'This is what I'd like''. He also advocated an electromagnetic therapy device which he said 'slows ageing, reduces pain... and tackles cancer' and launched a radio station, Postively Pets, 'exclusively for our animal chums'. When Deal or No Deal? was cancelled in 2016, Edmonds made his decision to move to New Zealand, where we now find him. The money to build his new life came partly from a successful fight against Lloyd's Bank, after a criminal employee pushed Edmonds's Unique business into bankruptcy in the noughties. Displaying the kind of tenacity that's kept his career buoyant, Edmonds had attended Lloyd's AGMs to call out bank bosses and even set up a radio station dedicated to anti-banking messages. After his pay-out, Edmonds commissioned a huge statue of a knight in prayer, named Guardian, from Wētā Workshop to commemorate his own fortitude, which was installed on his New Zealand estate. The inscription on its base reads: 'The devil saw me with my head down and thought he'd won, until I said amen.' So far, Edmonds' new venture has attracted some hostile press in his chosen outpost, where he has been accused of sacking workers without notice – something he rails repeatedly against in the new show, explaining he was standing them down for the off-season, a standard practice in hospitality. Let's hope it was just a misunderstanding and that Edmonds can win over the Kiwis as he did so many millions of us at home. Who would bet against Noel's new show defeating the odds again? We shall see.
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The Project stars poke fun at their own cancellation as they discuss axing of fellow 'woke' show Q+A: 'What is happening to this industry?'
The cast of the Project have shown their fans they still have a sense of humour - even after being cancelled. On Wednesday's episode the show ran a skit that appeared to mock the publicity that has erupted since Channel 10 announced on Monday that The Project would end for good on June 17. Comedian Sam Taunton kicked off the fun by referencing the ABC's decision this week to cancel news and current affairs talk show, Q+A which like The Project is considered by some to be ' woke '. 'First it was us here at the Project and then it was the ABC axing Q+A and now I'm sorry to say another giant of the entertainment industry is being forced out' he said. The program then cut to a news item from the US announcing that a long-running animal novelty act featuring a 'water skiing squirrel' called Twiggy was facing retirement. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. On Wednesday's episode the show ran a skit that appeared to mock the publicity that has erupted since Channel 10 announced that The Project would end for good on June 17. Pictured: Twiggy the Skiing Squirrel is being retired after 40 years and the Project described the rodent as a 'giant in entertainment' that has been 'forced out' of the industry 'After 40 years on the water a talented squirrel ice hanging up her skis,' the US anchor announced with a straight face. The item then detailed that the talented rodent gave its final performance in Orlando, Florida, and showed footage of the animal skiing around the surface of a small pool. 'There wasn't a dry eye in the house,' Sam said after the clip and added, 'What is happening to this industry?' 'She better not be starting an Only Fans,' Sarah joked. A well-known 'feel-good' story on US news, Twiggy was launched as an act in 1979. Daily Mail reported in 2023 that Twiggy is actually the fourth squirrel named Twiggy to be trained to water ski by the Florida couple. The original was rescued as a baby by Chuck and Lou Ann Best in 1978 after it was blown from its nest during a hurricane. It comes after the stars of The Project bid the show farewell, after it was officially axed after 16 years - with right-wing media personality Steve Price blasting the show's cancellation. Network 10 announced the news on Monday, and hosts Waleed Aly, Sarah Harris, Steve Price and Sam Taunton shared their thoughts on their sacking in the opening minutes of Monday's show. Surprisingly, it was Price, a regular conservative voice on a show often considered left-wing, who was the most torn up about the cancellation. 'This is the best crew of people I worked with. I was 55 when I started here. I'm now 70. That's 15 years. 'How an old fat guy like me can survive, I don't know,' he said. Price did not mince words when he shared his additional thoughts in a column for the Herald Sun on Monday night. He slammed viewers who are gleefully 'dancing on the grave' of the 'woke' series amid its cancellation. 'Those ignorant people doing the 'glad they got sacked' dance over the cancellation called the show woke and leftie – hello, I am the exact opposite of that description – and have been there from almost the start' Price wrote. 'Show me that sort of political balance on any ABC TV show – you can't.' Price concluded: 'Melbourne and Australia has lost something unique this week – a live TV show with passion, courage, humour and a heart. It's sad.' The Project first aired in July 2009, then known as The 7PM Project, and exceeded more than a million metro viewers at the height of its success. It first began as a half-hour program but soon transitioned into one-hour episodes as its popularity increased. Shot mostly at Network Ten's studios in The Como Centre in South Yarra, Melbourne, The Project was known for reporting on current affairs with a comedic spin. It has won several accolades of its nearly 16 years, including 11 Logie Awards - two of which were viewer-voted Gold Logies won by Aly and former host Carrie Bickmore. However, viewership began to dwindle in recent years, with Daily Mail Australia reporting in March the show was under review and set to get the axe.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Greg Davies: Full Fat Legend review – Taskmaster manchild lists his humiliations
Hold forth for two hours about your low self-worth, and you can start to look very self-involved. Is that the problem, or the point, of Greg Davies' new show? Ostensibly, Full Fat Legend poses the question 'What the hell am I?', as the Taskmaster man looks past his professional title and family roles to reveal the true Greg beneath. Practically, that means a retread of Davies' life from 1970s Shropshire via a brief teaching career and nascent celebrity, and around more adventures in poo, pee and wanking than you'd wish on anybody. You might marvel that a 57-year-old's gaze remains so directed at the navel, and below. But 12-year-old in a (very) outsized body has always been Davies' shtick. I found the fixation on bums and willies a bit much in this latest offering, perhaps because it goes on so long. But if, after six decades, Davies' sense of humour remains juvenilely self-absorbed, at least he has the good grace to acknowledge it, and the craft to often turn it to fine comic effect. See the 'face full of new freckles' image-making that accompanies one anecdote about attempting to clean his 'baggy bumhole'. That's one of several humiliating stories that demonstrate – according to Davies – that he's not, in fact, a legend, but a complete chump instead. Others include tales of sleepless life with a swollen prostate, and of 'dick-dialling' by accident a prominent government minister. We also get the explanation for why Davies turned out this way, with reference to the unreconstructed world of his youth ('It was a different time. It was an awful time'), when parental love was tough and sex education came via the Freemans lingerie catalogue. A lot of that material feels familiar, but Davies brings great gusto to its revival. Along the way, a handful of stories (one about an eccentric Irish 'animal handler'; another about Danny Dyer) de-centre Davies and his ostentatious puerility, which can come as a relief. It's a show, finally, about one manchild's struggle to get over himself, his neuroses and ego – and on this evidence, he still has some way to go. Touring until 11 April
