Jimmy Rees KIDDING AROUND

THIS DAD IS STAYING GROUNDED WHILE HIS CAREER TAKES OFF

- Naomi Toy

It would be easy to paint comedian Jimmy Rees as an accidental star of the pandemic – the children’s entertainer who pulled together a funny video or two stuck them on YouTube and found overnight success. But to do that would be to sell Rees short. Like countless other instant sensations, the 35-year-old has been working for a while.

For 10 years he was Jimmy Giggle, a regular feature in the lounge rooms of anyone with young children as he laughed and sang along with his owl puppet mate Hoot and other assorted friends on the ABC show, Giggle, and Hoot. His wide appeal to young and old saw him recruited to Seven’s Dancing with the Stars in 2019. He did Carols by Candlelight, toured a live stage version of his show, and in 2020 was set to tour nationally to farewell the TV series (although it lives on thanks to daily repeats) when the pandemic hit and production – not to mention his livelihood – was cancelled. But like many who found their plans ripped up by the new rules written in lockdowns and isolation, Rees was able to take the tilt at comedy he’d been eyeing off for a while.

“I thought, ‘This is my chance,’” he tells WHO from his home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. “I thought, ‘I have to try it.’ I was now free of the ABC contract. I’d been writing down ideas that I thought were funny because comedy was always my next focus, but I was never really allowed to do it, which was cool, I loved my job, but now all of these things aligned. There was a lockdown and I had nothing to do, and I thought, ‘If this isn’t the time then I don’t know what is.’”