Comedian Sam Taunton is a brave person coming back to the University of Melbourne. Last time he was here a sausage was thrown at him from a BBQ adjacent to the stage where he was preforming a stand-up gig on North Court. An event which Sam says has caused “Nam-style flashbacks” ever since.

We took a sausage into the Radio Fodder studio just in case the attacker decided to return. Since making the final of the Australian-wide comedy competition, RAW, in 2015, Sam’s rise up the ranks of comedy has been a pleasure to watch. The guy works hard. Sam has been performing 14 gigs per week in recent months, an impossible workload to fathom for most but Sam lives for comedy.

I ask him about his MTV interviews with Zac Efron and Adam Devine where he requested an apology from Efron for his Australian accent.

“I don’t think Zac was too happy with the proposal,” I tell Sam, midst laughter. Sam rolls his eyes. “Well it was a shit accent.”

His smile along with his tongue-in-cheek humour is contagious. Before he was a comedian Sam worked on a Christmas tree farm. A narrative, which Sam says, has “gone a bit crazy” to the point of MTV actually asking Sam to film segments at a Christmas tree farm. “I did one day of work!” he yells mock-angrily into the microphone. “I need to go back to do some actual Christmas tree farming labor.”

Throughout the interview I laughed so hard I genuinely hurt my neck. The doctor’s bill will be in the mail Taunts.

The hour rolls by as Sam and I discuss his worst and best gigs- what comes and goes within the comedy industry. Sam is definitely one to watch as a future star of Australian comedy. Sam hopes audiences can “expect an hour full of laughter” from his show at this year’s Melbourne international Comedy Festival- ‘Taunts Down For What’. Sam’s festival show is a must see for anyone looking for a relatable comic to the young people of the University. We can hardly wait, with sausage-clad hands, to attend Sam’s show for an evening of laughter at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

‘Taunts Down For What’ runs throughout the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tickets from ticketmaster.com.*