A new episode of Australian Story on ABC will focus on comedian Michelle Brasier, who you may know from her appearances on Aunty Donna.
Having recently toured the world with her acclaimed stage show Average Bear, an intimate and comical insight into her life, Brasier has embraced the uncomfortable idea that she may die young due to her family’s history of cancer deaths.
In the tour, she jokes about ‘keeping her brothers’ ashes under the sink in a zip lock sandwich bag’ and ‘getting sick of eating all the home baked lasagnas given to her family after her dad’s death’.
Brasier was once told by a doctor that she had a 97% chance of getting cancer. Her response was to ‘laugh in the face of death’. Â
‘Comedy is good friend to grief. Physiologically laughing, crying and singing are all really close, and so I’m always on the edge of one of them and I like it, I like that’ Brasier said.
On the upcoming episode of Australian Story, presented by Leigh Sales, Brasier will discuss her journey in comedy and grief, and her thoughts on discovering that genetic testing may not give her the answers she needs.
‘They say that I’m young, I have a head start,’ Brasier said. ‘And so, my body is a temple and I go to yoga and they say that I will die young. And so, I party and I do this for a job and I haven’t consolidated my super. And maybe everyone should live like me. Yoga in the morning, whisky in the evening.’
The new episode of Australian Story will premiere this Monday, 26 August, at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABCTV, ABC iview and YouTube.
