HISTORY
His story begins in Sydney, Australia, where he was born on 23 August 1974. His family moved around a lot. Joe was always the new kid on the block having attended four primary schools and three high schools. He was a very shy child and found it hard to make new friends. Instead of throwing himself into new friendships Avati would instead sit back and observe the world around him. Little did he know that doing this would train and mould his mind into the mind of a great comedian. When Joe was about 9 years old he saw a television documentary on The Beatles. He was fixated from that moment on in pursuing fame. In keeping with his desire to become famous he taught himself to play the piano and guitar and wrote songs. At school he finished with a composition major. He wanted to be a popstar. His idol was George Michael. Even though he never made it as a popstar he did eventually become famous.
But it didn’t always seem that it was going to happen. Since he was a self taught musician he didn’t make it to the conservatorium of music. His parents persuaded him to get a real job and so he turned his back on music abandoning the dream of one day becoming a mega star.
His second love was science and so in 1992 he was accepted into University studying Food Science. He applied himself the same way as he did his music and finished with a distinction average winning accolades along the way and eventually securing himself an honors scholarship. Joe’s first job out of university was at Streets Ice Cream being part of the team that brought the Magnum ice cream to Australia.
While the desire to become famous had almost distinguished itself there was a small flame still burning in the back of his mind. One of his fellow uni mates, Carlos Tapia, noticed that Joe had a great sense of humour and encouraged him to go to a try out night at Sydney’s Original Comedy Store. That he did. It was Tuesday 11 July 1995 when he first stepped out on stage to perform 5 minutes of stand up on try out night. Within 6 months he had been given his first paid spot. He could see that, through comedy, he could now achieve his dream of being famous.
While Joe was performing comedy at the Comedy Clubs around Sydney and Melbourne he was asked to perform in front of a mainly Italian audience. He took this opportunity to perform part of his act in the Italian dialect of Calabrese. No one had ever seen or heard anything like it and his unique brand of bilingual stand up was an instant hit with the audience. He was then inundated with requests to perform at Italian functions in and around Sydney and Melbourne. Each time he did he would add more and more to his repertoire until such a time that he had enough material to tour a one man show. He did this in September 1999. He recorded his first album ‘Livin La Dolce Vita’ on the 10th September 1999 and released it on 19 January 2000 in Melbourne and within months of the release he was touring to packed houses around the country becoming a household name in Australia’s large Italian community. At the same time internet file sharing programs were just taking off. He was in the right place at the right time and via the now defunct Napster program his comedy spread around the world making him a household name in the large Italian communities in Canada, the USA and the UK and technically making him an Internet millionaire, at the tender age of 27.
Over the years Joe has successfully made the cross over to mainstream audiences thanks to his appearances in the hugely successful stage show IL DAGO and other shows such as ‘IL DAGO II’, Comicus Erectus’‘ and ‘The Good The Bad and The Ethnic’ which he also produced. Watch Joe perform in IL DAGO here. His body of work is enormous for a comedian his age having released 5 CD’s and 5 DVD’s of his own by his mid 30’s. In 2012 he released a 5 DVD Box Set containing his entire collection aptly named ‘Joe Avati The Ultimate Collection’. In a nice twist in 2009 he came full circle having been asked to co host a show called Food Investigators whereby he jovially talked about the science of food. Food Investigators went on to be sold into 42 countries around the world.
Joe Avati spends about 9 months of the year touring the globe both as a performer and as a producer. In 2013 he produced and starred in the hugely successful stage show The Good The Bad and The Ethnic as well as starring in and co producing A Very Woggy Xmas which will play in late 2013.
In 2014 Joe will tour The Good The Bad and The Ethnic in Perth and will resume his world tour performing in the United Kingdom and The United States.
