We got to this week’s Meet the Author evening early, and found the author, Shaun Micallef, signing books, so I bought a copy and got in line. When it came to my turn, I told him that only he could get me to read a book about vampires, to which he answered, teasingly but also seriously, that if I hadn’t read Bram Stoker et al, I wouldn’t get the in-jokes. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to take my chances. Hopefully the book, De’Ath takes a holiday, can stand on its own. Described as “the origin story of the first real vampyre (not Dracula)”, it’s a comedic, satiric romp through history – with deeper meanings for those who care to find them.

For non-Aussies, Shaun Micallef is a loved comedian, actor, writer, and host of satirical news comedy on television. Ben Elton, says the book’s blurb, has described him as “perhaps Australia’s finest satirist”. Adam Shirley, who conducted the conversation, is an investigative reporter and radio presenter for our local ABC.

As always, Colin Steele did the introductions. Indeed, he introduced the book so well, including describing it as a backdoor satire on how things operate, that the participants suggested we could all go home – or, go back outside and buy books! However, fortunately for us, they soldiered on …

The conversation

Adam started by describing Shaun as one of our “sharpest minds and funniest people” which drew the immediate quip, “did you interview Tony Abbott?” (Australians will understand the allusion.)

Adam then picked up Colin’s metaphor idea, and gave his metaphorical reading of the book as a timeless tale about a billionaire tech bro. Shaun agreed that it is fundamentally about human labour as capital wealth.

The conversation then turned to his experience of writing the book – more like a marathon than the sprint of TV – and a discussion about optimism versus hope. Referencing the Pandora myth, Shaun said he prefers optimism to hope (which was left in the box!) He is optimistic that things will turn around, but his book is more about how we got to today.

On comedy, reading, his inspirations

Adam asked him about his interest in comedy, in reading, and his inspirations. The book’s narrative style harks back to the 1892 book, The diary of a nobody, by brothers George and Weedon Grossmith. This book, which I too loved in my teens, starts from the conceit that everyone writes a diary (which drew a brief discussion about people’s use of social media, today, to communicate – if not, perform – their lives). Shaun also loved Robert Louis Stevenson’s The wrong box. He loves the language, the circumlocution, what he described as “luxuriating in language”. Shaun talked about his early difficulties with reading, but once he cracked the code – that you could read in clumps, in lines – he was off.

Adam and Shaun talked a bit about comedy. Shaun loved comedy from a young age. It’s the thing that occupies his mind, and is almost more fun when it doesn’t work. He enjoys analysing why. He loves the tension between when a joke comes out of the mouth and the laugh. You don’t get that immediate response when you write a book.

What then was enjoyable about writing the book? It was having time, and using the same muscles but in a different way. It can be lonely, but the world building is fun. He hears voices of his characters in his head. He also had fun emulating the style of writers he admires, like Oscar Wilde in the blood transfusion scene!

On zombies and other subjects

Adam, who later described himself as Team Zombie, asked whether they are the unacknowledged heroes of the book. Not exactly, but the book is about human labour being the foundation of capital wealth, and zombies do prove to be better workers than vampires (for reasons that are made clear in the book). The book’s protagonist, the Comte De’Ath, shares his ideas about labour with Henry Ford who takes them back to America. Today’s corporations are modern-day vampires – immortal, with no empathy.

At this point Adam read a small excerpt referencing the zombies …

Left to their own devices and without anyone to tell them what they could and couldn’t do, the zombies fell to cooperating with each other and creating a society. (p. 150)

… and asked Shaun about his thoughts on authority. Shaun is always interested in authority, specifically in the idea that if you have strength you should lean on someone, and are weak if you don’t. In this novel, he looks at thinking about strength and might, and its role in the world. The novel’s narrator, Roger Bracegirdle, is on a journey in which he learns what life is (which the Comte can’t do because he is immortal).

On Shaun, now

Shaun admitted that he was burnt out by the time Mad as Hell ended. He “stepped off the train” to give space to younger, more diverse authors. Describing his Origin Odyssey, he suggested he has entered his Michael Palin era; he is interested in telling more serious stories, like his current TV show on gambling. If there’s value in his holding the microphone, he’d like to do it. Shaun admires Palin, whom he has met a couple of times, and who, like all the Pythons, listens and is generous with his time. Terry Jones, he shared, once described a book as having the author sitting on your shoulder, whispering into your ear.

Concerning the book and his expectations, Shaun would like people to laugh – even if they laugh at different things. It’s a comedy, and if people find the deeper strata or message, that’s good too. As to whether he needs affirmation that the book is good, Shaun admitted that he’s a performer so needy! He talked about doing the audiobook version, himself, and searching for the right voice for his protagonist, Comte De’Ath. Alan Rickman? Jeremy Irons? He treated us to a recitation of lines from TS Eliot’s Ash Wednesday in a Jeremy Irons voice – and asked if we knew what “The infirm glory of the positive hour” meant!

As for his own reading, Shaun reads books about comedy and books by comedians on their journeys. He likes books that offer little signposts to navigate your own life. We write, he says, to make sense of what has happened.

Adam returned to his tech-bro metaphor, and to the spectre of AI, which he suggested is inevitable. Shaun’s not so sure! He said you can feel the humanity in Chaplin’s films, less so in modern Marvell films say, with their artificially created special effects. Speech is thought, he argued, but all AI does is talk. There’s a difference. (At this point he did one of the best Trump impersonations I’ve seen.)

Shaun is not on social media, not glued to his devices, and definitely not a fan of AI, which he sees as “cravenly Uriah Heap-ish”. This made me laugh given my recent interactions with Chat GPT and its determinedly positive responses.

Q & A

There weren’t many questions from the audience, so the Q&A included questions from Adam interspersed with audience questions.

On whether AI can be useful as an adjunct to human thinking and creativity: Shaun would not let AI into the room, but admitted that he was 63, and had “brought the shutters down on everything” when he was 45.

On whether we can take the Gothic seriously: Shaun doesn’t think they did. Gothic is funny. It can be both parodied and loved. Anything that handles that and survives is worth considering. I was interested in Shaun’s aside around here that he sometimes thinks it’s a pity that spareness of language is taking hold. Gothic is over the top – and fun – but I think there’s a place for both approaches to writing.

On whether our civility is just a front: Shaun recognises that at heart we are transactional. We decide how to relate to people depending on how we feel about them.

On whether humour is an antidote or answer to our troubles: Shaun believes the best laughs are those in which we recognise ourselves. However, he doesn’t think satire is enough if you really want change. The “soft revolution of representational democracy” is more the way.

Finally…

The vote of thanks for this most entertaining evening was given by Canberra’s queen of horror (and more), Kaaron Warren. She was the perfect pick for the job. As she knows, writing horror well – turning human fears into meaning, mixing humour and horror – is hard. But, horror is the genre of metaphor, meaning you can sneak in a message. Micallef made her laugh, and think, and creeped her out. What more could you want!

ANU/The Canberra Times Meet the Author
MC: Colin Steele
Lowitja O’Donoghue Cultural Centre, Australian National University
25 May 2026