Kirsty Webeck

Canberra, Taiwan, and a five-minute set

Webeck came to comedy late and sideways. She spent six years in Taiwan before returning to Australia and a job in a government department that did not suit her; as she told RNZ's Culture 101 in September 2024, the dissatisfaction produced something close to an epiphany and she enrolled in a comedy course. That course ended, in 2013, with a five-minute set. Most people treat that as the first rung of a very long ladder.

She did not. Instead of years of open mics, she went straight at a full-length show, using the public relations skills from her old career to sell more than a hundred tickets to her first major performance in her home town of Canberra. The approach set the pattern for everything since: she has generally been better served by booking a room and filling it than by waiting to be discovered. Melbourne became her base, and the Australian festival circuit — Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra — became the spine of her year.

Clean by instinct rather than rule

Webeck is routinely described as a clean comedian, a label she has neither chased nor resisted. Speaking to RNZ, she explained that avoiding swearing and explicit material was not entirely a decision; it followed from her natural pull towards observational comedy and from finding the humour in ordinary situations. She also described a specific technique for winning over a room of strangers: opening a show by handing the audience personal information about herself before asking anything of them.

The material is personal without being confessional in the way the current circuit often rewards. She is openly gay, and told Fuse Magazine that she does not talk a great deal about being queer on stage, preferring to work in broad brushstrokes about things she thinks anyone could recognise. Her stated aim, in the same interview, is modest and consistent with the act: to make people feel better and give them a nice escape for an hour.

Critics have been picking up the same quality for years. The Age, writing in 2021, said a promoter would need a heart of concrete to resist her; the Sydney Morning Herald in 2023 called her consistently enjoyable and impossible to dislike. Neither is the sort of notice that builds a cult, but both point at why she keeps getting booked to open galas.

Television, galas and three recorded hours

The screen credits are broad rather than deep in any one show. She has appeared on Tonightly with Tom Ballard, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, The Project, Today Extra, SBS's Celebrity Letters and Numbers, seasons two to four of the ABC's Question Everything, New Zealand's 7 Days, Channel Ten's Just For Laughs and Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee. Gala work has been steady: the Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the Oxfam Gala in 2024 and again in 2026, the opening galas of the Sydney and Perth comedy festivals, Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow tours, and a set at the Falls Festival in Byron Bay. She has also been a regular on ABC Radio's Thank God It's Friday.

Three solo hours exist in recorded form. Silver Linings, her first, was released on Paramount+ in November 2022 and later appeared on ABC iview. Two more — I'll Be The Judge Of That and Everything I Need To Say About Sea Creatures — she put on YouTube to watch for nothing, which is a deliberate distribution choice rather than a fallback.

New Zealand has become a second home market. She made her New Zealand International Comedy Festival debut in 2024 and toured I'll Be The Judge of That there from 25 to 28 September that year, playing Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North and Christchurch.

Sea creatures, and a job outside comedy

The 2025 hour, Everything I Need To Say About Sea Creatures, is the clearest statement of what she does with an obsession. It was built around marine life — octopuses using tools, fish being punched for no good reason — and it debuted at Perth's FRINGE WORLD in 2025, where it collected one of the festival's weekly Best Comedy awards. Fringefeed called it a sidesplitting masterpiece; Blackguard Media wrote that it cemented her status as one of Australia's most loveable and reliable comedians. It then ran at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival before a national tour.

The subject matter was not a bit. In 2025 Webeck was appointed an ambassador for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, and she has been open about folding ocean protection into the work rather than keeping the two separate.

Lost For Words, and a camera in October

Lost For Words is the 2026 show and the one currently on sale. Webeck told Fuse Magazine it runs on loose themes rather than a single thesis: artificial intelligence, environmentalism, and her eight-year relationship with her partner. The reviews from its first run are the strongest of her career so far — five stars from Fringefeed, whose critic reported that their cheeks hurt from laughing and called her a compelling storyteller who is hilariously clever in her set, and four and a half from The Perth Diary, which described it as smart, warm and genuinely funny without being mean-spirited or cynical.

The touring has been relentless and spread across every kind of room. Sydney got it at the Carousel Bar and Ballroom in Darlinghurst on 17 July 2026; Canberra got an encore in Street One at The Street Theatre on 30 May as part of the Canberra Comedy Festival, a single night at $38 standard and $35 concession. The October run takes in Meeniyan on the 9th, a Melbourne warm-up on the 12th, a work-in-progress hour billed as I Hope This Is Funny in Brisbane on the 16th, encores in Newcastle on the 17th and Sydney on the 18th, and Perth on the 23rd for the Side Splitter Comedy Festival. A regional New South Wales stretch follows in November: Narooma on the 14th, then Mudgee, Dubbo, Orange and Bathurst from the 17th to the 20th.

The date that matters most is 22 October 2026, when Lost For Words is being filmed at The Toff in Melbourne, with doors at 6.30pm. It is listed as sold out on her own ticketing page, which is why the 12 October Melbourne show exists as a warm-up. Assuming the recording lands where the last two did, the hour will end up free on YouTube. The show is also listed to return to Perth's FRINGE WORLD, presented by KEG Touring and rated M, after her 2025 debut there.