“I mean, everyone wishes they could just wander through life without having any self reflection or self awareness and just blunder from one catastrophe to another, but it’s by acknowledging mistakes that you grow and change, or at least cement down what you think is right and what you think is wrong… If you expect nothing more than shit, that’s cynicism. But if you go, ‘come on, aren’t we better than this shit?’ That’s hope.”

So what’s ‘Misanthropology’ all about, then?

“The idea behind ‘Misanthropology’,” Perfect explains, “was to look at humans and the nature of humans and the evolution of humans over time in terms of where we might be going. It’s a subject I’ve always been really interested in, because it’s an irrefutable fact that humans are just one species on the planet and yet our elevated sense of importance kind of gives me the shits on a day to day level.  There seems to be this sort of self adoration and adulation with humans about how amazing we are. ‘Ooooh, we’ve invented fire, and look at us flying through the air and look at my amazing mobile phone.’

“My partner, Lucy, and I often amuse ourselves with how kind of stupid and short sighted we are and how humans have an immense capacity for failure and disorganisation. (I thought) it would be funny to look at all those negatives about humans with the view that if we can laugh about our failings then maybe we can do something about addressing them.  Because I don’t think we even really acknowledge them very much.”

The show – written in two and a half months between his ‘Offspring’ commitments – will see Perfect return to the Powerhouse.

“The first time I performed in Brisbane, it was at the Powerhouse,” he remembers. “It was part of the Brisbane Cabaret Festival.  I’m not really a big one for doing cabaret festivals - I find the whole cabaret thing a little bit weird - but I was like, ‘hey, a free ticket to Brisbane, let’s do that.’ I was in my early 20s. Tim Minchin was playing piano for me at that stage. 

“So there was this gala and the whole Powerhouse was full of people and this guy at a table called me a faggot, right?  And I remember thinking, ‘this is really odd, this guy is at a fucking cabaret convention and he’s calling me a faggot?’  It was a very odd situation.  I was wedged between the fucking Liza Minnelli impersonation and the Barbra Streisand impersonation and I’m gay?  You’re sitting here watching this and I’m in the green room drinking beer.

“I’ve been yelled at quite a bit.  It used to freak me out.  The problem with satire is that if people don’t grant you the license that you’re operating on a satirical level, well, they just think you’re the singing Hitler. I find that really difficult because you can’t actually argue with them because you’re just going, ‘you’re fundamentally wrong, you just don’t get what I’m talking about.’

“They’re missing a key component of the way you’re communicating and there’s no way you can fix that for them.  Like, I had an older gent come to my show and say, ‘I really enjoyed your show, but I found there’s a song in there which is about non-consensual sex…’

“There was a song called ‘No Means No Except When It Means I Love You’, which is all about all the loopholes in terms of consent. It was so obviously satirical and this guy says, ‘I didn’t like that song, I thought it was really sexist.’  I was like, fuck, what the hell do you say to that?  You go, ‘right, right, actually you’re wrong, you’re just wrong.’  

“But he goes, ‘oh, but I like the show.’  And you go, ‘how could you fucking like the show? You didn’t understand it. What did you like about it?’”

‘Misanthropology’ plays at Brisbane Powerhouse from July 20-23.