Last year, one man bought 100 Penguin books and loaded them into the boot of his car. It was January in Australia, so summertime. He drove around the country camping, setting up his tent beside a river, unfolding a table and laying out the books on it. The books were read, rearranged on the table, flicked through again, then tossed in a slush pile if they didn’t make the cut. ‘I knew I had an idea brewing,’ says comedian and clown Damien Warren-Smith. ‘On 1 January, I wrote in my diary: “start dreaming Penguins.” Five weeks later, I performed a work-in-progress show in Melbourne.’

That new show was Classic Penguins, where Warren-Smith slips into a penguin suit (or his birthday suit and some flippers, to be more accurate), then tries to act out every Penguin Classic novel in under an hour, performing as his alter ego, the mischievous and absurd Garry Starr. That noble (and naked) mission is designed to save books from extinction and it scored Warren-Smith the 2025 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award for Most Outstanding Show as well as Best Comedy at Adelaide Fringe. Edinburgh Fringe audiences loved it too: so much so that’s it coming back for another run. Over 130 performances of the show later, Warren-Smith is scaling things up for his new, bigger spot in the upside-down purple cow in George Square, his largest venue to date, with a capacity of more than 400.

‘I remember seeing that venue when I was a spring chicken, 20 years ago in 2005. I was at the Fringe playing a character in someone else’s play. We performed to five people a night. To do my own show now in the purple cow every night for a month is so exciting. Plus all the critics have already been in and I’m not eligible for any awards as it’s a return season, so that’s lovely!’

His 2025 Classic Penguins show will feature new scenes and, rumour has it, perhaps some added 1984, Hamlet, 100 Years Of Solitude and Wuthering Heights. Tying it all together is Garry, Warren-Smith’s high-energy, low-intelligence clown counterpart. ‘He’s a big loveable idiot. He’s incredibly ambitious; he thinks he can achieve much more than he actually can. He’s kind of me, but a few of the dials have been tweaked. The longer I play the character, the more I feel Garry is becoming like me, or I’m becoming more like him... I don’t know.’

Warren-Smith was born in Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, to an English dad and Australian mum. Not that he can remember any of his childhood in Scotland; he moved to the town of Cooma in New South Wales before his first birthday because his mum wanted a break from the dark Scottish winters. After high school, he attended drama school then the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, the legendary clown school just outside Paris where master clown and theatre professor Gaulier has also trained Sacha Baron Cohen, Roberto Benigni, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter.

Warren-Smith went on to study at Berlin’s Atelier des Mimes and spent a year touring Berlin’s cabaret circuit. That’s where a star(r) was born, and his debut solo show Garry Starr Performs Everything saw the overly zealous chump attempt to conquer all the performing arts in an hour, followed by Greece Lightning, a single-handed, silly stab at covering all of Greek mythology. ‘Clown crosses all boundaries; social and political. There can be differences of opinion on anything, but then you can come and laugh like a child at a grown adult behaving like a child. Starting out, I felt friends were doing me a favour coming to see me. Now I’ve hit a point where I really feel I’m giving something. People have got in touch to say I’ve helped them during a severe depression, or messaged me to say the show had a profound effect on them. I love that I get to give that experience to people.’

Warren-Smith, who cites Natalie Palamides, Trygve Wakenshaw, Mr Bean, Sacha Baron Cohen, Spymonkey and The Umbilical Brothers as his own contemporary clowning heroes, has hit his stride professionally. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t pay attention to feedback when it comes up. Like the time a critic from a certain List magazine gave him a two-star review for Classic Penguins. ‘It’s rare that someone really objects to the show. It was the only review I got that was less than four. I had to post about it on my social media, like “ok, so this hit well!”’ he laughs. ‘I do take it to heart. I want everyone to enjoy it. But I’ve never really had any constructive criticism where I decided I should really process it and take it onboard. With criticism, someone once said to me “either accept it, reject it, but never neglect it,” and I like that.’

If that cool reaction from The List gave Warren-Smith a brief twinge of sadness, it’s because he firmly believes that a central tenet of clowning is giving the audience what they want. In fact, that’s where the whole nudity idea came from during rehearsals for Garry Starr Performs Everything. ‘We needed to find a way to bring Garry down a peg or two. He kept winning. How could something get the better of him? He looks down his trousers and that got a big squeal from the audience. When he takes his mask off and is naked, he’s ashamed. Clown is all about vulnerability. That’s beautiful, when performers allow themselves to be seen like that.’

Warren-Smith thanks me for not making the old ‘I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on!’ joke he has heard hundreds of times. ‘My dad was a naturist. When I was a kid, we went on holidays to nudist beaches, so I’ve always been around it; nudity has never bothered me.’ And while nudity may have become an integral part of his show, personal grooming is one thing he will not be prioritising before his upcoming Fringe run.

‘I quit drinking over a year ago because of my work schedule. I stay off social media and online nonsense. I eat well, I run and stretch because this show is quite demanding. But no, I’ve not trimmed my bush in seven years. I can’t! The first time my director saw me naked onstage, he said my bush was too funny and told me I could never trim it. Plus it feels too self-aware: Garry would never have tattoos or groomed pubic hair. That’s not him. It would just be wrong!’

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins, Underbelly George Square, Wednesday 30 July–Monday 25 August, 9.30pm.