Lardner, who next week shares the stage at Sydney's Giant Dwarf with a number of Australia's top comedians for Comedyish, recalls her own experience working on a "hot mess" with Foxtel's Comedy Channel. "It had too much money behind it, and Foxtel is just poison for comedy. It was the biggest comedic failure I've been involved with," says Lardner. "When you're forced to be creative, which is how young people have to be because we have barely any money, things turn out way better because it's interesting and we're not the same 10 50-year-old white dudes they've been hiring since Full Frontal." Among local comedians, there's a lingering resentment around the axing of ABC's Tonightly and, more recently, Ten's short-sighted canning of Saturday Night Rove, two shows that offered up-and-coming comic talent a mainstream spotlight. "Becky and I were the last people interviewed by Rove on that show, which I believe was a childhood dream for both of us. And it came true, but at what cost?" laughs comic Cameron James.

James, who produces sketch comedy for SBS's The Feed each week, says such opportunities are limited. "It seems the only way a comedian gets on TV in this country is on a game show or a quiz show or a guest panel spot. There's very little opportunity for people to just be funny for funny's sake... My rally cry to the Australian industry is give us some shows and let us just make Australia laugh again." Comedian Cameron James. Credit:Comedyish Comedian Matt Okine, who cultivated a stand-up career into a Triple J breakfast hosting gig and successful Stan series The Other Guy, says a comedy career like Carl Barron's, for example – an arena-selling act borne from "about six appearances on The Footy Show" – couldn't happen today. "That guy has sold the most tickets out of any Australian comedian in ages just based on a weekly show that gave comedians a chance, and we don't have that at the moment and it's a real shame," says Okine.

"We talk a lot about Australians making a name overseas, but it's only because that's where the opportunities are." Loading The commercial networks' ignorance is particularly egregious considering the rising crop of local comics are a diverse group in terms of queer and ethnic representation, says Lardner. "Even looking at just me, Rhys, Hannah, we're all queers, and Becky's a very forthright and righteous woman. It's people who've had to work freaking hard to get to this point, and whose perspectives are interesting because we're so different." So do local comedians need to head overseas to push their careers to the next level? Is there a shallow ceiling on what can be achieved here?