“You’ll get your content” is the motto scrawled across the promo image for the Raglan Fetish Show, a one-man show featuring Patrick Downlow, Esq. that features lipsync, transgression, spoken word poetry, audience participation and cursed images… all at once.

Is that a promise or a threat? Seesaw caught up with Patrick Downlow Esq. (AKA writer/performer Nick Morlet) to find out more about this unusual character and his show.

Seesaw: When did you first know that you wanted to be an artist?
Patrick Downlow Esq.: It was maybe 2009 when I realised that, for the most part, lay people simply don’t have the time or wherewithal to furnish themselves with the kind of content they truly deserve. I was at my office viewing footage an associate had sent me of a migrating herd of critically endangered Saiga antelope when it occurred to me that I’m in a position to really help others, in ways they never knew they needed help to begin with.

S: Did you do formal training, learn on-the-job, or a bit of both?
PD: I suppose it could be said I’ve been training all my life… from my childhood spent in the attic amongst the mouldering stacks of Nat Geos and Women’s Weeklies, to that first CRT monitor and the widening world of screen-based content it brought into our home.

I digress, or rather, regress. My on-the-job training started really at my first journalism job, reviewing local film festivals and gallery openings but I consider my true inception as an artist to be when I opened my first content dissemination firm in 2004. From there it was just a matter of realising my ultimate path, to become the person I am today.

S: Describe your artistic practice…
PD: There are, in essence, two pathways open to people who are interested in soliciting my services: the first, one-on-one coaching wherein I not only expose people to content that I, through a rigorous period of research, find most appropriate but also! divulge to them my patented methods and means of content procurement. This is, of course, not comprehensive of my entire practice but is certainly more in-depth than your usual sub-Reddit listing or Instagram exposé.

The second is geared more towards group sessions and this is what I will be showcasing in my debut Fringe performance, the Raglan Fetish Show. Both multi-modal and interdisciplinary in focus, the show takes the guise of a conventionally presentational one-man act, but certain technical and, let’s say, attitudinal aspects of the production will impress upon the audience that what they see is meta-content at the bleeding edge, a “22nd-century TedX talk” so to speak.

S: What do you love most about what you do?
PD: Just the very particular, very special way an under-occupied individual’s dull face lights up when they see an example of especially good content, for what must feel like the first time in their lives.

S: What made you decide to give Fringe World a whirl?
PD: People are at Fringe for one thing, and one thing only: content. Whether or not they get the best is up to them but I feel I can help raise awareness, so that audiences can best decide where to put their valuable selves. In other words, I saw a niche, I filled a niche. Now, as they say, all there is to do is to sit back and wait for the kudos to roll in.

S: What is your favourite playground equipment?
PD: The large web-like climbing apparatuses, found, for example, on the Freo esplanade.

The ‘Raglan Fetish Show’ plays Paper Mountain 12-17 February, 2018.