Three things with Nat’s What I Reckon: ‘Losing my lung was a real kick in the guts’
Nat’s What I Reckon is a different kind of celebrity cook. On his YouTube channel, the Sydney-based personality dispenses no-nonsense recipes for dishes such as spaghetti bolognese, chicken wings and nachos. His hair is long, his face pierced, his arms tattooed and his advice to budding home chefs littered with profanities.
It’s proven a winning recipe. Nat has amassed almost half a million subscribers on YouTube and has parlayed his online following into a series of cookbooks, in addition to his career as a standup comedian.
When he’s not on stage or in the kitchen, Nat also plays in bands. He counts his most cherished possession as an electric guitar he had to search far and wide for. Here, he tells us about that very special purchase, a simple item that’s helped him through life – and the organ he lost along the way.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
Without hesitation or consideration for my own safety, I would stop, drop and roll down stairs, wrapped in a wet duvet, to my Dunable R2 v2 guitar.
If you’ve ever seen Wayne’s World, you’ll know the scene where Wayne stares through the music shop window and sees his dream Fender Strat in a protective glass case. He presses desperately against the window and exclaims, “It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!”
That’s more or less me, except I’d never seen one for sale in Australia or even played one – I just knew I needed to shred this legendary axe someday. Painfully, for years all I could do was check online to see if any were in stock in Australia (there weren’t) and I resorted instead to watching endless videos of people playing them and thinking, “Damnit, it will never be mine.”
A Black Friday sale years later would change all of this. The gates of rock’n’roll opened and after a brutal exchange rate and months of shipping time, I opened the case to my very own R2 v2. I swear a beam of light came from inside the case – though that may have also just been the lethally bright summer sun in Botany reflecting off the pickguard. Hard to say.
All I remember is picking it up and holding it with this feeling of pure joy. I raced home to plug it in and found that, holy shit, this thing fucken wails – pure shred perfection. It is the goddamn best fucking guitar I’ve played in my life and I’m never letting it go.
My most useful object
I’m going to sound fairly ridiculous here, but it’s hands down my wallet chain – a stainless steel chain connecting a wallet I barely use to my belt loop. I have been made fun of for wearing one for more than 25 years now and am not going to give it up anytime soon just because you think it looks silly.
I saw an older kid wearing a wallet chain at a skate park when I was a kid and immediately thought he was the coolest person I’d ever seen. I was 11, I think, and I had no idea how to find one. The only way I knew how to make one was to go to the pet shop, buy a choker chain for a dog and use a keyring to link it to a clasp.
I’ve made hundreds of chains since, and now, in my 30s, I have a fleet of them. The reason it’s so useful to me is because it simply makes me look and feel more like myself. And that rules.
Related: How to cook a share-house dinner: Nat’s What I Reckon’s dishes to learn before leaving home
The item I most regret losing
My lung. Of all the things I’ve lost over the years (and I’ve lost a lot), having to lose my upper left lobe was a real kick in the guts. Tuberculosis is a cheeky dickhead that likes to occasionally pinch functional organs from you.
I liked to breathe in silly things as a young man, so I didn’t exactly look after my lungs. When I was diagnosed with TB, it didn’t look great in terms of keeping both lungs after one collapsed. It’s been bittersweet in some regards, to try to put a positive spin on it. But after it was removed, I did manage to immediately kick the durries and, as an added benefit, simultaneously missed out on the vape craze.
Breathing is something I think I took for granted. I can gladly say now I am at full lung capacity from looking after myself better and the privilege of healthcare.
Nat’s What I Reckon’s comedy show, Hot Dogs Probably Aren’t Real, plays at the Sydney comedy festival on 10 May, Perth comedy festival on 11 May and Brisbane comedy festival on 17 & 18 May.
