Back to School With Merrick Watts

He's a 'stand-up' guy.

This post is presented in partnership with Bankwest.

Our webseries Back to School With invites Australia's most interesting and successful people to share stories from their school days. In each ep, they let us know how they landed their dream careers, as well as how they faced all those inevitable obstacles of teenagerdom along the way.

Over five seasons, we've interviewed Jimmy Barnes, Julie Bishop, Samantha Jade, Dr. Karl, Daniel Ricciardo, Ita Buttrose, Tom Ballard, Layne Beachley, John Marsden and many, many other fascinating peeps.

But a new year brings a new season... and even more incredible Aussie stories.

In the sixth episode of Season Six, we chat with radio fave and stand-up comedian Merrick Watts. Merrick told us how he was a trouble-making "scallywag" at school, and how he managed to divert from a life of crime to become one of Australia's best loved radio presenters and comics.

"It was a very turbulent time and a lot of my friends and my friendship group were pretty nefarious. We were well known as being a bunch of crooks... I went from being kind-of interested in being naughty and fun to just being naughty. And then that just turned into criminality. It took me down the wrong path but I was able to bring that back around. But a lot of my friends crashed and burned."

Check out our chat.

Merrick is touring his first ever solo stand up comedy show Man Of The Hour. Catch him at the Brisbane Comedy Festival from March 23 – 26, the Melbourne Comedy Festival from Mar 30 – Apr 23 and the Sydney Comedy Festival from May 4 – 5. All tickets can be purchased at comedy.com.au.

Stay tuned: We'll be dropping new episodes each Tuesday. Join us as we venture back in time with another Aussie legend every week!

In the meantime, catch up with previous seasons:

Season One

Season Two

Season Three

Season Four

Season Five

You can find our Season Six archive here:

Season Six

Back to School With Season Six is presented by Bankwest. Need a bank account with student benefits? Find out more here (and remember to consider the PDS).

Photo: Student Edge.