Comedian and singer-songwriter Tim Minchin opens up about his family, the loss of his beloved mum Ros to blood cancer, and why he never reads his own reviews
It’s been 20 years since Australian comedian Tim Minchin first registered on British radars with his award-winning Edinburgh show Darkside, a mix of comedy songs, political jokes and poignant, witty reflections on his own life, all played barefoot at his piano.
Since then the Northampton-born musician has written and starred in the Netflix drama Upright, released six albums of his work and created the critically acclaimed musical Matilda – inspired by the Roald Dahl book – which, in 2025, celebrates 15 years of West End success.
It has won seven Olivier awards and four Tonys and is about to start a second UK and Ireland tour with a new cast.
Now about to turn 50, and having re-recorded an album of his old songs, Tim is in a reflective mood. While he is tired after finishing a 33-gig UK tour this summer, he feels happier than ever getting to do what he loves.
But the last two years have had challenges. Tim lost his mum Ros in 2023 after a three-year battle with blood cancer. He performed in Sydney hours after she died, having spent as much time with her as he could in her final months.
“I’m a deeply pragmatic person, I’m quite emotionally intelligent and I’m a reasonable observer of both my own and other people’s emotions, so your mum dies, and that’s like one of the rules,” he says.
“If you’re lucky, she goes before you. If she dies at 74 like mine, we’re lucky to have had her that long.
“But sometimes I feel like she’s missing all of this, as she would have loved to see her grandkids getting older. “
He laughingly describes his children, Violet and Caspar as “pretty different and cats, my kids”. The teenagers, who he shares with childhood sweetheart Sarah, feature in some of his songs – Lullaby, which he wrote when Violet was a sleep-dodging baby, carries the immortal line, ‘When is rocking rocking, and when is it shaking?’
“We really struggled with her. She liked being rocked, but it was like, ‘is this alright? I’m throwing this kid around,'” he laughs.
Family is so important to Tim, who lives with wife Sarah in Sydney when he’s not travelling. His dad David came to the UK for Tim’s recent tour and the Minchins have a novel way of keeping in touch: by reporting their daily exercise to each other.
“Although Dad’s been grieving, he’s also been like, well, I don’t have long, I’d better travel,” says Tim. “We’re very close, my family, my three siblings and me. We are all talking, all the time.”
When he’s not writing new lyrics or recording – his new album TimMinchinTimeMachine is a look back at 20 years’ worth of his favourite songs – Tim stays off social media and 24-hour news.
“I was on Twitter in the early days, and I think once some troll said something, and I slapped them down,” he recalls. “And all my fans piled on this person and I just went, ‘I will never do that again’.
“I can’t believe that in 2025, people still set their dogs on each other. After Trump and Brexit happened, I got out of Twitter, I just went, ‘this is horrible, toxic’. Now I’m off everything. I had to go cold turkey, I was completely addicted.”
In his free time, Tim reads books and checks the news every three days or so to keep away from the dreaded doomscrolling. “It’s this perpetual humankind panic, as if none of this stuff’s ever happened before. I can’t be happy and have all that stuff [in my head]. Now I’m trying to teach my kids the same thing,” he says.
The same mentality extends to his critics – he refuses to read reviews of shows, knowing a single criticism would make him spiral.
“I’m just too fragile. And I’m not ashamed of that – you have to be, to do what I do. You have to be open-hearted,” he says.
“I have confidence in my work now. A long time ago I thought, ‘who do I listen to? I’m not like anyone else.’ [Anything I read about myself ] is in my head the next day when I go on stage. And that’s just no good to me, because to do what I do requires a massive leap, almost like a suspension of disbelief.
“The person that I am when I walk on stage is a person completely confident, to have up to 7,000 people hanging on my every word,” he says. “And that is not who I always feel like. Sometimes it feels impossible.”
