References

• La Dole-Cheque Vita Joe Avati's first one man show 'La Dole-Cheque Vita' is now officially the most successful Italo-Australian show in Australia's history drawing over 60,000 fans to his show in little over 6 months. In some cities and towns the shows sold out before the posters were put up and in Melbourne the first four shows sold out in two hours. No Australian artist of Italian origin, past or present, has been able to re-ignite the passion of being Italian as Joe Avati has. The parents of many Italo-Australian children have been trying in vain to get their kids to speak, or at least, take an interest in their Italian heritage. And now because of Joe Avati they do! Teachers of Italian all over the country are frustrated with their pupils, who, instead of answering questions in 'proper' Italian, respond in the same style as Joe Avati would half in English half in Italian.
• Joe Avati While Joe was performing comedy at the Comedy Clubs around Sydney and Melbourne he was asked to perform in front of a mainly Italian audience. He took this opportunity to perform part of his act in the Italian dialect of Calabrese. No one had ever seen or heard anything like it and his unique brand of bilingual stand up was an instant hit with the audience. He was then inundated with requests to perform at Italian functions in and around Sydney and Melbourne. Each time he did he would add more and more to his repertoire until such a time that he had enough material to tour a one man show. He did this in September 1999. He recorded his first album 'Livin La Dolce Vita' on the 10th September 1999 and released it on 19 January 2000 in Melbourne and within months of the release he was touring to packed houses around the country becoming a household name in Australia’s large Italian community. At the same time internet file sharing programs were just taking off. He was in the right place at the right time and via the now defunct Napster program his comedy spread around the world making him a household name in the large Italian communities in Canada, the USA and the UK and technically making him an Internet millionaire, at the tender age of 27.