Nat’s What I Reckon

Comedian, rock musician, mental health advocate and award-winning, best-selling author Nat’s What I Reckon had been creating online content for close to a decade when his early 2020 isolation cooking content rocketed the channel to a new level – blowing up an existing fan base already in the hundreds of thousands to a global following now over five million.

Coupled with hilarious social commentary, Nat’s sweary message of kindness and inclusivity and open sharing of his mental health struggles has resonated with champions the world over, earning him a staggering half a billion+ views on his videos.

Nat’s love for taking the playful piss had seen him riff on everything from trade shows and tattoo events to burnout festivals and exploring “the wrong” Area 51, when in response to the craziness he was seeing at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic Nat declared war against processed food.

Unable to bear continually seeing pasta jar-sauce shelves picked clean by hoarders while fresh produce sections were bursting with untouched fruit & veg, Nat launched a video featuring one of his one of his own favourite home-cooked pasta sauce recipes. With his classic sweary style and signature spin and whistle the clip rapidly took Nat to a new level of viral. This new pivot for the channel saw Nat’s audience expand exponentially and win him A-list fans including Courtney Act, Dave Grohl, Yael Stone and frequent collaborator Briggs – but most importantly, successfully got people into the kitchen and away from packaged meals.

Nat with his co-creator, designer and producer Julia Gee as equal partners in the channel have used their platform to hold a tongue-in-cheek mirror up to antiquated culture norms and societal politics, delighting in unveiling irony and making light of how strange everyday life can be. As Nat told The Guardian, “I’ve always made fun of that narrow-minded boofhead thing. The trade-show reviews I did were all about sticking it to boys’ clubs. Boats, burnouts, that kind of shit.”

Nat’s open and honest approach to sharing his mental health struggles has been an important part of his platform since the early days. With an aim of destigmatising the experience by encouraging conversation and using his wit to give fellow sufferers a laugh, Nat has thoughtfully reviewed mental health for a popular ‘Is It Sh*t?’ segment on the channel, served as an ambassador for The Big Anxiety Festival and has shared his experiences for Stand-up For Mental Health on ABC TV. By openly sharing his own battle with anxiety and depression, Nat’s positive impact on the mental health of millions of people cannot be underestimated. In 2022 he took on an ambassadorship role for Beyond Blue’s inaugural Big Blue Table alongside former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and MasterChef sensation Julie Goodwin, wildly exceeding campaign expectations and leading to an invitation to continue the role in 2023.

Nat’s 2020 live solo comedy debut, the On Purpose tour was a sell-out success, adding shows to the tour and comedy festivals across Australia to meet demand, as well as two shows filmed to packed, sold-out houses at 6am and 10am in Sydney and live-streamed to the UK and Canada in the first real-time streamed lockdown events of their kind globally. Writing and performing a new live show each year to critical and audience acclaim, 2023 marked Nat’s international touring debut, with shows in Aotearoa New Zealand, England, Scotland and Ireland.

He is the author of four bestselling books, all published by Penguin Random House. The first, Un-cook Yourself: A Ratbag’s Rules for Life, an “unhelpful self-help guide”, went straight to the #1 Bestsellers spot on both Booktopia and Book Depository on pre-orders alone. The 25 recipe illustrated cookbook Death To Jar Sauce: Rad Recipes For Champions debuted at #2 on Booktopia immediately on announcement, swiftly going on to take out the top spot in the charts in just a week. And Life: What Nat to Do – Nat’s “hot take on the advice you never asked for” was also an immediate and acclaimed best-seller, once again taking Nat straight to number #2 on the Booktopia charts on release.

All three were shortlisted at the Australian Book Industry Awards and Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Book Award, with both Un-cook Yourself and Death to Jar Sauce winning the Booktopia Award. Nat has donated all of the winning proceeds to Beyond Blue.

Most recently, Smash Hits Recipes once again went straight to the Booktopia charts on announcement and received a FAB awards nomination. Continuing in the famous comic strip style from his previous books, this amazing hardback book includes 45 of Nat’s all-time best recipes and with advice on the most useful items to have in your pantry promises to be his biggest selling title to date.

Due to Nat’s claim that he’s shit at trivia, he wanted to create a game that everyone has a 50/50 chance of winning, and so the Yeah Nah Game was born, with Imagination Games announced they were relasing the Nat’s What I Reckon board game in November 2021.

Nat has been invited to guest-program ABC TV’s iconic rage music show, join a panel and present a video in collaboration with Briggs at music conference BIGSOUND 2020, a talk for TEDx Sydney, and the ARIA awards for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal and Dance. Courtney Act chose Nat to be one of only six guests for her season of ABC TV’s long-form interview show, Courtney Act’s One Plus One.

The National Film And Sound Archive Of Australia recognised the importance of Nat’s What I Reckon’s contribution to society during the pandemic and honoured the team with inclusion in their curated collection: Creativity in The Time of Covid: Documenting A Nation In Lockdown. Nat and Julia were also selected to represent the collection with participation in an NFSA Livestream: Creativity in the Time of COVID discussion, recorded in May 2021.

In March 2022 Nat and Jules launched their joint Spotify Original podcast, Food Crime. A hilarious investigation into the seedier side of food, the smart, funny and biting buffet of educational and interesting information went straight to the top of the podcast charts on its release. The fact-packed and funny podcast revolves around stories about food getting caught up in the world of crime. Murder, poison, heists… all with a side of piss–taking and taste testing.

When he’s not filming, cooking or purloining rosemary from a local bush, Nat can often be found indulging his love of rock’n’roll and comedy, playing in bands and stand-up rooms around Australia and abroad.