NPR's Scott Simon speaks to Australian comedian Christian Hull about his popular TikTok videos in which he watches paint get tinted and guesses what color it will become.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The world could sure use a good laugh, and a man in Australia has a great one in these vexing times.

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CHRISTIAN HULL: Orange, yellow and red - (laughter) this is so fun.

SIMON: Australian comedian Christian Hull has tapped into a very twitchy vein with his TikTok videos where he guesses what paint colors will come from the mixers at a paint shop. You might laugh at that, but, well, we're talking millions of people are delighting in them.

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HULL: I find gray makes a color more pastel, and then - oh (laughter). Oh, wait. No, that's...

SIMON: Christian Hull joins us now from Brisbane, Australia. Thanks so much for being with us.

HULL: You are so welcome. Is this not weird for you that you've got a random Australian who guesses paint colors on your show? Have you hit rock bottom?

SIMON: You know, I was just reflecting on that. I've had a rich and varied career until this moment and...

HULL: (Laughter).

SIMON: What ever even put this idea in your mind? And I say this after, you know, watching 50 hours of them.

HULL: Oh, gosh. Firstly, I mean, it's not an original idea. If you're unfamiliar, it's literally just me, someone who works at, like, a paint shop, and this machine spurts out different colors. And then basically, I'm watching this happen. I guess the color. And I saw these two girls do a TikTok on it, and I just thought, that looks really fun. And I just thought, I'll just upload a few. And then, you know, the classic story is I went to bed one night, woke up, and I had, like, 200,000 extra followers, which is insane - all American. It's exploded in America, not here in Australia, which is quite bizarre.

SIMON: Really? I don't - well, I guess it says a lot about us. And, I mean...

HULL: (Laughter) You're a simple folk (laughter).

SIMON: Yeah, we are desperate for a diversion at this point.

HULL: No, no. Well, the night it exploded was the night of the first debate. And a lot of the comments were, oh, I just needed something to escape from the chaos.

SIMON: Well, then this is beginning to add up at this point. Now, it must be said, you seem to guess brown a lot, and it's never correct that I've seen.

HULL: It's never what you'd imagine. Red, green and orange all mixed together - like, you'd be like, well, obviously, that's brown. And then, you know, like, this sandy yellow color comes out. And you're just like, how?

SIMON: OK, let's take a can of white paint, a couple of dribbles of blue...

HULL: OK.

SIMON: ...A couple of dribbles of red, a couple of dribbles of green. What do we got?

HULL: OK, so this is how - this is what goes through my head. And you've got - in these videos, you've got, like, 20 seconds. So you got purple, purple with a green. And green - would it be a dark green, I'm assuming, like a forest green?

SIMON: I don't know the answer. I'm asking you.

HULL: There are so many shades of green. You can't just say green.

(LAUGHTER)

HULL: I'm - brown.

SIMON: I knew you'd say brown.

HULL: Brown (laughter).

SIMON: I'll take your word for it. May I say, I don't know why, but you've brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, so thank you for that.

HULL: (Laughter) I don't know why either. Thank you so much for having me.

SIMON: Comedian and paint color guesser Christian Hull speaking with us from Brisbane. Thanks so much for being with us.

HULL: Thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.