"I got close to doing the wrong thing." Tim Minchin opens up about his 20-year marriage with Sarah.

Tim Minchin is one person you can count on to be honest.

The Australian comedian and composer is known, among other things, for his no-nonsense and ever-sensible attitude towards all-things life. And hearing him talk about his 20-year marriage to his wife, Sarah Minchin, is as refreshingly real as you'd expect.

Tim and Sarah met while they were both at high school, and went on to do arts degrees together.

"He was quite silly and funny," Sarah recalled to Australian Story this week. "He was always noodling away on the piano. Eventually, he recorded some songs with a tape recorder. It was pretty raw at that stage, but I could definitely hear the tunes."

They dated for three years, before Sarah dumped him. A few years later, they realised there was still a connection and decided to pursue it. By 2002, they were married.

Reflecting on their union, he said: "She is always supportive, but if I'm looking for someone to pat me on the back and just go, 'You're amazing', I don't come to Sarah for that. If I want to be loved for being a sort of weird-looking ginger bloke, then I go to Sarah for that."

Recently, Minchin has spoken about the normalcy of temptation when you've been married for so long.

"I'm away a lot and I am in a really flamboyant industry and I'm really flirtatious and I really like women," he said during the interview with Australian Story. "It's very intoxicating. You're away from home for a long time, and you're jet lagged, and you're drinking. The times I got close to doing the wrong thing made me realise that it wouldn't be worth it to blow my marriage up." 

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The subject of his 2020 song 'I'll Take Lonely Tonight' was also addressed - a song about rejecting a woman's advances.

"That's a song about my darling husband, like, not cheating on me," Sarah said with a laugh. 

"Congratulations. Well done, Tim. I make a joke of that, that he shouldn't be praised for everything, including not cheating on me. I couldn't live in a flurry of jealousy all the time about where he was and what he was doing. So I just learned not to have any of that. That was a part of what I had to figure out."

In his interview with Mia Freedman for Mamamia's podcast No Filter, the 47-year-old elaborated, opening up about his thoughts on marriage and monogamy.

"I've made a choice, that I think Sarah is the right person and that monogamy is the right idea and that family is a priority over all the other stuff, which I also really, really want a lot," the musician said.

"On a recent tour, I've got a song 'I'll Take Lonely Tonight', which is about resisting temptation [and] is the song that actually resonates with audiences the most these days. But I've made a choice, and it's a real commitment to loyalty."

Minchin admitted that being married doesn't come without its challenges, particularly as their family has travelled the world and relocated a number of times for his work.

"Every now and again [Sarah] goes, 'Oh, I'm just serving your bottomless need to achieve more crap. I'm just your facilitator so that you can have all your dreams come true and kids you don't have to look after'," Minchin told Mamamia.

"That's her hitting bottom. A month after she said that to me, when we moved to Sydney, I went, 'We need to talk about that feeling,' and she went, 'Oh, I was just feeling down.' I've had to say to her, 'It's your life, I will do anything - barring stopping working - to support you'."

Watch: Tim Minchin tells us what advice he would give to his five-year-old self. Post continues below.

But he said the sentiment is easy to say, harder to do.

"She's a mum and she's a primary carer and she's got a husband who's obsessive about work. So, it's all very well to say 'you can get more help,' but she's like, 'I don't want someone else to bring up my kids, I want you to be here'."

Sarah is often mentioned in Minchin's stand-up routines, and is famously the centre of his song 'If I Didn't Have You'.

"It was a hell of a surprise that just when we had Violet [their daughter], my career took off. So it was incredible, it was like someone had gone, 'Here's all your problems solved.' The cost being: I was away and touring."

He continued: "By the time Matilda was done, we realised we probably would never have a financial woe in our lives and that we could live the life we wanted to live. So you'd have to be a bit of a dick to whine too much. We are hugely aware of how lucky we are."

As for how their relationship works, and how they've been able to maintain it, Minchin says Sarah is "non-competitive and not jealous - I think that's hugely important".

Listen to Tim Minchin’s full interview with Mia Freedman here. Post continues after audio.

"And I don't take the piss. So I work very hard, but... I don't go out with people, I don't go to openings, I don't take drugs and stay up all night. When I'm home, it's just she and I doing our thing."

Oh, and she does the "life admin," he adds.

"She's the one who bought the house in Sydney, sold the house in LA, packed... I do nothing. As in, I do empty the dishwasher and take the kids to school, and day-to-day, I'm a contributor. But I don't do life admin. She runs the whole thing."

Navigating it all, Minchin said to Australian Story that he's glad to have come out the other end with a stable marriage and secure income. 

"I'm proud of my marriage and my family and I'm proud of how boring I am basically. I want to have a lovely, normal, hard-working, honest sort of version of what is basically just a Bacchanalian fantastic romp of a career. Boring Keith Richards. That's me."

This article was originally posted on February 6, 2020, and was updated on November 7, 2022. 

Feature Image: Instagram @timminchin.