COMEDY: TOM GLEESON
Tom Gleeson is the resident ginger ninja (name of his previous stand-up show) on television shows The 7PM Project and Good News Week. Now redheads, let alone balding redheads, don’t have it easy but Gleeson chops and kicks with his self-deprecating humour that’s made him one of the country’s best-loved comedians. He chats with us in an email interview.
Get It Into Ya! What exactly is the audience getting into?
I find it hard to describe my own show, so this is what The Age said, “Gleeson delivers an impressive, solid hour of straight stand-up. He doesn’t even bother with a theme – the title of the show is just another punchline.”
Should redheads rule the world?
Only if the Country Independents let us.
Do journos try to be funny when they ask you questions?
All the time but what is more annoying is when journos ask you the same questions you’ve been asked a million times like, “What do you do when an audience doesn’t laugh?”
What do you do when an audience doesn’t laugh?
It’s not a problem I suffer from. In fact, last weekend in Brisbane I had a woman in the audience who was laughing too much. She wouldn’t stop and it started to ruin the show because it was distracting. So I decided to not do anything funny until she stopped laughing but it made it worse.
Can you tell us something about the panel from The 7pm Project we don’t know?
Charlie Pickering and I had a big night in Romsey, the country town I live in and we finished the night by lying on a bridge and looking at the stars. I think we held hands for a bit. It felt natural.
Nov 10–21, The Comedy Store, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park, $25-35, 9020 6966, comedystore.com.au
