Tom Ballard has a message for the alt-right: ‘Bring it on’

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Tom Ballard and Celia Pacquoia grill each other over One Night Stan2:40

New to Stan, One Night Stan with Celia Pacquola and Tom Ballard.

• April 5th 2017
• 6 days ago
• /video/video.news.com.au/Entertainment/

“The world is so crushingly scary it has to be funny.”

TOM Ballard had probably lost count of the number of whiskies he’d downed on stage.

The young comedian was dancing through his “The World Keeps Happening” act to a packed crowd at the Melbourne Comedy Theatre. It was a warm Saturday evening in December and the audience was buzzing, possibly from their own pre-show drinks.

But Ballard was struggling. Not because people weren’t laughing — they were, raucously even. He was just sick as a dog.

“It was brutal that week,” he told news.com.au. “I was going through some really horrible voice loss and stuffed pipes.

“But, thankfully, due to the constant supply of whisky onstage, and I was loaded up with a bunch of meds, I struggled through it.”

Whether whisky actually helps with a sore throat or voice loss is scientifically dubious, but there’s no denying it helps loosen you up. And losing your voice is not something you can afford when you’ve got 1000 people and several cameras laser-focused on your performance.

Ballard was filming his performance in the 90-year-old theatre for a stand-up comedy series on Stan, punnily called One Night Stan. He’s one of six comedians whose specials are premiering over four weeks on the streaming platform — the others are Wil Anderson, Celia Pacquola, Sam Simmons, Judith Lucy and Tom Gleeson.

Ballard’s show is a mix of bizarre things that happen to him — yes, this includes intimate, candid details from his dating life — to his take on the very odd state of the world today.

“Is there whisky in this?”Source:Supplied

He’s facing the same challenge so many comedians come up against in that how do you parody something that is already frightfully absurd?

“It’s very hard because with someone __like Trump, he beats you every time,” he said. “You can’t say things funnier than he does.

“It’s funny to make fun of other presidents because they’re supposed to be serious and take themselves seriously. Whereas Trump isn’t even trying to do that. What could you say to that?

“I guess it’s more about the fact that people __like Trump and Hanson are in power and what it says about us as a society. I think you can attack [with comedy] the more serious people who try to defend someone like Trump or Hanson.

“These people who agree with them, they all go on about ‘you can’t say anything anymore, freedom of speech is dead, she’s actually raising an important issue’. No, she’s f**ked. One Nation is f**ked and the fact that they’re back is f**ked. It’s so crushingly scary it has to be funny.”

But he’s hesitant to hold comedy up as some platform that’s going to change the world or engage the apathetic.

“The vibe that I get from my audience is that sometimes it’s a nice relief to just get in a room with other people who share a similar worldview or share similar concerns about the state of the world at the moment and we can all laugh about that for an hour and then go back to worrying about it.”

Asked if he’s worried about any type of Amy Schumer-style alt-right internet backlash against his streaming comedy special, he’s gleeful at the prospect. “That would be awesome. It would be so good if the alt-right gives me one star.

“I’m sure Stan would be happy with that because it means more people signing up. I say bring it on. I would love [white supremacist] Richard Spencer himself to condemn my special. That would be great.”

Tom Ballard’s One Night Stan episode is available to stream on Stan from today. Wil Anderson and Celia Pacquola’s episodes are also available now.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

Wenlei Ma travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Stan.

Self-proclaimed “Nasty Woman”.Source:Supplied