Tom Stade co-wrote Frankie Boyle’s TV show Tramadol Nights, and the Canadian’s comedy kinship with the controversy-creating Scottish funnyman shows.
Not a stand-up for the easily offended, his bawdy tales of misdeeds, jokes about starving Africans, AIDS and jibes aimed at women are just the examples that leap immediately to mind from a set peppered with pitfalls for the easily slighted.
Stade is much cleverer than the average offensive end-of-the-pier comedian, and by the end of the show his intention is clear to stand up for free speech by saying the unsayable, and to use comedy to highlight the plight of the weak.
“Bono has a big nose, sunglasses and the voice of an angel to help Africa,” he says.
“I have none of those things. The only way I can get any attention for them is by making fun of them.”
Stade has a good manner with his audience, and his crazy tales of mayhem are told with the assistance of his unwitting sidekick, Heroin Jimmy.
Plucking a man at random from the front row he asks, “Hey Jimmy, what year were we running around Asia in, nineteen-ninety-what?” The bemused young man he points at, stutters: “Three.” “When you were how old?” “One.”
He returns to Heroin Jimmy numerous times throughout his act. The quality of this material depends to a degree on the person he’s picked from the audience. On the night I was there, he picked a good ‘un.
My advice to those who attend his gig is stick with it, it gets much better as it goes on.
Tom Stade: What Year Was That? is at the Pleasance Courtyard at 9pm until August 28 (not August 15).