Comedian Tom Ballard’s has returned to the stage with a new show titled Enough. The comedian is debuting his new material at Fringe World in Perth and after a big 2018 – Ballard has a lot to chat about.
Last year he took on the challenge of hosting the satirical news program Tonightly, the show poked fun at politicians and public figures in the news cycle, but also put some offside.
When the show aired a controversial sketch that made fun of a Australian Conservatives candidate there were calls for the show to be taken off the air. The Australian Communications and Media Authority cleared the show of any wrongdoing, but shortly afterwards the show was axed.
OUTinPerth caught up with Ballard ahead of his run of shows at Fringe World and asked him what is was he’d had enough of? He explained though that the title works on many levels.
“I’ve had enough of it all.” Ballard said, “But it’s about capitalism and how rich people have too much and can never have enough enough and how poor people actually don’t have enough, and that’s makes me angry. But I’m also a product of that system because I’m a middle class comedian who has the safety net at all times. It’s basically yelling about that for an hour basically” Ballard laughs.
“It’s about greedy people saying they don’t have enough, and poor people not having enough. That’s the system we seem to stick with, the one our politicians are happy with, and I think that is wrong, so I’ve written some jokes about it.”
Ballard said he found it hilarious that the world seemed to have a sudden fascination with anti-clutter guru Marie Kondo.
“Don’t buy the shit in the first place,” is Ballard’s advice. “If you didn’t buy it in the first place you wouldn’t need a Japanese lady to tell you how to clear it out, and ask you if you for joy from your material possessions.
“Giving things away to other people is good, but maybe we could avoid getting the stuff in the first place. I hate all the planned obsolescence. I just bought a new iPhone, and you know it’ll be fucking broken it two years because that’s a classic upshot of capitalism, they sell the least effective system of doing things.
“You’ve got billion dollar companies creating things that are designed to break in a year and half, so you’ll buy some new expensive shit. It’s the most efficient system in terms of resources, but it’s very good for profits.”
Ballard says he’s excited about getting back to doing stand-up after a busy year in 2018. “I was working my arse off at Tonightly. It was really long hours, I don’t know if that showed on screen.” Ballard said, before noting that a lot of the show’s detractors have told him that “it didn’t’.
“It was a really intense schedule, It was a daily show, I was working from nine in the morning to after eight at night, working pretty intensely for over 150 episodes. Now we’ve finished and I’m back to being a comedian where I work an hour a day.”
Asked if he’d sign up for such an intensive commitment again Ballard jokes that he’s available for the next producer with a million dollars, but admits the hectic schedule and high level output was something he really enjoyed.
“I loved it, I honestly loved that job and I’m proud of what we did. I do however get a lot more sleep now so it’s all ‘swings and roundabouts’.
The final weeks of the show in many viewers eyes was a delivery of truly amazing. Free of the worry about potentially being cancelled, the Ballard and his collaborators didn’t hold back. Ballard agrees that knowing that you can’t be cancelled after you’ve been cancelled open a floodgate of creative freedom.
“They let us have three weeks after we were told that we were finished, which was kind of insane. We created segments like ‘Why the Fuck Not’ that saw us spending taxpayers money on frivolous things like oiling up Greg Larson. It was a bit anarchic, but we learned a good lesson – live every day like you might be cancelled, it’s a good message for life.” Ballard said.
One of the great tragedy of a show like Tonightly not being on air is that recently politicians have been providing so much fodder that the show could have had a field day with.
“We finished the week after Morrison became PM, from then there has been something very funny every week in the news. Scott Morrison’s Fatman Scoop video, remember that! Andrew Broad, the Andrew Broad stuff would have been gifts from comedy heaven. The ‘It’s okay to be white’ moment, politicians at Nazi rallies – I often think how much fun it would have been to tackle these topics.”
Catch Tom Ballard’s show Enough at Fringe World until 27th January.
Graeme Watson
