Home   What's On   Article

Subscribe Now

Comedian Tom Stade: ‘Cancel culture? It’s almost cancelled now’




An extremely prolific and outrageously gifted talent, Tom Stade has written and performed a different touring comedy show every year since 2011.

He’s also one of the funniest and most wildly imaginative stand-ups you’ll ever see.

Tom Stade. Picture: Trudy Stade
Tom Stade. Picture: Trudy Stade

A master of storytelling, delivery and comic timing, and at encouraging cross-generational audience participation (though not in a nasty way), the Canadian-born comedian will be back in Cambridge later this month with his new show, Risky Business.

Without wanting to come across as sycophantic, I informed the 54-year-old force of nature that I thought The High Road, his show that I witnessed back in January 2024, was one of the best comedy shows I’d ever seen – and that he should, if there was any justice in the world, be performing in venues three times the size of the Cambridge Junction’s J2.

“Yeah, that’s kind of out of my control,” admits the comic described as “endlessly funny” by The Independent, who moved to the UK from his native British Columbia in 2001.

“A lot of people say that, and I’ve had my share… like I’ve played the O2 arena, but it was on a charity gig.

“It was still pretty exciting, but for some reason this is where the people have me… but it’s not over yet.

“That doesn’t really worry me so much; the worry would be not being able to write another great show for the people who do show up. That’s where I’m at.

“It still may go pretty big – who knows? Showbusiness is very weird; I’ve been on top, I’ve been on the bottom, and now I seem to settle in the middle!

“I’m OK with that, I’m grateful for what I have.”

Tom says he likes to turn his gigs into intimate gatherings that he likes to call “kitchen parties” – “where it feels like everybody’s involved, and we’re all just laughing together, instead of you watching me, you know what I mean?”

He adds: “And once you turn it into a kitchen party, you’re less judgemental about the show, you’re more involved…

“But the one thing that I don’t do is I never make anyone feel bad. So when everybody comes up and goes ‘Hey Tom, you took the p**s out of me at that show’, I’m like ‘I didn’t, nobody took the p**s out of you – you came across as the hero!’

“And that’s what I enjoy; they feel like they’re part of the show and I’m pretty sure they’ll talk about it for years afterwards.”

On the subject of Risky Business, Tom explains: “Risky Business is kind of a continuation, because I had so much material for The High Road and you only do an hour, right?

“So really it’s a run-off from The High Road and it sort of starts where The High Road ended. And the best way to describe it would be the joys of ageing, actually.

“So you get to inspire the young kid that he’s going to find getting older really exciting, and you inspire the older guy to not be so depressed about being old – and show him how much stuff he’s gotten to see, and all the stuff that he’s still going to see.

“It’s very clever, actually! Let’s just say it starts off with Mr Potato Head…”

When I first saw the title ‘Risky Business’, I wondered if it might be a critique of the modern comedy scene, that Tom might find that his brand of hard-hitting humour suddenly becomes surplus to requirements.

“Yeah, there is that point to it,” says Tom, the co-writer and co-star of Frankie Boyle’s edgy Channel 4 series Tramadol Nights.

“But Risky Business is really the business about getting old. But the reason we called it Risky Business is because I use Bob Seger a lot in it, from the movie!

“I’ve got a joke about having Bob Seger tour T-shirts, but you’ll have to figure that out when you get there…

“Some people when I say it, they’ll go ‘Ooh, clever’, and other people it will just go right over their heads.

“But the business about getting old is risky – that’s really what it is. So it’s like a cool double meaning.

“But there’s always an element of me pushing the line, of course there is – that’s the whole fun about being a comedian.

“If I didn’t push the line, I’d be… probably in big arenas! See, that’s one of my bigger problems to do with comedy.

“I’ve got no problems with really nice, clean comedy – and there’s an element of that [in my comedy].

“But I’ve always thought that a real comedian will push an envelope and actually say something – and this has been said so many times before – or you’re a comedian that just wants to sell as many tickets as they can.

“All of a sudden, the next thing you know you’re so likeable, you’re selling products on TV and if you tried to say something controversial, you’d lose everything.

“So that’s the difference, right, that’s the trade-off you have to make, and a lot of people love that trade-off.

“And then there’s some people that break that mould, that do get really big by saying risky things, and that’s where I want to go.”

Tom Stade - ‘Risky Business’
Tom Stade - ‘Risky Business’

Another top comedian, Steve Hughes, a friend of Tom’s, told the Cambridge Independent in an interview last year that Britain used to be the “greatest comedy country in the world”, adding: “It’s really funny watching the English kind of ‘outlaw’ comedy!”

Tom, whose television appearances include Live at the Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Lee Mack’s All Star Cast and Mock the Week, moved to the UK to pursue a career in stand-up exactly for that reason – he too thought that Britain used to be the best country in the world for comedy.

“I did, he [Steve] is definitely not wrong on that,” says Tom. “I came from Canada, he came from Australia, but in Canada it was always safe, very clean comedy and I did well in it. It wasn’t that…

“But when I came over here for the first time, I watched comedians say whatever they wanted, and people were disapproving of it.

“Now are we saying that it’s going back, that it’s not like that anymore? I don’t know, I think everything has a pendulum swing, and England’s no different.

“But I think the woke thing and the cancel culture is almost done now, because I’m finding a lot of the younger comedians are becoming more again like Steve and myself, pushing that envelope, and for a time they were too scared to.

“Now I’m watching them actually go further probably than we do! There’s Vittorio Angelone, Mike Rice, Connor Burns, Gareth Mutch… these are all young guys that are just going ‘Forget it’ – boom.

“So I really don’t know about that, but I’m still doing what I’m doing till they cancel me! I’m not worried about it… to cancel me is like, what, are you going to step on a bug?!

“Cancelling maybe Kevin Bridges would be something, but how can you cancel something you didn’t really order?!”

Tom adds: “It’s not that you can’t be too offensive, you can be too offensive to the point that it just isn’t funny.

“There’s also that… because you still have to remember that you want the audience to enjoy it, you don’t want to shock them – you want them to come along for this dark ride.

“And if you’re too dark, then maybe they can’t get on board with it, and they want to but they just can’t.

“But yeah, the TV comedians now, they’re really boring to me and they all say the same thing. That’s really the problem.

“Sometimes when you go to watch these so-called comedians, you’re not really going there to see a comedian, you’re just going there to see somebody really famous, and it’s a story to tell all your friends. There’s that element to it too.”

Tom Stade. Picture: Trudy Stade
Tom Stade. Picture: Trudy Stade

Tom Stade will be bringing Risky Business to the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Friday, 24 January. Tickets, priced £25, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on Tom, go to tomstade.com.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More