Review: Comedian Tom Ward returns to Cambridge Junction

Stand-up comedian Tom Ward brought his new Choose Your Delusion tour to the Cambridge Junction (J3) on Wednesday, 13 November.

Top-notch support came from Joe Jacobs, who co-hosts the Bad Boys Done Good podcast with Tom.

He elicited a great deal of laughter with his rather deadpan style, and drew an even more positive response with his outrageously funny grime song about mindfulness, which rounded off his well-received set.

After the interval, Tom, 42, noted that this was his fifth show (I think it was the fourth time I’d seen him) and said that previously he’d always start off by making jokes about his hair (“as if James Blunt and Ann Widdecombe had had a child,” he joked), but that tonight he wasn’t going to do that.

The basis of the show was the fact that the hardworking comic had recently become a father. He reflected on his own childhood (his main interests, we learned, were cake and The A-Team) and that his son will only know him as a middle-aged man in a downward spiral - which is akin to only knowing WHSmith as it is now.

Many of his witty - and often very accurate - observations, which tended to descend into whimsy and the downright surreal, were hilarious and I found myself doubled over with laughter on more than one occasion.

He spoke about, among many other things, the perils of staying in a Travelodge, what his life should have been like, and the reason why middle-aged men collect things and spend a lot of time in their sheds.

As ever, Tom delivered laugh-out-loud ‘commercials’ - his dry, almost sarcastic soft-voiced delivery put to melodic ‘advert’ music - and also interacted with members of the audience. Again, to very amusing effect.

With some comedians I find the more I see them, the more they lose their touch and become slightly less funny each time.

I would say the opposite is true with Tom Ward - he just gets better and better.

For more information on Tom, and to check on tour dates, visit tomwardvoice.com.