STAND-UP SATURDAY
The weekends are always special, and this one can be spent watching an hour of Tommy Little. The comedian has just recently performed a new stand-up special in his home country of Australia. Nailing jokes and quick one liners to a sold out crowd in Melbourne, the comic is slowly but surely climbing the ranks. Little has since gone back on tour in Australia, doing a new live show but his 2020 special Self-Diagnosed Genius is currently playing on Amazon Prime Video. The hour long set is a hysterical routine filled with Little’s oddly unorthodox life experiences as of late.
Self-Diagnosed Genius is Tommy Little’s example to others of perhaps, what not to do
His show’s concept revolves around him gaining control of his vices and the measures he’s taken to ‘attempt’ to do so. It’s a random assortment of topics, but he finds a way to string things together without running over any speed bumps. Tinder, bad sex, dry spells, partying, and marathons are what’s up for discussion. With a ‘lad-like’ demeanour and an energetic attitude, Tommy speaks about the funny side of his life as though the problem he faces, however trivial, aren’t actually of any consequence. It’s a simple set, but it’s still sharp, and Tommy Little gets his laughs and makes up the time.
Little sprinkles a bit of everything into his set. He does some crowd work, a touch of improvisation, and he’s an avid storyteller. By comparison, his crowd work is closest in parallel to someone like Andrew Schulz. He asks the audience questions, and though he does so light heartedly, he eventually gets around to ‘roasting’ them. Little is also skilful at thinking on his feet, milking laughs out of improvised lines he uses once his audience members indulge him in brief conversation. Said moments are so real that it’s as though it’s rehearsed, even though it couldn’t possibly be. Where Little will sooner or later rise above the rest, is in his stories. There are a lot of comedians who tell stories, but the way he does it is on another level. A sizeable portion of his show is actually about how he decided to train and run for a marathon in Antarctica. He’s able to take that one piece of information and effectively stretch it out over an extended period of time, managing to get laughs out of the smallest details. How he’s able to do it isn’t even explainable, so readers will just have to see to understand it.
Getting his special onto Amazon is a step in the right direction. If his upcoming tour is even close to what this one was, he’ll find himself in a good position by the end of the year. Objectively speaking, Tommy Little really does have everything going for him. He’s fit, professional, and if he’s able to base most of his material on only two or three events of his life at a time, there’s no telling what he’ll talk about next.
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