Tom Ballard
Acting
Biography
Tom Ballard is an award-winning stand up comedian/actor/writer/broadcaster/person who always tries his best. He’s one of Australia’s hottest comic talents, he’s performed and won acclaim all around the world and he’s very pleased to meet you. In 2009, Tom became the youngest ever recipient of the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Best Newcomer Award for his debut hour, Tom Ballard Is What He Is. He was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe for his show Taxis & Rainbows & Hatred, while his 2016 show The World Keeps Happening was nominated for Best Show in both Melbourne and Edinburgh, as well as taking out the 2016 Helpmann Award for Best Comedy Performer and the inaugural John Pinder Prize at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. The show then went on to be recorded at the Comedy Theatre for Stan Australia’s One Night Stan series. In 2017 Tom’s show Problematic won the Best Australian Show Award at the Sydney Comedy Festival and was hailed as one of the top three best-reviewed shows at the Edinburgh Fringe that year. He’s been invited to perform at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival, had sold-out seasons at the famous Soho Theatre and has opened for the likes of Wanda Sykes, Stephen Merchant and Danny Bhoy. He even once roast-battled Jimmy Carr and didn’t die in the process. Tom also has quite the taste for broadcasting and doing proper satire. He co-hosted the breakfast show on national youth radio station triple j with his dear friend Alex Dyson for four years. A collection of the “highlights” from that show, Tom & Alex: The Bits We’re Least Ashamed Of, won the 2013 ARIA for Best Comedy Release. At just 24 years old, Tom hosted Reality Check: his very own ABC TV panel show dissecting the insane world of reality television. He’s guest hosted the ABC discussion show Q&A on multiple occasions, interviewed all sorts of political figures on his popular podcast Like I’m A Six-Year-Old, featured on the race-focused social experiment series First Contact and for more than 150 episodes, hosted his own satirical late night show for ABC Comedy, Tonightly with Tom Ballard, which was a very naughty show that the conservative Australian government didn’t like very much at all. You should also know that Tom dropped out of a law degree after six weeks, he’s very bad at being vegetarian and he suffers from mild eczema. Tom is one of the country’s most exciting and insightful voices.
Known For
Adam Hills, one of Australia's favourite comedians and winner of Edinburgh's Best of the Fest award, is joined by two team captains, comedian and actor Alan Brough and radio breakfast announcer Myf Warhurst, as well as brave personalities who enjoy having long forgotten embarrassing stories laughed about on national television. Two teams go head to head as they sing, shout and delve deep into the recesses of their collective minds to help earn their team an extremely inglorious victory.
Spicks and Specks
Two vastly different female detectives are thrown together to solve the murder of a local man in the sleepy seaside hamlet of Deadloch.
Deadloch
When Helen Tudor-Fisk's life falls apart, she takes a job in a small suburban firm specialising in wills and probate assuming that, because the clients are dead she won't have to deal with people.
Fisk
Get ready to laugh-out-loud as Guy Montgomery and his loyal assistant Aaron Chen are joined by some of Australia's favourite personalities, testing their spelling prowess with wildly inventive spelling challenges designed to befuddle, bamboozle, and bedazzle them all.
Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee
Coverage of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
It's a Date is a comedy series exploring the tension, expectation and complication of finding true love. Each new episode features a different cast tackling a different set of situations and addressing a new question each week. Should you have sex on a first date? Does age matter? How accurate are first impressions? How important is honesty on a first date?
It's a Date
Hosted by Rove McManus, this comedy panel game show features two teams captained by acclaimed actor Jane Harber and comedy star Joel Creasey who compete in a series of movie trivia rounds.
Show Me the Movie!
Each week on Claire Hooper's House of Games, four celebrities face a bunch of tricky trivia, perplexing puzzles and hilarious headscratchers in exchange for a low-rent daily prize and a shot at the weekly champion's trophy.
Claire Hooper's House of Games
In a world dominated by fake news and outright lies, Question Everything dissects the news to sort the real from the rumours, separate fact from fiction and flatten conspiracy theories back down to Earth.
Question Everything
The fast-paced comedy panel show will see each country’s greatest comedian’s pitted against each other to find out who knows their country best, with our host the only thing keeping them apart.
Patriot Brains
Love Aussie stand-up comedy? Then you'll love this hilarious new series showcasing some of the country's great stand-up comedians.
The Warehouse Comedy Festival
A four-part Stan Original comedy series featuring over 20 of Australia’s favourite comedians including Dave Hughes, Cal Wilson, Nazeem Hussain, Wil Anderson, and more, performing stand-up comedy from their own homes. Dealing with the highs and lows of lockdown, over 20 of Australia’s biggest comedians are putting on performances from the comfort of their own homes. You’ll see them in their bathrooms, bathrobes, baths, bedrooms and kitchens but most importantly, they'll be streamed directly into our homes ready to make us laugh.
Australian Lockdown Comedy Festival
Sixteen well-loved Australian celebrities will battle it out for the winning title across five weeks, facing the pressure as they answer questions based on their speciality subjects. Hosted by journalist Jennifer Byrne, each episode of Celebrity Mastermind will see one celebrity advance to the Grand Final, and eventually compete against the other winners for the prestigious title of Celebrity Mastermind.
Celebrity Mastermind
Six of Australia’s best comedians bring the house down at one of the world’s great comedy venues. Full length, award-winning, celebrated shows from Wil Anderson, Celia Pacquola, Tom Ballard, Sam Simmons, Judith Lucy and Tom Gleeson recorded live at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre.
One Night Stan
The best and biggest performances from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's late night club.
Comedy Up Late
Tom is a gay. He is from Warrnambool. He is a comedian. In Is What He Is, Tom Ballard gives a candid account of coming to terms with his private bits in the 21st century. Tom's debut solo show is a hilarious hour of personal storytelling that will make you laugh, think, squirm and come to love your fellow human.
Tom Ballard: Is What He Is
Tom Ballard has had enough: enough of COVID, anti-vaxxers, being lonely, culture wars, the super-rich, Australia being dumb, capitalism and Baby Boomers. Watch and laugh as he tries to fix all those things by yelling horrible jokes about them in a beautiful venue.
Tom Ballard: Enough
One of Australia's hottest comedians (not physically) delivers a brand-new show about robots, the monarchy and death.
Tom Ballard: It Is I
Hosted by Kitty Flanagan.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala
What’s the deal with man’s inhumanity to man? This is an hour of dynamite stand-up about how everything is sinister and confusing and on the verge of collapse. Tune in and have a good old-fashioned laugh about it while you still can.