The 'Bad, Weird, Homophobic' Experience Behind His New Show

Warrnambool’s Tom Ballard once combed the beach for relics of an old Portuguese shipwreck – “a local legend” – with school friends. “Our teachers would be like, ‘Oh, if you look carefully, you might find some of the Mahogany Ship’ – which was bullshit,” mocks the fast-talking Ballard. “That was busy work – they were trying to distract us!”

The openly gay comedian ultimately left his “boring” coastal Victorian hometown. “It is a lovely place, and I do enjoy going up there, but, by the time I was getting [to] 17, 18, I was kinda getting pretty restless and figured that, if I was gonna be an international superstar in the world of acting and film and comedy, then I maybe had to move to Melbourne.”

Ballard exhibited comic flair in high school when he was a three-time finalist in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Class Clowns competition. But the school dux initially went on to study law at Monash University rather than pursue comedy – chiefly to “placate” his parents. “My mum was a careers teacher, so her entire life was about back-up options,” Ballard reveals. Nonetheless, he dropped out after six weeks, his career in entertainment already on the ascent. Ballard and Alex Dyson secured airtime on triple j, eventually becoming breakfast presenters. “I guess with this crazy business, when things are going your way, you’ve kinda gotta go for it.”

More recently, Ballard hosted the ABC’s engaging TV program Reality Check – which won’t be returning because, he laughs philosophically, “The ABC has not found room for it in its 2015 schedule.” “I got to meet Brynne Edelsten, so that’s a career highlight.” Ballard has just piloted the SBS-backed web sitcom series, Fully Furnished, with Tommy Dassalo.

“The ABC has not found room for it in its 2015 schedule.”

The comedian is touring his stand-up show Taxis & Rainbows & Hatred on the festival circuit. “It’s about this bad, weird, homophobic thing that happened to me in a taxi in Newcastle in 2013. That incident got me thinking about a whole bunch of different things – including how many stories I have about taking taxis and about homophobia and dating and rainbows and, yeah, being gay in 2015. I mean, my first stand-up show [2009’s Tom Ballard Is What He Is] was about me growing up and coming out in regional Victoria. I’ve been out for, like, seven years – and my life is great and fantastic and I have wonderful people who love me and stuff. But now I just have to deal with the stuff that everybody has to deal with, which is trying to fall in love and date, and deal with people not liking who you are... I’ve been working on it a lot and taking out the shit bits and putting in better bits... I feel like I’ve got a vibe of who I am and the kind of comedy I like to do and the kind of show I put together so, yes, Edinburgh 2015 is the dream.”