Like many stand-ups, he paces the stage with furious, nervous energy and he’s shouty and sweary.
That might have been it, an angry Canadian stand-up railing at the annoying things in life to an appreciative Inverness audience.
And Tom Stade, who’s resident in Scotland, is a witty man, so that would have been all right.
But he did something clever at Eden Court last night.
Lampooning the world of PC
He managed to lampoon the world of political incorrectness in a very non-PC way, using several audience members as helpful stooges.
PC has been the death of comedy, you hear many comedians say.
So here’s how Stade got around it.
At 53, he announced himself as a time-traveller aged 23, firmly stuck in the 90s.
He wore a short-sleeved T shirt, slogan I ❤ Benidorm, over a long-sleeved one to prove the point.
A visitor to 2024
And from the position of time-traveller, a mere visitor to 2024, he could cast his unflinching eye around our times and tear anything he found preposterous to shreds.
Early on he announced that he identifies as a scientist. He’s got the white coat, the test tube and the Bunsen burner, so if he says he a scientist, he is one, OK?
We see where you’re going, Tom!
From the words we all can’t say now to the affronted over-sensitivity of Gen Zs and social media users, using his time-traveller construct, Stade managed to be as un-PC as imaginable, and the Eden Court audience loved it.
In another trope that worked well, he selected audience members and addressed them as co-conspirators through.
His fall guys were Kenny, the same age as Stade and therefore someone he could address with all the ease of a peer who completely understands the pain of grinding through the past three decades in the face of bewildering change.
He used fall ladies, Eilidh and Pauline in the same way.
Tolerant foils from the audience
They were all tolerant foils for Stade’s onslaughts.
The best sport was 23 year old Mhairi-the audience loved how Stade struggled with that name- whose generation’s values Stade so clearly struggles with.
And after he had roared and railed against today’s multitude of PC minefields, Mhairi was unfazed when he shouted as her to cut the older generations some slack if they get it wrong, but if her own generation gets anything wrong, “roast them!” he shouts.
Amid the huff-puffery though, Stade throws out that this generation, and his daughter is one of them, have made him a better person.
And that’s by being forced to consider everyone’s feelings all the time, despite having to conduct your life inside apps in your phone.
Gareth Mutch opened the show
Stade was supported by the punchy and warm Gareth Mutch, who compared himself to Humpty Dumpty in shape and opened his act with a hilarious rant about body positivity, specifically the differences between men and women about the idea.
His story of his dad’s heart attack on the golf course could have been viewed in the current climate as ‘insensitive’ and ‘triggering’ and unlike Stade, Mutch did feel he needed to apologise for any potential offence caused in advance.
But the audience, or most of them, roared with laughter at the story, proving to the permanently bewildered older generations that common sense hasn’t entirely gone out of the window.
