‘I’m as honest as I can be with comedy’
Stand-up comedian Tom Houghton is finally on the road for his debut full tour – a chance to reflect on his privileged and rather unusual background.
He will be regaling audiences with tales of a dad who is the ex-chief of defence staff, stories of living in the Tower of London (his father is consul of the Tower of London) and anecdotes lifting the lid on the all-boys boarding school environment he enjoyed. Dates include March 11, Crawley’s Hawth Studio; and March 18, Brighton’s Komedia.
“I was tour support for Milton Jones and then I was going to do my own tour, going back to some of the venues that he was doing but just playing the smaller rooms. And that was going to be in June or July 2020. We had started planning the tour.
“When lockdown happened I was on the road with Milton.
We had got to Newcastle on his tour and we had started putting some coronavirus jokes into the show. And then that was that. No one knew how serious it was. As the tour went on the jokes started to get less and less of an amused reaction. Come March and we realised that we really couldn’ t include those jokes at all. And then of course everything had to stop.
“I live in the Tower of London when I am in London but my family home is near Darlington and because we had been in Newcastle I just stayed up there... and stayed for years! It was very sad about the tour. It would have been my first full tour and I realised that I had got the momentum going. As a comedian, obviously self-employed.
“I had spent a long, long time building up to getting my first months of diary full and then half a year of diary full and then it was just completely wiped out. And then during the lockdown my agent quit being an agent and my relationship broke up. My entire life was taken away. I’m certainly not going to say that I have got the biggest sob story of the pandemic. Of course I haven’ t but it was difficult. But now I’ m in a new relationship and now the tour is happening.
“But I don’ t think anyone is the same now as they were. There are certain elements in the show that I’ve had to change because it’s not who I am now. I think I’ve grown up a lot more. My value system has shifted. I’ ve learned to value my family more. I had been an on-the-road comedian but I went back and I connected with my family a lot better. We took the time to sit down and have the talks that we didn’t have the time to have over the years.”
As for his approach to comedy: “I think you always elevate yourself a little bit characterwise on stage but I am as honest and as selfevaluating as I can be.”