I’m hosting this panel at the Wheeler Centre for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival on Monday March 30th.

Here’s the blurb:

Comedy aims to make us laugh, but it’s not all sweetness and light. Humour can be a way of taking control over the dark side of life: for the comedians who write the jokes and the audiences who relish them.

 

The ‘sad clown’ cliché is often true, with high-profile comics increasingly coming out of the closet about their struggles with mental health, partly due to an increased awareness and acceptance. Can seeing the world from a skewed or outsider perspective make humour easier, even if it makes life harder? When we joke about mental health, is there a line between catharsis, or boundary-pushing, and offence? Join host Tom Ballard, Lawrence Mooney and Sarah Kendall as they peek out from behind the red curtain to share their insights.

Click here to read my blog from the Brisbane Comedy Festival, featuring great fan feedback (see above), audio of confused Dutch people and shout-outs to late legends.

Here’s the last one from Adelaide Fringe, featuring the above photo, audio of old people and a cute kitty.

Ahead of Gay Christmas, I wrote some little thoughts down on the internet.

For pedestrian – On X-Men & What Mardi Gras Means To Me

For junkee.com – 14 Pro Tips To Making The Most Of Mardi Gras

Happy Mardi Gras to us all. Remember you can watch me, Magda Szubanski and Patrick Abboud broadcasting the action from the parade on SBS ONE this Sunday night at 8:30pm.

My second blog from the Adelaide Fringe for Daily Review is up now, featuring pictures like this one (with very little explanation). You can always hear the audio of me receiving the nicest heckle ever and the sounds of a lady in the distance being sexually pleasured.

@TomCBallard Sorry to hear that you’ve turned into a concrete parking pole, I was looking forward to your show! pic.twitter.com/HZTtZ0pM5u

— Madi Stroomer (@madistroomer) February 17, 2015

 

Throughout the comedy festival season I’m blogging for Crikey’s arts site, the Daily Review.

You can read my first entry from the Adelaide Fringe here, featuring audio of a 12-year-old in my audience on Saturday night.

Lately I’ve been getting a few questions from journalists and some folks on twitter about the fate of Reality Check in 2015 and I figure I owe it to fans (and hey, even haters) of the show to let y’all know what’s going on.

Unfortunately we won’t be back this year. It’s a real bummer but I can hardly complain about getting to host my own show that I’m very proud of for an entire season. Thank you so much to every single one of you out there who tuned in every week and let us know how much you enjoyed it, whether you were a reality tragic and loved finding out about all the inner workings of the genre or if you despised it all and enjoyed us taking the piss.

I’d also like to thank the incredible team at CJZ for putting their trust in me and working so hard to make the show happen; writers Richard Thorp, Sophie Braham and Ben Pobjie; Jon Casimir, Sophia Zachariou and everyone at ABC TV and of course, the amazing and generous panellists who were so willing to tell fascinating stories about the industry and laugh at themselves.

Obviously, the biggest thanks goes to my BFF Brynne Edelsten.

If you want to hear Dicko‘s voice again, check out my podcast interview with him here.

And because it wouldn’t be a blog post without a plug for my stand up, remember I’m touring my new show Taxis & Rainbows & Hatred all over the place, details here.

Here’s to the good, overly dramatic times…

On Monday nights I like to watch the ABC’s Q&A program.

This week during the show I tweeted this:

The only way to watch #qandapic.twitter.com/RqmBTMbGnL

— Tom Ballard (@TomCBallard) February 9, 2015

 

And then, wouldn’t you know it, people responded with stuff like this:

@TomCBallard cat still here but the dog has left the room pic.twitter.com/CudNDlv1sX

— Team Lottie Schnauze (@LottieSchnauzer) February 9, 2015

and this:  

@TomCBallard pic.twitter.com/2CPHC5Nw1v

— Emma (@emylee7) February 9, 2015

And from there it just got better and better and Buzzfeed even did a thing about it which you can check out here if you fancy.

Soooooo good.

Children’s illustrator Claire Richards is putting on this lovely exhibition at the Urban Cow Studio in Adelaide during the Fringe called Funny Bunnies in which she’s illustrating comedians as children.

She very kindly asked me to be involved and this is what we came up with:

HOLY SHIT YOU WANT TO ADOPT ME RIGHT????

If you’re in Adelaide and would like to check out some gold like this, here’s the exhibition’s Facebook event.