Tom Ballard wants you to know he's not a Nazi

There’s no easy way to say this, so let’s just get it over with:

Last year, I performed a Nazi salute onstage.

If that was all I had to say on the matter, you’d be well within your rights to exclaim "That’s a yikes!" and stop reading and walk away and move on with the rest of your life.

But it’s not. There’s plenty more to be said about this – for example, the following things:

1) It was as part of a pre-written, considered comedy routine (so not an example of improvised riffing gone VERY wrong);  

2) I’d performed the routine many times before without any complaints;

3) There are important mitigating circumstances and contextual considerations at play; and

4) I am not a Nazi.

That last one is crucial. I know I may look like quite Third Reich-y; I’ve previously been described by fellow comics with terms like ‘Hitler’s wet dream’ and ‘the chubby Aryan’. But I have a consistent record of thinking and saying out loud that Hitler and the Nazis were unequivocally evil and wrong and cringe, which is more than can be said for a sizeable number of Reform candidates.

So – the context. Back in 2023, my home Australian state of Victoria passed a law banning the public performance of Nazi salutes ‘to send a clear message that Nazi ideology and the hate it represents will not be tolerated’. 

I had no objection to this law whatsoever – once again, not a Nazi, so really not bothered – but I did find the idea of the various potential complications of enforcing such a law to be amusing. So I wrote a routine about it, which went like this:

Bit of fun.

That routine would end up in my 2024 show Good Point Well Made, which I toured extensively across Australia, the UK and Europe without incident. Everyone just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Then we come to January 2025, when wretched hornswoggler Elon Musk appeared to perform a sincere Nazi salute of his own at Trump’s second inauguration, which was widely considered to be a bit on the nose. 

The week that story broke, I was MCing a comedy club in Melbourne, and after a break, I took to the stage, re-enacted Musk’s gesture (‘You guys are such a great crowd – my heart goes out to you!’) and then went into the above routine about Victoria’s salute ban.

Far be it from me to critically evaluate the quality of the jokes in question (who am I, Chortle???). All I can tell you is that the overwhelming majority of the audience seemed to enjoy what I was putting out there. 

Sure, it might have been a tad spicier than your average fare for a Saturday-night club gig, but there was a lot of laughing and recognition of the topical reference, and I felt as though people were generally picking up what I was putting down.

Unfortunately, one gentleman in the crowd did not enjoy my routine at all. He proceeded to film me on his phone, complained to the room runner, and then later took his outrage (and his footage) to several media outlets. 

This would soon lead to some hysterical headlines, a politician damning me in the press (no, she hadn’t seen the routine), an actual police investigation (!!!) and comments from Daily Mail readers like these:

(Fuck you too, George from Adelaide.)

My Edinburgh Fringe show Be Funny Challenge (Impossible) is primarily an attempt to make sense of this scandal. It’s my way of trying to explain what happened on that night and why, and to really try to get the whole ‘Tom Ballard is definitely not a Nazi’ message out there as much as possible.

I’ve also tried to figure out what it tells us about our broader political moment, in which everyone appears to have lost their goddamn minds.

The past three years have been a confusing, maddening and heartbreaking mix of godawful anti-Semitic violent attacks, a live-steamed genocide, the implosion of political discourse and the truly sinister suppression of protest and dissent. I’ve tried to squeeze my messy feelings about all that into 55 minutes of material and a PowerPoint with funny pictures.  

Some might argue such an effort is ‘foolhardy’, ‘annoying’ or even ‘a marketing nightmare’. And that’s fair. All I know is that for the past three years, I’ve barely been able to think about anything else…which usually means it’s a good place to start for some jokes.

Happy Fringe, everyone.

(Not a Nazi. Tell your friends!!!).

• Tom Ballard: Be Funny Challenge (Impossible) is on at Monkey Barrel Comedy at O'Neill's at 4.25pm daily from August 3.

Published: 21 Jul 2026