Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Perhaps weary of Donald Trump’s relentless moronic bullshittery – or simply conscious that most audiences come to comedy to escape global misery – comedians are increasingly shunning overt politics for the personal and the silly, even as the world becomes more tumultuous and divided.

Not so for Tom Ballard, an active Greens supporter who has always loudly preached his left-wing beliefs. And for this festival season, he could barely escape politics even if he'd wanted, having spent much of last year publicly embroiled in a tabloid-manufactured row about him doing a Nazi salute on stage.

When actual fascists take to the streets with pride, it does seem unlikely that an outspokenly progressive gay comedian would be actively spreading far-right ideology rather than mocking it, following a tradition dating from Charlie Chaplin. In fact, he was flirting with the laws that banned the hateful salute and the precise wording they needed to define it.

It’s a valid opinion that the Nazi gesture shouldn’t be used in comedy, but it is just that: an opinion. Proper antisemitic comedians, such as France’s Dieudonné, have come up with a workaround to propagate their hate anyway. 

Ballard spends much of his hour defending his case with vigour, portraying himself as a low-hanging target whose TV heyday is behind him. Though on stage, his status is more mixed. He’s clearly a charismatic orator speaking with often furious passion – especially when defending his reputation, and admittedly to a room largely on board anyway – but also portrays himself as a scrappy outsider taking on the behemoth of the Murdoch press. 

Ultimately his plea is for nuance, which might be rich for a comic who always delivers at frenetic full tilt, but even he comes to accept that doing the Nazi salute, even as a joke, might be more complicated than he first portrayed it.

His argument that it is possible to simultaneously believe that both antisemitism AND killing Palestinians are wrong does not seem so outlandish. That you can say October 7, 2023, was a black day in human history perpetuated by barbaric ideological murderers, AND that the Jewish state’s reprisals against a civilian population is just as barbaric.

This conclusion may be deadly serious, but the route there is funny. Ballard offers an appealing, contradictory mix of the arrogant and the self-deprecating and able to see every absurdity of the situation he found himself in. 

His arguments get a little circular as he repeatedly justifies his behaviour, long after he’s convinced everybody willing to be convinced about his true intentions, and he can err towards the hectoring. 

But he blasts through it all with vigour –  able to create and release tension skilfully. I salute him… just not like that. 

• Tom Ballard: Be Funny Challenge (Impossible) is on at Trades Hall at 7.30pm (6.30pm Sunday) until April 19.

Review date: 16 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival