Thom Tuck looks and sounds like a cross between David Mitchell and a long-lost sixth form teacher famed for getting a bit drunk. He creates a fantastic atmosphere in this early evening show of an orchestrated shambles, with the background whiff of an authority figure - dressed in tweed jacket, cords, and shirt, speaking with a commanding if slurred voice - going a bit off the rails. However, there is also a nagging sense throughout the hour that he doesn’t capitalise on this atmosphere as much as he could.
At times, he has a spectacular turn of phrase - one of the best examples of the night being when he imagines scrolling on an iPad with his penis like an ‘ersatz stylus’. He is also capable of using his bumbling persona to slip in real surprises - flitting between the experience of falling asleep in a pint of Guinness with the philosophy of Descartes, for example. Yet, when faced with an unusually quiet audience for a Friday night, rather than modulating his slow, languid style for tension, he doesn’t seem to ratchet up the energy in the room. When a few of the jokes get lukewarm responses, the pace noticeably shows. This is a shame, because a lot of his material deserved better credit from the audience, and it is highly likely that on other nights Tuck would have been able to feed off this with aplomb, to bolster his well-developed comic persona.
A set which exhibits notable strength and a winning performance from Tuck seems to peter out towards the end, as he culminates with a routine about keeling over from drug intake at Glastonbury which doesn’t exhibit a lot of what makes him such an entertaining figure to watch. With the right audience behind him, and stronger ideas and structure for Tuck to latch his persona onto, he could be onto a winner.
