Tom Ballard has picked an incredibly tricky subject for a comedy show in 2026: trying to defend his choice to do a Nazi salute on stage in his 2024 show, without going the way of every other person who’s ever tried to defend something like this, and coming off as a right-wing reactionary. That’s the real borderline impossible challenge here – the title’s a misnomer, as Tom Ballard has never had any difficulty with being funny.
Ballard rises to the challenge, armed with just a PowerPoint and a microphone and a voice so loud that he doesn’t need the microphone, and he pulls it off. It helps that I, a card-carrying leftie who generally believes there’s no contextual justification for a Nazi salute, saw Tom Ballard’s show in Edinburgh 2024; and in 2026, I didn’t remember in which routine offensive gesture took place, until he played a video of it.
It didn’t flag in my mind as offensive at the time, and for good reason, due to context. However, someone else felt differently, and that’s not a view should be dismissed by anyone with a basic sense of ethics. Hence, nuance. Tom Ballard acknowledges this nuance. He tackles this nuance, sometimes with what seems like all the force of a professional rugby player. He has taken on the impossible challenge of a stand-up comedy show about nuance.
It’s primarily, however, a stand-up show about context. The context of the routine around the gesture, the context of the show around the routine, the context of the career around the show, the context of stand-up comedy as a whole, the context of the current geopolitical climate, the context of the past 100+ years of history. It’s a lot to tackle, in an hour. An hour that’s partly taken up with the gay jokes he makes at the top (about himself and his boyfriend, no one can cancel him for that), to get the audience laughing and relaxed enough to trust him through the harder stuff.
It’s a sign of Ballard’s skill that the actual show is a whole lot more fun than this review makes it sound. He’s packed it full of PowerPoint gags, sometimes with an almost Lou Wall-esque blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed, to constantly undercut the tension. The force of his loud and intense style carries us through the thornier topics. He’s so funny that it’s easy to stay on board, wherever he goes.
Only at the end does Ballard let the gag rate drop, building to a conclusion that manages to hold both nuance and the courage of his convictions, making some powerful statements about the real issues behind the controversy.