“… if you’re feeling bad, just go scuba diving” - An interview with Tom Houghton
Comedian Honourable Tom Houghton heads back to the Gulbenkian in Canterbury and talks to Joe Bill about life lessons, comedy lessons and not getting too deep
There can never be another comedian bringing the same jokes to the table that Tom Houghton has been able to for the past decade. Born into the height of British aristocracy as the son of the former head of the UK Armed Forces and resident of the Tower of London, ‘Honourable’ Tom (which is actually his title, though, he is quick to point out, one he never earned) has been known for creating engrossing comedy that playfully contrasts privilege and absurdity.
From ghostly encounters and royal ceremonies to strip-club mishaps and pizza deliveries to the Tower, Tom’s world is one of spectacular contradictions. But, in his new show Deep, Tom has changed things up.
After a phenomenal, sold-out international tour and a stint supporting comedy legend Milton Jones, Tom traded in the palace for a journey of self-discovery… sort of.
As seen on Netflix, Comedy Central and as host of Very British Problems, Tom Houghton returns to the Gulbenkian and the University of Kent in Canterbury - a place where he studied his craft and graduated with an MA in stand-up comedy. We got in touch to find out more.
Hey Tom, the synopsis of your show would suggest it’s very different to your previous…
It’s definitely, probably, more poignant than my last shows. I think it was essentially a show about a midlife crisis. Last year I turned 40, which is sort of halfway there, isn’t it? If I live to 80, that’s not too bad.
And so living on my own, lots of my friends have all settled down and everything, I was like ‘OK, what am I doing?’. That sort of midlife reassessment. What dreams have I always had? I’ve always wanted to write a musical, but then the other dream I have is I always wanted to go scuba diving. So instead of doing the Edinburgh Fringe last year, I took a month off and I went to Indonesia to get my advanced scuba-diving certificate.
Deep is the story of me going out to Indonesia to scuba dive while also asking the sort of deep questions about life and death, and you know where I am so far. So it’s deep on several levels.
What did you discover?
Without giving the end away, my sort of conclusion is that I think ‘finding yourself’ and going on journeys and getting too deep is probably a load of boll*cks.
I think we suffer in our own heads a lot more than we do in reality. And we quite often try to think our way out of problems and we end up just stewing in our bedrooms, whereas I think the answer is to go out and live life and do stuff. So I try not to get too pretentious about it - I think action is the cure. So, if you’re feeling bad, just go scuba diving.
There’s also a whole section of the show where I worry about staying in a hostel, because hostels are full of 18-year-olds, but then hotels are full of married couples and families so they don’t want to talk to a solo traveller either. So I ended up getting involved in an 18-year-olds’ beer pong competition and it went horribly wrong. It’s a weird stage of life if you’re single in your 40s.
Were you conscious that you wanted to do a show that was totally different, or was it the trip that inspired it?
I think I was very aware that I couldn’t just talk about being posh and living in the Tower of London for the rest of my life. That was a very good USP to start me out and I think it was very interesting. But I think not only am I running out of the stories but I don’t want to be a one-note comedian.
And even though it’s an introspective show, it is also talking about my view on the world a lot more, which is scarier because people can disagree with you.
There is still a whole routine about flooding the Tower of London at the end, which is a story I haven’t been able to tell when I lived there, but now that I’ve left for a few years I can tell it.
Did you have any pushback in the past with the notion of being posh, or your family or the Tower of London situation?
Before I went solo, I didn’t really talk a lot about my parents because I was in an improv group, so I didn’t really get the chance to. Because I was living in such a ridiculous situation with a dad who’s now a Field Marshal - which, fun fact, is a rank only normally reserved for wartime.
So strap in, it’s looking good, I realised that I wanted to talk about the Tower of London and my dad being a lord, and me being the ‘honourable’.
Lots of people said ‘You won’t be able to play in certain areas of England’. Whereas, actually, I found if you’re honest about it, people respect that and they find it fascinating. It’s when you pretend to be something you’re not, or pretend it makes you in any way superior, which I never did. I was just brutally honest about what it was like being very lucky to find yourself in that situation and being self-deprecating - I was met with fascination more than anything.
Having watched some of your stories about strip clubs and drinking out of puddles, it creates an interesting dynamic as to how that went down with your parents.
Yeah, exactly. They haven’t actually seen the routine about me flooding the Tower of London yet, so...
Part of your comedy journey brought you to the University of Kent to work with tutor Oliver Double on a Masters in stand-up comedy.
Oliver Double is one of the most influential characters of my comedy career. He taught me everything. That comedy course was so good at making you go out and try loads of different stuff. And the Monkey Shine Comedy Club, which they had on campus, was every week and you’d have to do a new 10 minutes. He’s been a comedian himself, so he knows what it’s like, but also his knowledge on comedy is just insane. Even after I left university, we stayed in touch - he came to shows and asked me to come back and do workshops. He’s just been so great.
While the comedy module is now a smaller part of the drama degree, the amount of comedians that have come out of it is remarkable.
Yeah, comedy is a hard thing to break into, so to even get that amount, you know, Pappy’s Fun Club, Laura Lexx, Jimmy McGhie and The Noise Next Door, is amazing.
Comedy still struggles to be accepted as an art form, for some reason, which is madness. Especially as nowadays it’s one of the most prevalent, influential art forms there is. You’ve now got comedians on Question Time, and people listen to comedians more than they ever have.
What did a course in stand-up comedy look like?
Very detailed. It’s all to do with the actual stage craft. You know, when you go on stage, move the microphone stand out of the way, or if you’re in a theatre, play upwards to the top, not down to the bottom. All those genuine physical notes that you need. Then there’s the writing of jokes. And, you know, all the sort of the rule of three, the establish, re-establish, undercut or the pull-back and revealing all those sorts of writing tips.
You might do edgy comedy, they might do surreal comedy - I ended up doing a double act.
There’s just so many different angles. And then you basically have to create a portfolio for yourself and you have to go out and do open-mics and record sets with the hope that you graduate and have at least 20 good minutes, which is what you need to get on the circuit, to then go out into the comedy world.
What were the biggest lessons you took away from the course and into your career?
There was a whole theory that people are either performers who have to learn to write, or writers who have to learn to perform. And yet some people are both, and they’re just incredible, and there are some people who are neither, but they’re delusional.
I was definitely a performer who had to learn to write, having been dyslexic, so my performance skills were normally with acting and everything. Doing the drama degree and lots of plays was quite good anyway, naturally, but the writing was stuff that I really took from Olly.
The big lesson he gave me was this economy of words. I remember that. Being able to tell the joke in the shortest amount of words possible. Cut the chaff.
You’ve now been on TV a number of times, including the Netflix reality show The Circle. Aare tickets flying out, or do you still have to hit that tour grind?
Well, both those things, to be honest. When the Netflix thing came out, my tour went from doing sort of a 20 date20-date tour to a 60 60-date tour. And the rooms got bigger.
But the life is very fickle. And if suddenly, a good year happens, you go, ‘Oh, I'’ve made it. Now. I don'’t need to try’. People move on very quickly. So it's it’s that whole thing of ‘If you do something you love, you'’ll never work a day in your life’. No, you'’ll work every single second of every single day of your life. You can never switch off. And that's that goes for anyone at any level.
