'Tramadol Nights is comedy caviar'

Tom Stade

CANADIAN funnyman Tom Stade has obviously taken plenty of flak since co-writing controversial Channel 4 comedy Tramadol Nights with Scot Frankie Boyle.

“I am comparing Tramadol to Shakespeare,” he said.

“We watched the ratings go down at first, but by the fourth week people came back. It was like they had been fed on McDonalds and suddenly they got caviar”

“It’s not a family-oriented show, but it is funny. I’m not scared of darker material. When you do comedy for 22 years you are a connoisseur. So does he feel the need to be dangerous? “I would never say that I need to be dangerous. But I know what I like to talk about – and that can just include what my kid did that day.”

Tom hooked up with Frankie Boyle after meeting him on the comedy circuit.

He said: “I met Frankie before Frankie became Frankie! And we have been friends for a long time, not really close. But we always have a good time and we had an idea for a really witty show that we’d shock the world with. We tried using a little thing called free speech. All those angry people who complained about the series didn’t realise they were helping us.”

Tom took to comedy back home in British Columbia in his teens.

“I was a young man of 18 my first weekend onstage and found out I could earn $50 being a bus boy waiting on tables or take my ass onstage at a comedy night for five minutes.

“At 18 I didn’t have much to talk about, but enough to get by. And I ended up hanging out with creative people who influenced what I became. I found Canada to be like a comedy university. Unlike here, where you only do a 20-minute spot, there you have to do 45 minutes to an hour every night, like an Edinburgh show every night!”

But Tom now lives in Edinburgh – not originally the plan: “I came over eight years ago, but I didn’t decide to stay, I got stuck here. Three and a half years ago I came over to do an Edinburgh show and you have to pay three and a half thousand pounds a monthrent for the festival, so the only way I could get a place was to take out a six month lease. Then we decided to stay up here!”

Tom allows his experience to let him play with comedy.

“My shows are never the same I always go off at a tangent because I say them so much I have say them to keep myself interested. If you think you’ve heard it before, I have heard it more than anybody! And I am in a Catch 22 situation when it comes to material people have seen on TV. If I don’t do that joke, people get mad – or it’s ‘Don’t do that joke, I’ve seen it’. But I think what people really want is for you to be you. Then everyone seems to like it.”

* Tom Stade is at the ironworks, Inverness, tonight (Thursday).