Tom Little is a comedian who is going places – literally.
The funnyman from Flimby took his routine on board bus routes from Workington to banish Blue Monday.
Stagecoach, the UK’s leading bus operator, invited the award-winning West Cumbrian comedian onto its buses on Monday 19 January, which is often described as the most depressing day of the year.
Tom, who has been performing as a stand-up since 2013, said it was a pleasant change to perform close to home – but a small audience made for a tricky gig.
He said: “You don’t get many opportunities to gig in Cumbria that often so it’s nice when you do. It’s also nice to do a gig that’s only a bus ride from my house – normally it’s a long drive for hours.
“It’s tricky so far, though. It is the strangest place I have ever done a gig and on a bus the audience is always liable to leave.”
Tom has won the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year (also won by Johnny Vegas, Jason Manford, Rhod Gilbert and Romesh Ranganathan) and was a BBC New Comedy Award finalist. You can currently see him in the film The Days Ahead on Amazon Prime.
His favourite comedies include Peep Show and I’m Alan Partridge, and he has also found himself compared to a famous creation of the late Rik Mayall.
“I hadn’t seen Rik do his Kevin Turvey character until after I started doing stand-up. My mother told me that all her friends had been comparing me to Kevin.”
Tom’s routine was a morning tonic for passenger Peter Brooks, on board the 600 service to Cockermouth, heading to a winter walk in the Keswick area.
“It’s a bit unusual to get on a bus and find yourself in a comedy gig,” he said. “I can see why it is known as Blue Monday with the days still being shorter in the middle of Jan. Listening to comedy on the way into Cockermouth has cheered up my morning.”
It even inspired Peter to provide his own joke: where do Martians buy their drink? At a Mars bar.
Lauren Read, for Stagecoach Cumbria & North Lancashire, said: “Today is Blue Monday which is meant to be the most depressing day of the year so we have been hopping on and off buses in West Cumbria with comedian Tom Little to surprise and delight the passengers with some jokes and stand-up comedy.
“He makes jokes about things you can relate to in day-to-day life which makes it more funny because it’s something you might laugh about yourself anyway.
“Bus journeys are unpredictable because it’s members of the public getting onto something; it can be different every day and today was even more unpredictable because we had stand-up comedy.”
