AWARD-winning Frome comedian, Tom Burgess, will return to perform at Frome Festival, after receiving a ‘Best Debut Show’ award at the Leicester Comedy Festival awards.
A childhood of watching classic BBC comedy shows such as Not the Nine O’Clock News, led Tom on a journey to becoming a comedian. He started by writing and performing sketches at Frome College and then found even more of an outlet at university.
Since 2015, he has toured the country as his character Peter Fleming, a senile man who used to make children’s television in the 1960s. It was for this character that Tom won the award for ‘Best Debut Show’ at the end of March, at the Leicester Comedy Festival Awards – noted as the largest comedy festival in Europe.
Tom told the Frome Times, “I am utterly delighted – to be nominated was a fantastic surprise on its own, but to actually win was very strange. It still doesn’t feel totally real, but perhaps that’s because the trophy is glass and therefore barely visible from most angles. More than anything, I’m excited to develop the show further.”
Meanwhile, he is currently performing a sketch double act, Sam & Tom, which he will be bringing to Frome during this year’s Frome Festival.
Tom continued, “Our show as ‘Sam & Tom’ this year is all about immersing the audience within the action. The plot centres around us interviewing a group of applicants for the role of our audience. But as things progress, the audience will actually end up finding out a lot more about us than we do about them – and the tensions within our relationship will come to light. We also plan to include several jokes along the way.
“We had a lot of fun last year in Frome because the balance of our dynamic gets slightly tipped whenever we perform in each other’s hometowns. By rights, the hometown boy should be most in his element, and the outsider will be on the back foot – but there can also be more pressure on the homecomer to impress, so the outsider can exploit that and really mess with his partner’s standing in his local community.
“What I’m saying is, our Frome Festival show this year will either cement or dissolve any respect this town could possibly have for me!”
“We’ll be performing at the Granary on Friday 13th July, I hope people come.”
