Tommy Little: ‘I’m getting strangely clucky’
The comedian opens up about life as a single man, bungee jumping naked in freezing temperatures for charity and why Angelina Jolie is the answer to all his problems.
Stellar
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Tommy Little did it once, but he’s in no hurry for a repeat performance.
Last year, the 34-year-old comedian flummoxed his social media followers by sharing photos of himself in some rather steamy poses: shirt off, physique taut, upper arm and shoulder muscles bulging and a rippling six-pack.
“Only for charity,” he insists with a laugh. “And those days are done and dusted.”
Little, the youngest of three children who was born and is still based in Melbourne, gets a lot of mileage out of the fact he’s still single.
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Google it: he talks about it. A lot. And if he weren’t so busy juggling his commitments on radio (co-hosting the Carrie & Tommy radio show alongside Carrie Bickmore), TV (a regular co-host on The Project, again with Bickmore) and stand-up gigs, he could probably land himself the plum gig as Australia’s next Bachelor.
Not that he thinks much would come of it. “If I was ever to do The Bachelor, it would be the shortest season ever,” he tells Stellar.
“Because I think the car door would open at the start and the girls would take one look and go, ‘Oh no!’ And shut the door and drive off.”
His friend Peter Helliar, another Project colleague, isn’t so sure.
Discussing one of Little’s early shows, which focused heavily on his lack of success in the dating department, Helliar recalls, “Watching this good-looking guy in a V-neck, constantly scratching his neck to show off his guns... it was a little hard to believe that this was a man who would have girl troubles.”
But he does. And now many of his mates have started families. He’s also enjoying being a doting uncle to his two young nieces as well as spending time with Bickmore’s children every afternoon since they started broadcasting from her house.
“I am getting strangely clucky,” Little admits.
Kids like him, too. Bickmore tells Stellar her eldest daughter, four-year-old Evie, constantly asks when Little is coming to visit, sometimes just five minutes after he’s left.
“He really engages with kids, probably because he is a big kid himself,” she says. “They gravitate towards him. He’ll make a great dad one day.”
Until then, Little makes do with a bromance he’s had going with fellow comic and Rosehaven star Luke McGregor for years.
The two have been housemates since McGregor and his partner split, and Little offers a glimpse of what happens when they’re both actually home: “We have pretty wild nights, and by wild I mean we sit down on the couch and have a cup of tea, play some Lego,” he says. “It’s pretty f*cking rock star.”
If work remains Little’s true love, it’s probably because it was also his first. He estimates that he did more than 100 stand-up gigs before he finally got paid, and often it was in beers at the bar instead of cash.
“I did my first gig and I just loved it,” he remembers. “I got lots of laughs. The second one, I got lots of laughs. By the third one I thought, ‘The king of comedy has arrived!’
“And then I died one of the most awful deaths ever — I tried to write new material for every gig. I was so naïve I actually thought that would be how I would make myself different as a comedian.”
It has been a long time since his material has fallen flat, but he also no longer fears awkward silences from the audience.
“You often realise why it hasn’t gone well, so then you adjust and change things,” he explains.
“But I also revel in those moments, that energy when everything is silent. I don’t give a sh*t. Everybody is on the edge of their seat. And that feeling of ‘How am I going to get out of this?’ is something I find fun.”
Little claims there’s a reason stand-ups like him can withstand those wild adrenaline surges: “Because we can’t do anything else! I am a comedian because I failed at everything else in life. It was a last resort.
“I wanted to do acting. And I was really sh*t. And since then I have been fired from every job I have ever had. It’s only a matter of time before I get fired from the jobs I have at the moment.”
He has an almost chronic inability to shy away from challenges — especially when they’re for a good cause, and particularly if they will play well on TV.
Consider last year, when he agreed to a nude bungee jump (his second) to raise money for Bickmore’s brain cancer charity.
Or the decision to run his first-ever marathon in -20°C temperatures in Antarctica, with no previous experience.
“I partied enough for a lifetime so that [ice marathon] was something new, something different,” he says.
“It was f*cking awful. I was physically destroyed by it. I still can’t really walk down stairs. And I have only just started running again, but short runs.
“The whole experience was the best and worst thing I have done. I had a strange feeling afterwards: I was proud, which was new to me.”
Sure, his knee still seizes up from the run, and hurling one’s naked body hundreds of metres through the air dings a person’s dignity.
But Little says he has no regrets. Except for maybe some of the multiple tattoos on his body — including one he got after a few too many of those free beers. Ironically, it reads “no regrets”.
“I also have a list of my exes names tattooed up my side,” he confesses somewhat sheepishly.
When Stellar reminds him he is in good company — Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie still sports a tattoo that “spiritually binds” her to Brad Pitt, for instance — he perks up.
“The answer to all my problems is sitting in front of us,” he quips.
“[I should date] Angelina. We can go and get laser sessions together holding hands. I would cry, and she would just be stone-faced. Why did I never think of this? It would be so simple. And she comes with all those gorgeous kids. Problem solved.”
Tommy Little’s comedy show Self-Diagnosed Genius is playing nationally, comedy.com.au/tour/tommy-little-2019; Carrie & Tommy airs 3pm weekdays on the Hit Network.
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