One of the titles I focused on in my What I Should Have Read in 2020 post, I have now got round to it and it certainly met my expectations.

I’ve always been very impressed by Tom Allen.  A couple of years back he performed locally at what we thought was an absolute bargain price compared to many comedians who show up at our local theatre.  Having really enjoyed the show my partner posted positive comments on social media whilst sat in the pub afterwards.  By the time we got home he’d had a personal message from Tom thanking him for coming and for saying he’d enjoyed it- how nice was that!

Since then Tom has become a more regular face on TV.  I particularly enjoy him on “Bake Off’s Extra Slice” and “Bake Off: The Professionals”.  Over the Christmas period there was a new Channel 4 show “Tom Allen Goes To Town”, was one of three comedians locked overnight in Hamleys and co-presented a festive Bake Off. 

He has written a memoir which is of a much higher quality than many celebrity biographies.  The reason for this is partly his natural wit and aptitude at handling his material but also the focus he places on shame, which does influence his stand-up work and has had a significant effect on his life and mental health.  This gives his writing a sense of purpose and development.

Like Will Young in his “To Be A Gay Man” also published in 2020 much of this shame is linked to sexuality but it is also about the fear of standing out. His upbringing in Bromley, South East London where nobody seems to want to stand out holds an influence here, but, as so often happens, not wanting to stand out is what causes him to stand out.  His well-spoken, clear diction is at odds with his family and his neighbourhood, nobody seems to know where that has come from; as a teenager he dresses as a Victorian dandy and there is a wonderful story as to how he opts to deal with homophobic name-calling by doing something theatrical for a PTA event at school in Year 8 which he hopes will make him seem more cool but chooses an Alan Bennett monologue as famously performed by Julie Walters playing an actress on a porn set which becomes even more inappropriate when he does it in a ballgown.

Tom is so good at recreating these “shameful” moments of his life that you laugh with him, never at him.  If you have seen his stand-up routine some of the material will be familiar, for example, his childhood experiences at Bromley Leisure Centre was a highly memorable part of the stand-up show I’ve seen performed but it is great to have it again here and the familiarity had me laughing in anticipation as much as at the events.

This is thoroughly entertaining with serious points to make.  Tom is a product of an educational system tainted by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government Section 28 ruling and as a youth grappling with sexuality his sense of being an outsider was reinforced directly because of this.  It takes years for Tom to begin to accept himself and this growth is catalogued in a well-written, funny, significant text.

No Shame was published in 2020 in hardback in the UK by Hodder Studio.