Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Totally Tom: class act

If you are feeling chippy — and I hope you are not — you might find Totally Tom annoying.

issue 20 August 2011

If you are feeling chippy — and I hope you are not — you might find Totally Tom annoying.

If you are feeling chippy — and I hope you are not — you might find Totally Tom annoying. Here are two Old Etonians, Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, who want to be comedians. They have been catapulted towards success at an early age thanks to the internet, and their act is all the rage at this month’s Edinburgh Fringe. Girls like them, obviously. ‘Oh, my God, Tom!’ shouts a nubile blonde as they walk into the room. ‘I was just about to text you!’
Chippiness, however, would be quite the wrong reaction. Totally Tom are totally brilliant. They are talented, funny, and admirably self-effacing. ‘We’re just bitter dorks,’ says Stourton (who is, incidentally, son of Ed, the writer and broadcaster). ‘A lot of our jokes and characters come from that.’

Palmer and Stourton, who are both 23, have spent much of their lives trying to make each other laugh: they have the instinctive understanding of two blokes who have watched a lot of TV together.

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