Many of us have seen Tom Gleeson on the telly, whether it be hosting his highly successful ABC tv quiz show, ‘Hard Quiz’, his Hard Chat segment on ‘The Weekly’ or his infamous Gold Logie acceptance speech this year. Either way, for those familiar with Gleeson’s work, we know he’s a good-natured, knockabout guy with a sharp wit and a cheeky sense of fun. Which is exactly what we got in tonight’s “Joy” stand up comedy show which Gleeson has been touring around the nation and at comedy festivals since January 2019.

It’s a nice sense of occasion tonight at The Malthouse, situated next to ACCA in the sophisticated South Melbourne arts precinct just behind and around the corner from the NGVI. The Malthouse is a swish, contemporary “proper theatre” which adds a nice sense of luxury to proceedings, but not so swish as to alienate the average person, just cosy and a little plush. I find you can never guess a comic’s Tom Gleeson live at Melbourne comedy festivals.audience and tonight was no exception. I expected them to be more “Aussie” but they turned out to be quite middle class and cultured.

Likewise with Gleeson, who I’ve seen in person at live recordings of ‘Hard Quiz’ and ‘The Weekly’ at the ABC here in Melbourne, but his stand up comic persona is quite different to that, more polished and cultivated, although there are certainly liberal lashings of the larrikin we’ve come to know and love. Tonight’s show is Gleeson’s very last performance of “Joy” although the material has changed a lot since early this year so in a way the name is the only thing about the show that has stayed the same, and it is being recorded for an Amazon Prime comedy special.

You wonder how a performer responds to that kind of presence, knowing you need to get it right for the cameras, but Gleeson is a consummate professional and very smooth with only a few of the very most minor of verbal stumbles. He hits the ground running and has us in the palm of his hand from the word “go”, starting with material about his young son swallowing a $2 coin, excitedly trying to strain it out with a colander and then having to scan his son at the airport check-in, wondering if the coin was still in there.

There is a very funny account of a country town switchboard operator punching through reverse charge STD calls through an exchange in the 80’s and an at times eye-poppingly remarkable story of being kicked out of a Sydney nightclub closing for the lockout laws and a woman named Debbie who collected Tom Gleeson’s leather jacket for ‘safekeeping’ and its retrieval after she left her number with the nightclub. It’s just the kind of eccentric, kooky Australian behaviour recounted by comedians like Gleeson that makes them so entertaining.

Gleeson goads the hecklers out of hiding midway through the show as he amusedly comments on how polite they’d been so far. All are genial and good natured except one who has a red hot go and whom Gleeson proceeds to take down with merciless precision to hilarious effect. I am so glad this man piped up because he supplied us with one of the many big laughs of the night. At the end of the show, Gleeson invites us to ask him which of his stories were true and which weren’t, which proves a very interesting insight into the comedic writing process and forum for fun audience interaction again.

There was a delicious sense of a continuation of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from April-May earlier this year at which I was lucky to see a handful of shows but missed “Joy” and it was nice to have another dose of this very pleasant form of entertainment. Tom Gleeson is one of Australia’s premier stand-up comedians and it’s not hard to see why, with his likeable, easy going, highly entertaining patter. It was indeed a joy to be present and made for a very enjoyable night out.