Competing on Taskmaster Australia is giving comedian Tommy Little the chance to live out a dream – and to let go of that dream.
“I did want to be an actor, and I’m not good at it,” Tommy admits to TV WEEK. “And it’s nice to be able to finally let the Australian public know just how bad I am at acting – and do some questionable accent work, some very poorly thought-out characters that have no real base or purpose. So yeah, it’s good.”
Tommy, known for his appearances on everything from The Project to The Hundred With Andy Lee, studied drama at uni before turning to comedy.
“I think I held the record at my university for the most number of subjects that I withdrew from,” he says. “I think I withdrew from 28 subjects, and so it ended up taking me six years to complete what should be a three-year degree.”
But Tommy does have other talents, like doing card tricks. As he reveals on Taskmaster, he took up magic during lockdown, joking, “And the only thing that disappeared was my girlfriend.” Tommy tells TV WEEK about the “dark moment of the soul” when he bought a felt covering for a table he could do card tricks on – but he bought it online and didn’t check the size.
“It rocked up and it’s the size of a mousepad,” he remembers. “You can’t even fit a deck of cards on it. And my girlfriend at the time was like, ‘What’s that?’ I’m like, ‘It’s my card trick table.’ And obviously she was so aroused by that that we immediately got it on!”
Melbourne-based Tommy turned 40 in February this year. On the day of his birthday, he found himself questioning where he was at in life – but, he points out, “no more so than any other day”.
“Every day I think about where I’m at in this life and all the things I haven’t achieved and what’s the point?” he says with a laugh. “I don’t understand people who just exist and keep on existing and are content and happy. I just don’t understand it. Like, how do you not question your purpose every single day?”
One thing Tommy has achieved is reaching number one in the radio ratings with the drive show he co-hosts on the Hit Network with Carrie Bickmore, who he describes as “one of my best mates”. But he won’t take any of the credit for the show’s success.
“That’s because my co-host is brilliant,” he insists. “She does that and I just hold onto her coat-tails. If anything, I bring it down, so it’s lucky she’s so good at what she does for all of our sakes.”
Of course, there’s also Tommy’s successful stand-up comedy career, which he admits is his “first true love” in life.
“I wish I could fix people’s problems, but obviously I can’t do that,” he explains. “My aim, when I do comedy, is just to make them forget about their problems for an hour and laugh with me – or at me, I don’t really care.
“I think there’s nothing better than being in the moment and having a bit of a laugh. And for me, that’s what it is as well.
“It’s like that hour I’m on stage, the rest of the world melts away, and I get to just be and see people’s gorgeous laughing faces – and it’s heaven.”
Tommy believes that fatherhood would likely bring him a similar kind of joy – and it’s something he’s looking forward to in his own life.
“I have two nieces, and I just love kids,” he says. “You can just be in the moment with a kid and all you’ve got to do is make them smile and laugh and be happy, and there’s something very pure and freeing about that. I really like it.
“If my kids turn out to be a–eholes, I might regret making this statement, but at the moment, I’m looking forward with positivity.”
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