Tom Deacon: Can I Be Honest?

Yes, it's Tom Deacon from Radio 1, a fact the comedian and DJ is quick to point out to his audience tonight. To be fair he does balance this gratuitous point of information with a rundown of his Twitter detractors, and this journey from one extreme to the other is pretty much indicative of the flow of his show – from happy-go-lucky chappy to inexplicably low energy comic.

The change in register—particularly evident at the end—got me thinking that perhaps I had missed some hidden meaning and “Deaco”, as he refers to himself, was toying with some anti-comedy. But no, what the 24 year old offers is a very safe, stately canter through some unspectacular terrain, notwithstanding a handful of cracking one-liners.

The Mutley-haired comic has nothing more dastardly to offer than a few domestic potboliers that involve admitting he is more interested in his Xbox than his former girlfriend, that he can elicit funny noises from his flatmate who dislikes being touched, and that teabagging sounds a lot like a northerner saying “tea bag in”.

Perhaps the best gag of the evening was one that had apparently come from an audience member the night before, who said to Deacon: “I'd rather be bald than have earmuffs”. It's likely that Deacon crafted that line himself, of course, and there are flashes of his writing ability throughout. The problem is that, like radio, he could all too easily be relegated to background noise.