2014 Edinburgh Fringe

More details

After a three-year hiatus from the festival Tom Allen returns with his new show Life/Style, at The Stand 5, Edinburgh.

Life/Style is a stand up show about who we all are and what we've done to get there. With ever increasing lifestyle choices, online privacy breaches and our dependence on social networking - how do we want to appear? And in the wake of gay marriage legislation - have we all reached equality? Should we care what people know and think about us? Do we get to choose our style and are we ever happy with what we see? And maybe, whatever life throws at us, how we deal with it is actually what becomes our style.

Welcome to the world of Tom Allen - where occasional chairs, revolving doors and raised eyebrows are the sparks that take him on a whirlwind of imagination to the depths of insecurity and the beauty of the world he inhabits. Painting with a fine brush that describes in detail the absurd and the petty, the intricacies of snobbery and petty jealousy, it is escapism into the world around us. Allen invites you to dance in his mind.

No one has Tom Allen's skewed view of the world, his unique storytelling ability or his ability to be both young and old, insider and outsider, confident and fearful.

Tom Allen has just returned from supporting Sarah Millican on her UK tour. In 2005 he won both So You Think You're Funny and the BBC New Comedy Awards. Since then he has performed at Just for Laughs, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Comedy Festivals and has supported Reggie Watts and Eugene Mirman on tour in the US. In 2010 Attitude Magazine called him a gay role model.

Tom plays the central character Pip in the Sony Award winning Bleak Expectations for Radio 4. He covered the Edinburgh festival for BBC2's The Review Show, the British fashion Awards for Net-a-Porter and has presented for E4 and Channel 4 including TNT's Dictionary Corner. As a teenager he was the youngest member of the Noel Coward Society. He responds well to deadlines and strong women.