Tom Allen Audiobooks

Tom Allen, born in 1983, is an English comedian, actor, writer, singer and presenter. His breakthrough came in 2005, when he won the So You Think You’re Funny contest at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and from there he built the sort of career that keeps a performer permanently on British screens.

His acting credits range from Colour Me Kubrick to Starter for Ten and Tamara Drewe, but most viewers know him as a host and panel-show fixture: Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, The Apprentice: You’re Fired! and a long association with the Bake Off family of programmes, from Bake Off: The Professionals to An Extra Slice. Few comedians of his generation are so thoroughly woven into the fabric of British television.

Our catalogue carries two Tom Allen titles, No Shame and Common Decency, and the names alone read like a pair of mottoes – one a refusal of embarrassment, the other a code of conduct. Between them they stake out the ground a stand-up mines best: the small social rules of British life, and the comedy of taking them seriously.

Audio is arguably the ideal way to meet a comedian on the page, because a comic’s writing keeps the rhythms of the stage – the set-up, the pause, the placement of the barb – and listening restores them. For anyone who knows Allen from years of panel shows, these are natural next steps; for anyone who does not, they are a very painless introduction.