Tom is best known for his work in the smash hit series Friday Night Dinner and Plebs, which both set records for the highest audience and highest ratings for any comedy across their respective channels. His acting credits also include Lloyd of the Flies, Broadchurch and Bridget Jones’ Baby. On screen, Tom has appeared on Drunk History, Roast Battle, 8 Out of 10 Cats, The Last Leg, The Great Pottery Throwdown, Pointless Celebrities and more.
This January, he’ll be bringing his trademark humour to Funny AF - a night of top-tier banter for Try Dry® app users at the Lucky Saint, proving once and for all that you can have all the banter without the booze! Ahead of the comedy night, we caught up with Tom to talk about alcohol, life and his new tour.
Hey up Tom! Thanks so much for getting behind the 2026 Dry January® challenge. Tell us a bit about your own relationship with alcohol over the years.
I have two memories connected to my school years relating to alcohol. The first when at age fifteen myself and my best mate put water mixed with vinegar in a vodka bottle and handed it round to our friendship group, watching with glee as a few pretended to get drunk. The second was a little later when I was driven back from a birthday party and managed to coat the entire side of a car in vomit. The outside of it though. I had some decorum.
I then went to university. Within the first week I had been institutionally invited to get off my t*ts in six different costumes, which established heavy drinking as just a thing that everyone does. Then I left university and have spent the subsequent years slowly enjoying alcohol less and less - treating it as a numbing agent for points of stress or just something to do.
Looking back, alcohol probably didn’t do me as many favours as I felt like it was at the time, which is why I’m glad to lend my name to this endeavour as a small attempt to redress the balance.
You’re recently engaged (congrats!) and became a father this year (double congrats!) How’s that changed your view on life, health, wellbeing and all the things we do every day that help or hinder them?
Well yes, exactly. It seems to me that alcohol is a release because it brings you into your body and allows to express your baser instincts in quite a freeing way. But with aspirations of becoming the best version of myself, for my daughter and my fiancé, it’s a version of me that I’m quite keen not to be for the large majority of my time. I’m not in a place where I want to say I’m teetotal, because I still see a place for alcohol in my life - but that place is a selfish point of occasional existential relief, as opposed to an unthinking point of the habitual social every-day. The sober version of me is better for my family. The drinking version of me is probably better if England reach the World Cup final.
Aptly, your new tour ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am’, officially kicks off on the 31 Jan 2026 (hopefully with bucket loads more energy, better sleep - bar fatherhood sleep disruptions - and all the benefits you’ve unlocked in your Dry January® challenge, raring to go!) What are you allowed to tell us about it?
I’m allowed to tell you what I bloody like thank you. I’ve performed the show at Edinburgh and the Soho Theatre, so the reviews will probably give you a clue too. But it’s basically a series of routines about things that I’ve been categorised as mixed with a discussion on the creative journey of Arctic Monkeys and I dress like Alex Turner. If you like that Arctic Monkeys album you’ll get to listen to that as pre-show music as well, so buy a ticket for that and then you’re welcome to leave.
Ahead of January, we did some research exploring how blokes feel about banter and booze, what did you think of the findings?
According to the survey, nearly half of male drinkers (48%) in the UK think they are funnier when drinking alcohol. This is one of the more humorous statistics I have read. It is a fantastically male quirk to assume that because we’ve had a few pints we are suddenly wittier, despite the more likely reality that we are actually just louder. I would say the effect alcohol has on humour is at best, mixed. And this is despite the fact that my mother says my appearance on Drunk History was the best thing I’ve ever done.
Final one, do you have a favourite alcohol-free or low-alcohol beverage?
Cranberry juice. If you’re talking about alcohol replacement drinks, 0.0 Guinness is superb.
Read more about Tom’s tour, coming to the UK and Ireland in 2026, and where you can buy tickets: Tom Rosenthal.
