It would be easy to hit Tom Stade’s latest hour with the beloved hack term ‘growing old disgracefully’, but the Canadian comic’s easy-going, expletive-laden observational style still feels as fresh and youthful as it did three decades ago. That’s part of the point of Risky Business, in which Stade, now 53 years old, discusses the disconnect between looking older and still feeling mentally like a man in his early twenties. 

We’ve all watched comics mine the degradations of age, but it’s thanks to the whirlwind force of Stade’s persona that he finds fresh angles on his inability to change in an era of internet speak, doom scrolling and entitled teens. It helps that he’s a slick operator, wrangling anecdotes about cheap holidays and family discord seamlessly, and welcoming audiences along for the ride with crowd work that never threatens to throw his rhythm out of whack. 

His show may be about how most people don’t grow wiser as they get older, but the athletic finesse he’s moulded onto his style is a case study for how a lifetime on the circuit can yield jokes that are both machine-tooled in their precision and effortless in their delivery. 

Tom Stade: Risky Business, The Stand, until 25 August, 8.15pm.