Joshua Michael Thomas (born 26 May 1987) is an Australian stand-up comedian, writer, actor and media personality, possibly best-known for being the Generation Y team captain on Panel Show Talkin' 'bout Your Generation.
He first came onto the comedy scene in 2005, when at the age of 17, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Raw Comedy Competition. From there, he moved on to his first solo show, and developed a podcast with friends Melinda Buttle and Tom Ward. He also wrote for Girlfriend magazine. He competed in Celebrity MasterChef Australia, but lost in the first heat, which he jokes about at length. He hosted the 2011 Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala event.
His comedy style is very self-deprecating, and his act mainly consists of rambling anecdotes about things that have happened to him. Originally, a big part of his schtick was how awkward he was with the opposite sex; once he came out as gay, he made it quite clear that his ineptness at sex and romance had not changed, merely shifted in focus from women to men. He describes his skill set as "not very good at things ... but quite good at talking to large groups of people about genitals".
Came out as gay in late 2009, and was selected by samesame.com.au as one of the 25 most influential LGBT Australians.
He wrote and starred in Please Like Me, a semi-autobiographical comedy/drama series which premiered on ABC2 in 2013. Originally planned for a six-episode run, the show was renewed three times by The ABC, in conjunction with American TV network Pivot, making it The ABC's first scripted comedy to reach its fourth series.
In 2020, he starred in Everything's Gonna Be Okay, a comedy series airing on Freeform.
He is oddly remembered as wearing cardigans a lot.
His media appearances and shows contain examples of:
- Butt-Monkey: Especially on Talkin' 'bout Your Generation and his appearances on Good News Week.
- Call-Back: Often times, will link an anecdote near the end of the show with one from the beginning. For example, one of the last lines of "Surprise!" is, "And I said to him, one of my favourite things about you is that you've never vomited on me... and he said, yeah, but I did pee on you once." He had related the peeing story earlier in the act as part of an explanation on why he didn't like living with his boyfriend.
- Closet Key: According to his show "Surprise!", Tom Ballard was his.
- Coming-Out Story: His show "Surprise!" is the full story of his.
- Idealized Sex: Discussed. In his first solo show, "Please Like Me", he commented that sex for him had never involved much moaning and thrashing about from either party, and was more likely to involve murmurs of, "oh, gosh" and cries of, "oh, shit, are you alright?!".
- One-Steve Limit: Joked about at length in his podcast and on his Twitter, in response to many fans confusing his boyfriend, radio personality Tom Ballard, for his podcast co-host, Tom Ward. A few months after breaking up with Ballard, he started dating Tom Jaspers, who he dubbed "Ralph" to avoid confusion with the other Toms.
- To recap: His best friend, current boyfriend, and ex-boyfriend all have the same first name... Which just so happens to be his surname. Methinks Freud might have had an opinion on this.
- His current boyfriend is named Josh, causing similar confusion.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Famous for having a rather bizarre, unidentifiable accent. It might be vaguely British, which is itself strange, since Josh was born and raised in Australia.
- It's actually not that uncommon in Australia, because of how many Australians are only a few generations removed from England.
