Much Glee: TV funnyman Tom Allen launches comedy club in new Oxford home

“It’s a big honour and really exciting to be launching a new venue for the Glee Club in Oxford,” Tom Allen tells me as he walks and talks his way through our interview.

The reason for this is that he is on the end of his mobile phone, battling his way across central London on foot in the middle of Monday’s Tube strike – and battling occasional interruptions from emergency service vehicles with sirens doing their best to drown him out.

He adds: “This is a really good time for comedy and the Glee Club people are excellent at creating an environment where people can enjoy themselves. There’s a science to getting the venue and night out right and they are great at attention to detail, everything from the welcome at the door to getting the lighting right.

“In the past comedy could be quite a macho environment and the Glee Clubs have been great at tackling that and making sure their bills feature diverse performers.

“We’ve got a nice spread of people on the bill for Saturday – Marlon Davis, Ellie Taylor and Paul Thorne – each with their own take on the world. In my set I’ll be talking about things I notice around me and things I took very seriously when I was young but don’t any more.

“Although I haven’t spent much time in Oxford, I enjoyed appearing at the old Glee Club (in Hythe Bridge Street) and know the city and university have a tradition of producing great comedians and writers, like Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.”

Tom didn’t go to university himself, having set his sights on a career as a performer at a young age.

He adds: “I wanted to write, create and perform and thought that would be in acting for quite some time. Comedy then looked like a blokey, macho scene but someone said I should try stand-up and I had a go and enjoyed it.”

He quickly made a mark on the stand-up scene by winning both the So You Think You’re Funny award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the BBC New Comedy Award in 2005, when he was 22.

He says: “The scene has changed remarkably since I started out, with lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds telling their stories through comedy – it’s a really broad church. I’ve spent 12 years learning all the time, adapting to new environments and challenges, such as touring my own shows, which is different to doing club gigs.”

He has also made his mark on TV more recently, with appearances on Channel 4’s 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Comedy Central’s The Comedy Store Presents and the John Bishop Show, as well as Channel 4’s Comedy Gala at the O2 Arena.

“It’s amazing to be on with people I admire, like Jimmy Carr and Jo Brand, and great to see them at work and to learn from them.”

He has also kept in touch with his acting roots over the years by appearing in radio and TV dramas, such as BBC’s Sensitive Skin with Joanna Lumley and Fear of Fanny with Mark Gatiss and Julia Davis and film roles in Starter for Ten with James McEvoy and the Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe.

Tom says: “I still do a bit of acting but it’s more a side thing to stand-up, which has always been my main thing since I discovered it. It’s something that I’ve created, whereas with acting you are working with someone else’s writing.

“And I think comedians can create often work that is quite theatrical, such as Victoria Wood.

“Comedy combines so many elements, whereas theatre can sometime be stuffy and overstructured at times. I find comedy more inclusive and immediate.

“The interaction with the audience can also add to the fun. If someone shouts something out, it’s not a breach of some convention.”

He adds: “Comedy gives people an escape but it also gives people the chance to be subversive, to challenge and satirise things in society.

“There are so many things to lampoon now and we shouldn’t let them pass by without scrutiny. We have a responsibility to reflect on how the world is changing around us.”

• Tom Allen plays Glee Club at the Bullingdon, Oxford, on Saturday. glee.co.uk