Thomas James “TomSka” Ridgewell is a 27-year-old London-based comedian, actor, screenwriter, producer and director. Ridgewell started making short films with his parents’ camera early on in life and is one of Youtube’s longest content creators, with his earliest youtube comedy video still available being “KILL BING”, which was uploaded on May 6, 2007.
Ridgewell’s previous credits include the British webtoon Eddsworld, which was created and animated by Ridgewell’s friend Edd Gould. Ridgewell’s cartoonish persona in this format is a blue-hoodied mean-spirited alcoholic, which is a half-accurate representation of the man himself.
Ridgewell has battled depression and anger issues for many years, his first video about it being I am Depressed, and continuing to talk about his following struggles with weight and emotional management until the present day.
Ridgewell’s content generally comes in varying shades of violent, hilarious and startlingly pessimistic at times.
For example, Pizza Time and its spiritual successor, Time Trouble, both deal with time travel-based comedy. Pizza Time features the following exchange between Tom, who is about to order a Pizza, and a version of himself from the future who attempts to warn him about an impeding disaster.
Future Tom: STOP! I’m you from the future!
Present Tom: The Future? Oh man, I got fat!
Future Tom: Like an hour into the future.
Present Tom: Oh. (glances at his stomach fat) …Oh…
–Pizza Time (2015)
Ridgewell’s most popular video is also one of his earliest successes. asdfmovie (ASS-duff-MOO-vee) is an animated sketch comedy series created in 2008, and it sparked dozens of running gags and memes across its ten instalments, including “I like Trains”, which got its own song, and “Everybody Do the Flop“, which also got its own song.
Almost every sketch from each of the 10 ‘asdfmovies’ is highly quotable and their popularity stretches far across the internet, even to people who don’t know who Ridgewell himself is.
Ridgewell’s live-action sketches have a ranging budget and scope from the low-budget but high-creativity The Hole to the high-budget and also high-creativity Baby With A Gun 2, wrapping back to the low-budget and well-written ‘The Confession‘, which has two sequels.
Ridgewell’s second channel, DarkSquidge, differs in content. DarkSquidge videos range from the now-retired weekly Vlog (Video log, or video diary) “Last Week” (which has been replaced with Last Month in an effort to make life easier for Ridgewell and his editor, Elliot Gough) which details the week to week of Ridgewell’s life, to videos talking about his anger management, depression, and weight loss struggles.
The DarkSquidge channel also does “Thanksdays“, where Ridgewell gives thanks to the people who helped him get where he is now.
Ridgewell’s current company is known as TurboPunch Ltd., with the three most prominent employees being Tom Ridgewell, Eddie Bowley, and Elliot Gough. Music for most of Ridgewell’s videos is created by Todd “LilDeuceDeuce” Bryanton.
Hu is That? 