Latest news with #TomBallard
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Mum was looking out for me...Alison Hargreaves' girl in dramatic avalanche escape
The daughter of mountain climber Alison Hargreaves has narrowly escaped an avalanche just months before the 30th anniversary of her mother's death. Kate Ballard shared terrifying first-person footage of the rapid fall of snow in Charmonix, France, and as it rumbles towards her she says to herself: 'You need to get out of here right now. Ohh my gosh.' Hurriedly turning around on her skis, the video then shows her begin to ski down the hill and then turn around and see the snow getting closer. Mercifully she had been with her speed wing, a paragliding-like device which is attached to the user with a harness, a decision which potentially helped save her life because it meant she could fly away to safety. Sharing the shocking footage online, she said: 'No doubt in my mind that my mum and brother were looking out for me.' Both her mother Alison Hargreaves and brother Tom Ballard died while climbing. Ms Hargreaves, who had been based in Spean Bridge, lost her life less than a year after she became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest without the aid of Sherpas or bottled oxygen. When she summited on May 13, 1995, she immediately radioed her based camp and told them to send a fax to her two children at home in Scotland which read: 'I am on the highest point of the world, and I love you dearly.' Three months after her successful climb of Everest, which made her internationally famous, the then 33-year-old died while descending K2, which sits on the border between Pakistan and China. Her son Tom lost his life while climbing 24 years later. In March 2019 his body was found with fellow climber Daniele Nardi on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan. Mr Ballard was aged 30. Ms Ballard continues to spend time in the mountains. On the incident last month, she said: 'I felt something deep inside that it was not the day to sit around and take my time. 'I had just finished getting ready. I heard a loud boom and roar. 'I looked up to see the avalanche heading straight down towards me. Instinct kicked in and I flew away to safety.'
ABC News
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Chit Chat: Comedian Sez on un-spiralling her comedy with the help of a millennial
Comedian, musician, writer, content creator, dyslexic, bisexual — is there anything Sez can't do? If you've not heard her mononym yet, you've almost certainly come across one of her irreverent short-form videos, which have racked up nearly 7 million likes (and that's just on TikTok). Stand-up is only one faction of Sez, but that's where she finds herself in this moment, smack bang in the middle of a massive comedy tour that's already dominated the Melbourne and Sydney comedy festivals and is about to hit Perth, Brisbane and Tasmania. A self-confessed "mix of Jack Black and Missy Higgins", Sez has combined her irreverent stand-up and unique music for new show Keeps Me Young, directed by comedian and renowned millennial Tom Ballard. We caught up with Sez to find out what it's like to be a multi-hyphenate in 2025. Loading YouTube content This was your second Melbourne International Comedy Festival run, what lessons did you learn from the last time? Water and sleep and not accidentally going on tangents, which is my biggest battle as a comedian. Someone will say something from the audience and then I'll spiral into a five-minute tangent about what they said. Then I'm like, 'Oh shit, we're gonna have to cut a song, I've gone full TED Talk.' What's your wildest housemate story? When I lived in London for a bit, like every Australian ever, I lived in a share house. We paid cash through a private landlord, one of us would always put the cash in the envelope and take it to him. It was my week but my housemate offered to do it so I said, 'Oh, sick' and gave her the cash. It was my birthday party that night so we had heaps of people in our garden for a party. Wake up the next morning and I walk past my housemate's room, it's all empty and the walls are freshly painted. It wasn't until we were all having a coffee, hungover, that it clicked: she had just run off with the money. It was about five housemates, it was a big house, so it was a lot of cash. We tried calling her but she had blocked us on everything, except she forgot to block me on Instagram. I looked at her Instagram and she posted the morning of that day, and it was like in some forest somewhere and the caption was: 'Your vibe attracts your tribe.' It was such a shock because she was fine for like a year. What was your worst phase as a teen that you thought would last 4eva? A lot of people in our school would wear like 1,000 anklets and 1,000 bracelets, all acting like we're from Byron Bay, like we were coastal kids — but it was Katoomba. The tan lines were messed up, so you couldn't stop wearing them. Loading Instagram content What is your signature dish? I make an absolutely life-changing vegan lasagne. I've been a vegan since I was 14, so I just perfected it so much over the years for people who eat meat. I feel like everyone who has this lasagne is attached to me in an emotional way. What do you swap in for milk in the béchamel? That's what I've always come up against in a vegan béchamel. None of the alt milks works well for me That is the problem with a vegan lasagne, the béchamel, but I'm going to keep that secret with me, I'm sorry. Absolutely dastardly haha. What is your average daily TikTok time? To be honest, my TikTok algorithm is just so wild and uncurated, I don't know what's going on with the algorithm at the moment. I don't know if she's going through something, someone needs to check on her, but my Instagram reels algorithm gets me so much. I never, ever thought I'd be like 'Instagram reels', but they really got better. I love to say it's an hour a day, but then I also scroll when I wake up in the morning, have a scroll before I go to bed. That's the most dangerous thing. Would you rather meet an alien or a ghost and why? Probably an alien. Meeting a ghost, it would just confirm that people are being haunting, you know what I mean? And that's everywhere you go. I would feel so aware. At least aliens, from what I know, mostly they're not kicking down here. You wouldn't see them as much. "Around the time of the US election, I actually didn't go on TikTok for like two months or something," Sez says. ( Supplied: Chris Hillary ) What's a huge giveaway that someone's a gen Z or millennial? I think gen Z has more of an internet-culture way of speaking, gen Z has way better sarcasm and dark humour and can switch in between things so quickly. I feel like when I'm around gen Z I don't need to take my ADHD meds. When I'm around millennials, I'm more like, 'OK, we really want to take those meds.' I love millennials, they're literally my life. I honestly feel like a lot of my millennial friends worry about me. They think I'm like, on the edge. But that's just how we express ourselves, we're violently unfiltered. What was it like being directed by possibly Australia's most famous millennial, Tom Ballard? It's been great because I am a musical comedian, and one of the main things that I struggle with is punchlines. Like, I really have a lot of songs where I'm just spiralling through it. Photo shows Two men dressed as Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton In 2003, beloved film critic Margaret Pomeranz was arrested for trying to screen a banned film. More than 20 years later, the incident has inspired a comedy show. So, I feel like working with Tom has kind of helped me realise that if I just restructure the spiral a little bit, it can make a bit more sense to everyone. He gives me a lot of good advice, and he also respects how weird my brain is and how it works, because I often speak in riddles. So he's decoded that. He's the gen Z whisperer. Are you scared of turning 30? No, no, not at all. I talk to my friends about it all the time. I'm always like, get me out! Honestly, every year I get older, I'm so much happier. I'm so sick of that whole woman-turning-30 thing where it's like, 'Oh, my God, she's 30. What the hell is she gonna do?!'' Getting older is kind of hectic in a lot of ways, like just realising that everything's a bit more serious. But I think, as a woman, I feel like I spent so much of my early and mid-20s just accidentally being in the most stupid situation where it could have been so great. When you get older, everything gets a bit easier. Dating and life and things get different as you get older, not because you're getting older, but because you've developed your personality more and know what you want. Sez: Keeps Me Young is at Perth Comedy Festival on May 8 and 9, before touring to Brisbane Comedy Festival, Newcastle, Hobart and Launceston. Quotes lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
