—

Tell Us About:

Your latest improv show:

My latest improv show is a real blind date on stage. The date is real, it’s genuine, and they’re both genuinely single. They have a genuine date in front of an audience. That inspires us to create a montage of improvised sketches.

(I’m almost allergic to talking about the improv side because it puts the general public off – longform for life though! Short form is for people who play chess on their phone idly while they’re at an improv show on their 40th birthday drinking alcohol free beer. )

In the second half, after we have a short break, the audience writes out their own personal questions for the dates to ask each other. We finish that off with a one-minute speedrun, so we get through all the wild questions. And then we do more improv.

That’s also a montage form, but a bit faster-paced. Then, at the end, we do Date or No Date, where both people stand on stage, and there’s a giant sign that says “Date” on one side and “No Date” on the other.

They then twist that sign and then reveal to each other whether they want to date.

There’s some debate as to the cringe factor, morality, and complexity of emotions about if we should do that. We end with questionable questions. That’s where I answer the worst of the audience questions.

Last show: Would you rather join your mum and dad for sex once or have to watch them do it every day for the rest of your life?

The questionable questions are designed by the audience to be impossible to answer without somehow staining your character. I think I would join them once. Even though they’re old I think if you have to watch every day you’d start kind of wishing they were not doing that or that they’re not there at all – which isn’t positive.

Everyone should want their Mum and Dad to have sex. 

Your favourite suggestion you have been given?

I do an opening where I ask the audience for a small beef in my own one-man show.

The first time I did it I was pretty nervous, a French guy, a computer engineer, was like, “Hey, I was in London 10 years ago in a Pret a Manger, and I ordered a Caesar salad and it arrived… without Caesar.”

A Marc Anthony salad! I did not say that at the time. I was really grateful that he had shared something so fun to go off and that formed the basis for my 2025 GICF show ONE.

Your favourite venue to perform at:

Probably The Stand in Glasgow. The staff are really cool and they have a way of just making the show subtly better with little bits of insight—if it’s not the sound guy Frazer choosing a tune that the show referenced in the break or Scott jumping on the bar pulling a pint quickly because a date said they could down one in six seconds. A venue is a building; people are what make it great.

Improv hero:

Heather Ann Campbell. I saw her at the Edinburgh International Improv Festival when I just started. Rebecca Drysdale played with her.

I’d seen Jordan Brooks with his Perrier/Dave Comedy Award-winning show also in Edinburgh and it made me laugh so hard that my temples were sore and I felt like my head might pop, and then I saw Heather and Rebecca Drysdale improvise a show that was just as funny.

It kind of blew me away. The quality, the depth of characters, the moves, the speed, the interesting pulls and callbacks, the digging down into things, the subsection of little interplays of real parts of her life with her real opinions shared with unusual people, and Rebecca Drysdale was amazing—like broke me.

I just think Heather is such a great player and her character work is amazing. I watch Heather and Miles’ old YouTube shows to relax when I have time. Yeah, if I grew up to be a little bit more like Heather Ann Campbell, I would love that. She has an edge but is great at making you like her.Also, she has no idea who I am. Parasympathetic relationship right there.

Dream venue to play at:

Somewhere where I guess I feel like I’ve landed and I’m a success.

I’m not… I don’t really care much for the material world in the sense that places mean a great deal to me.

Although I do love Glasgow with all its flaws. I guess these things are totems. And those totems are signals that you have created something of so much value that people want to go and see it.

Definitely the Comedy Cellar in New York is one I took the show to New York Austin and DC.

It’s more about the quality of the play than the venue, I guess, for me. Most important is the people that I’m surrounded by.

Describe the feeling you get when you walk on stage to do a show:

Yes, all the admin is now DONE. I don’t have to do any more thinking or organizing, and now I get to go and have fun with my people on and off the stage. The feeling I have when I walk on stage to do a show is, yes, all the admin is now DONE. I don’t have to do any more thinking or organizing, and now I get to go and have fun with my people on and off the stage. 

My team is Chris McNally, Ellen Stewart, John McGlone, Shari Levine, Tom Fraser, Ellen McCullough and Charlie Bailey they are all amazing and I’m grateful for them

I did a show, just a small one, a couple of nights ago, and it was at Falling and Laughing, which is a show in the south side of Glasgow, where they take a wee bad thing that’s happened to an audience member and that inspires the show. The show’s great, and it’s a show that’s growing. Which is nice to see.

 But I realized that I was relaxed, and it was the most relaxed I’d ever been by being on stage, and it’s because that my day-to-day life, I generally get about 500 to 600 messages a day, generally, from maybe 50 to 60 people. I’m a handyman in my spare time, ( by that I mean my full time job) – I’m self employed and employ someone) and I also run Looking for Laughs.

So there’s a lot going on with both of those things and arranging festivals and practice and fringe, hanging a tapestry in a church , replacing a light switch explaining to a “potential customer” that I’m not coming to their house to drill 3 holes .

 So my feeling when I walk on is that it’s just freedom, pure freedom.

The hardest improv suggestion to perform and why:

I think anything sexually based has already set us off in a direction , you’ve got a bit of mental gymnastics not for the show to be incredibly sex based.  I know we can a to c that but there’s a shorthand you end up using that can make the show 2 dimensional. I mean sex and violence are part of the work – that’s part of creating art .Tapping into these base emotions, we just want to take the local to crazy town via unusual surprising heights with a stopover at sympathetic hardens, stopping at least 3 times at solid base reality terrace. Before arriving at Bonkers Conkers.

Essential items you always take with you to a show?

For Looking for Laughs, I take five signs, a full-sized neon sign, two phones, a camera stand, a laptop, a fully rigged mixing desk with receivers, 12 wireless microphones, 2 lavs for the dates, posters, pamphlets, cards that say “You’re perfect just the way you are” for the audience, little heart pins that we sell to the audience, t-shirts, a phone rig, a whole bunch of cables, tape, snips to take down tie wraps, and tablecloths, GIANT Date/No Date signs.

And a team of about five backroom staff with Kat Powell (comedian in her own right), our stage manager Harris McHendry (our videographer/editor), a separate team setting up the TV pitch, and Rachael Brown—who can’t answer any digital messages (why are some people like that?!) but runs the show on the night and helpfully yells at me when I get annoying.

We’ve got a separate team working on getting the show pitched. They’re all TV people with a lot of TV expertise. They also tell me off a fair bit.

When I’m not at Looking for Laughs doing a show, I literally only need me, and that feels amazing.

Describe your fans in three words:

Witty, warm-hearted voyeurs.

You can tell they’re witty because the bloody questions are amazing and they’re so funny, to the point where we have to section off some that are too cutting but we couldn’t leave them out of the show.

They’re voyeurs because they’re bloody there to watch someone else have a date and that is weird.

I think finally, yeah, they have a warm heart because everyone’s there hoping to see love happen in action. We all kind of want to catch love in the act—like romantic love, it’s so rare. I think that lives deep in all humans. It’s almost like catching the tail of the dragon for a human, seeing love spark.

What we can look forward to from you this year:

Live blind dates!

Single people! if you are single, and willing to travel to Glasgow or Edinburgh in August please apply! If you think think that could be fun we definitely want to hear from you! In no way am I panicking about needing to set up 14 dates on the trot in Edinburgh this August on top of a live show  – Why would I worry about that?

Please apply… I’m begging you.. I mean not really.

Everyone who’s done the show tends to stay in touch come back and see it or help out – it’s just a really nice atmosphere and a cool group of people.

Looking for laughs will be doing two shows a month in Glasgow as normal, one at The Stand Comedy Club and one at Blackfriars. (generally these sell out anyway)

In March Looking for laughs will be playing Glasgow Comedy festival in Blackfriars, I’ll also be doing my one man show at GICF (Glasgow Comedy Festival)

We’ll also be doing an April special singles only show in partnership with a company called It’s Thursday, where everyone in the room will be single and potentially (if the volunteer ) a date on stage. We’re going to do speed dates on stage where we make quick-fire improvised three-minute sketches.

That’s not fully booked yet, but we’ve set the date April 3rd and we’re just shoring up what the location is going to be. It will be just after my 43rd birthday.

At Fringe, we are hoping to be playing at the Gilded Balloon. Also ..we’re having a documentary about trying to get the show on television made by Eloise Curran and Joanna Macintyre. That should be coming out later in the year.

Thank you again for all your support in reading and engaging with the website.

If you want to help support the website then you can! You can buy Holly a cup of tea (and a biscuit!)