'Comedians have got hotter' Stand-up Amy Gledhill on how looks are linked to laughter

Rising star of stand up Amy Gledhill is back at this year’s Fringe with a brand new show Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, after smashing ITV’s The Jonathan Ross Show and being nominated twice at Edinburgh in 2022.

The queen of the everyday observation and left-field tangents was up for Best Newcomer for her solo show The Girl Before The Girl You Married, and with comedy partner Christopher Cantrill for their show Delightful Sausage, as well as being listed for Best Stand-Up Show at the 2023 National Comedy Awards.

This time round she’s making light about body confidence and pressure to look good, as well as romance, being newly single. For the record Gledhill does look fit on the poster, all massive hair, lips and flawless skin, but she points out that this is thanks to makeup artists, and she’s not entirely sure how she feels about it, having gone into comedy with the sole purpose of being funny.

Amy Gledhill's stand up show, Make Me Look Fit on the Poster is at Monkey Barrel Comedy venue from 13-25 August. Pic: Matt Crockett

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE TITLE OF YOUR SHOW, MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER?

My show is about self-perception and how being a comic, I didn’t really think about having to look fit at all. You think I say my funny things and actually doing comedy is all about looking silly and gross, but I do feel a little bit of pressure to look fit. And I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know if it’s something I agree with.

Comedians are getting hotter. They are. It used to be that comedians were outsiders and losers but now we’ve got these absolutely stunning and hilarious people and I think it’s a really great thing that we have so many really beautiful comedians because we want all perspectives and experiences in comedy, but also I don’t really know if I want to participate in that. It’s not really what I signed up for, but then again in my show I’m talking about being newly single and how you have to reassess yourself as a sexy person, and you’re ‘oh god, I have to get back into this again’. So a lot of the show is about trying to unpick my feelings towards my own self-esteem and where you fit in society and if it matters.

Hopefully by the end of the show collective self-esteem will be raised. If I was coming into comedy now and seeing stunning and funny people, I would be saying ‘oh, I don’t know if it’s for me’ and I want to reach out to anyone who is not feeling that and say ‘it’s ok, we’re all right, we’re doing OK’.

Since her nomination for Best Newcomer in Edinburgh in 2022, Amy Gledhill has appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show and has made a sitcom pilot for Channel 4. Pic: Matt Crockett

There are some comics where I think I’ve never had the same life as you and I never will and that could be through ‘pretty privilege’ or actual privilege, and it doesn’t mean you find them less funny but one of the things I try and pride myself on is people who say I really relate to it and I love that because I think it’s so important to feel seen and heard.

ARE YOU PLEASED WITH HOW YOU LOOK ON THE POSTER?

I am. I love the poster because it’s silly. The hair is soooo big, it’s absolutely ridiculous, over the top. I did have a makeup artist and the most phenomenal photographer and my face, I look like a doll. So I do look fit, for me who goes around day to day with no makeup, but it’s a real balance. I want people to think ‘she’s gorgeous’ and intelligent, but I don’t want to have to be gorgeous. It’s complicated.

TELL US WHAT’S IN YOUR SHOW WITHOUT SPOILERS.

Stand up Amy Gledhill's 2024 Fringe show looks at body confidence, romance and bin liners. Pic: Matt Crockett

I bookend the show with two mortifying experiences of pure embarrassment that flash before my eyes when I’m going to sleep.

One of them is a 40-minute interaction I had with an A-List celebrity I didn’t recognise, a 40 minute interaction. It’s a reveal in the show. I’ll just say he’s a Hollywood level celebrity, very young, very cool, and I spoke to him in depth about Toby Carvery, and the other is where I fancied a boy and went to Go Ape, not knowing what it was. There was a point where I was swinging by my gusset from the trees like a little bauble, waiting for rescue. That just flashes before my eyes, his face looking over from the top of the trees. It was bad.

I like laughing at embarrassing things and situations I’ve got myself in and other people are laughing because it sounds like something they would do and there’s a real sense of relief in the room that we’re all laughing at each other collectively and I think that’s a really cathartic experience of comedy and it’s really important. I think being relatable in comedy is up there with one of the most important things that you can be. And a surprising amount of people have said, oh yeah, I went to Go Ape and had an awful experience, it’s like Go Apes Anonymous.

DID THE A-LIST CELEBRITY THINK YOU KNEW WHO HE WAS.

Yes. I’m hoping he’s on Jonathan Ross or something and they ask what have you learned about Britain and he brings up Toby Carverys, that’s he checked it out.

YOU’VE BEEN ON JONATHAN ROSS YOURSELF.

Yes, but I don’t remember anything I talked about because it felt like a fantastic fever dream. I was watching Paolo Nutini play a song while I’m sat next to Peter Crouch and Andy Serkis and I could see Jonathan Ross tapping his feet and you just feel like you’re having an out of body experience.

When I went to the studio I took a picture in my dressing room and sent it to my mum and said ‘I’m here at Jonathan Ross’ then got a text from her that was meant for my Aunty Carol saying ‘well she’s sent me a picture so she must be doing it’. My mum either thought I’d lost the plot or was telling an elaborate fib.

GLEDHILL WAS INVITED ON THE JONATHAN ROSS SHOW TO PUBLICISE HER DEBUT SOLO TOUR, THE GIRL BEFORE THE GIRL YOU MARRY.

DOES THE ATTENTION ADD PRESSURE?

Weirdly I don’t often feel a lot of pressure and it’s not because I don’t care, because I care so much, but even though I’ve been nominated three times in total I never assume it’s going to happen or think it’s anything to do with me. I feel quite good at not getting involved in any hype and as long as I’m happy with my own show and having a good time I’m happy. I’m very much a comedy nerd at heart, and am so delighted I get to do it that I don’t feel pressure of reviews or accolades. When I feel massive pressure is when comedians I respect come and watch. I did a gig last weekend and Ross Noble was there, the first comedian I had DVDs of and saw live and I really wanted to impress him and Tim Key, the best comedian we’ve got right now was there, and Sam Campbell who I really respect, and I wanted it to be the best gig I’ve ever done. And it was… fine… I was just gutted.”

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LEAGUE OF GENTLEMAN CONNECTION? REECE SHEARSMITH’S MUM AND YOUR MUM WERE RECEPTIONISTS AT SAME DOCTOR’S SURGERY IN HULL.

The League of Gentlemen came out when I was in secondary school and I thought this is the best thing I've ever seen. I couldn't believe someone from an estate five minutes from where I grew up was making this sort of stuff. Then because you don’t see that many working class Hull people doing what you want to do, I literally followed in his footsteps to get into comedy, applied to Bretton Hall [part of Leeds University] where he met The League of Gentlemen to study Performance and managed to get in thankfully, otherwise I don’t know what I would be doing now, and loved it. I wouldn't be doing standup if I hadn’t gone there. I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn’t for Reese, but even though my mum knows his mum, I’ve still never met him. He’s still this abstract hero.

WHAT IF YOU MET HIM?

Yeah, I’d be Reece Toby Carvery, there’s a Gravy Station, a whole area just for gravy.

YOU DIDN’T COME TO EDINBURGH LAST YEAR, WHAT WERE YOU DOING?

A lot of scripted projects. I just recorded a sitcom pilot for Channel Four, called Toads from Amy Gledhill | Channel 4 Comedy Blap that will be on the Channel 4 player and is on You Tube. Having a sitcom is the dream, since I discovered Fawlty Towers when I was at primary school. It’s the dream. It feels scary to be getting closer to it.

I’m playing basically myself and it’s the morning of my wedding and my character doesn’t know if she’s making the right decision. We see various flashbacks of all her terrible boyfriends and the audience doesn’t know which one she’s going to marry. I hope Channel Four give me the series.

And I do a podcast called Northern News with Ian Smith, which is a comedy podcast with two Northerners who live in London and we look at the bizarre news stories you get in Northern papers like The Goole Times and The Hull Daily Mail and we find stories about someone who didn’t get filling in their pastie or there’s an emu on the loose and get guests to they tell us a story from when they were growing up or from their local paper. It’s a joy.

IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT YOU THAT WOULD SURPRISE US, THAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU?

Yeah, I think the two things that are quite surprising because I think I seem sort of quite unfit and quite… thick is too strong a word, but I think because of the Hull accent and the way I carry myself, no-one thinks I have any academic chops to me. But two things always seem to surprise people - that I used to be a champion ballroom and Latin dancer, one of the best in the country and that was what I was going to do until I had knee operations and was out of the game and discovered crisps, boys and booze.

And then academically, as part of my degree at Bretton I did quantum physics and loved it and have a tattoo of my favourite quantum physics equation, which I wish I didn’t. It’s about the Boltzmann Theory [S = k. Log W], which is about thermodynamics, and the equation itself is for something that’s so close to being impossible but is still slightly possible. Ludwig Boltzmann has it on his gravestone in Vienna. It’s in the theory of relativity, so it’s really important, and I love how it’s about something that’s almost impossible, the poetry of it. I’ve got it on the back of my leg but it’s so pretentious explaining it that when people say oh, what’s that, now I just go ‘oh I dunno’.

WHAT’S YOUR TOP EDINBURGH EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU’RE IN TOWN?

I always try and get up Arhtur’s Seat. I know that’s a real classic one, but something where you feel like you’re giving your brain a little bit of a rest. Because you do get so buried in Edinburgh and everywhere you turn there are posters and flyers and comedians so I always try and do something where I’m away from it, whether that’s Portobello Beach or Arthur’s Seat and I go on my own because I think you need to have a little bit of space. But inevitably I’ll get to the top of Arthur’s Seat and there will either be a comedian who wants to give me a full debrief of their Edinburgh sales or there will be a really lovely, very enthusiastic audience member who has seen the show and wants to go into detail and says I’ll walk down with you, I have a funny story, I had diarrhoea, and you say ‘brilliant, come on, let’s walk down together’.

SO EDINBURGH IS PART OF A UK TOUR?

Yes, after Edinburgh I’m on tour until the end of November. My first tour was after the nominated show last time and I loved it so much because it’s the first time I’ve done something where everyone in the room is there to see you and knows what to expect. It really gives you a headstart having the audience on side so I’m excited to do that again because it’s really brilliant to go out to people who have booked to see you. A lot of my new show is about self esteem so it makes me feel really good about things. And I want to make everyone have a laugh and feel a bit better about themselves too.

Amy Gledhill: Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, Monkey Barrel Comedy - Monkey Barrell 1, 18.10pm, 13-25 August, edfringe.com/whats-on/amy-gledhill-make-me-look-fit-on-the-poster.