Widely known as a comic actor, following notable appearances in popular comedy series such as After Life, Life’s too Short and This Time with Alan Partridge, Colin Hoult will soon be coming to Cambridge with his new stand-up show.
Titled simply Colin, the show is about, among other things, family, fatherhood and a formative childhood experience. Or, as Colin puts it, “basically lots of laughs”.
Colin Hoult. Picture: Ed Moore
Colin, a nominee for Best Show at the 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Awards, says of the piece: “It’s me as a stand-up; I’ve done characters in the past and now I’m doing a show all about fatherhood.
“It’s about my dad who was called Colin and he gave me his name. My dad’s been dead 20 years and I don’t know why he called me after himself – I never got to ask him.
“Now I’ve got kids myself, and it’s quite a mad, scary world at the minute. It’s all about trying to live up to fatherhood really, while discovering I’ve got ADHD and getting things wrong all the time.
“And the heart of it is just looking back at my childhood in Nottingham and some of my funny stories from when I was a kid.”
Colin says he’s always done live comedy and “stand-up of a sort” – one of his best-loved comic creations is ‘has-been actress’ Anna Mann – but notes that this is his first time actually “being Colin Hoult on stage”.
“It’s strange but fun,” he observes, adding that it was quite nerve-racking at first.
“It took me a while to get my head round it,” explains the 45-year-old, “because obviously you have yourself as you really are, and then you have your persona you put out there – and it’s kind of finding the balance between those two.
“I always sort of know how to make people laugh, which is fun, but it was interesting to talk about my own life. It was quite nerve-racking, to be honest!”
Did Colin have the ability to make people laugh as a child?
“Yeah, I remember at school doing a show – me and my mate started doing Mr Bean sketches.
“There was a terrible mistake and all the kids just immediately bombarded us and started throwing stuff at us, so it was quite a bad beginning!
“And then I had a lovely English teacher and she took pity on us. In the English class, instead of doing the lesson, we did our show for the kids – and it was really nice.
“I remember I just started improvising with this puppet I had… and so that was the start of me just trying to make people laugh.
“I’ve always done it; I’ve always done silly characters and voices and stuff – it’s how I express myself, I guess.”
Colin Hoult. Picture: Ed Moore
Colin says that “like a lot of things” in his life, getting into acting and comedy on a professional level “just sort of happened”.
He elaborates: “I constantly try and take hold of things but really I find myself just ending up ‘Oh, I’m doing comedy, am I? OK. It’s a little bit like that…
“Every now and again I try and plan things, but things just tend to come my way, stand-up-wise and TV-wise, so really I’m just grateful to have whatever comes in.”
As well as acting and stand-up, Colin is also a prolific writer and former winner of the Writers’ Guild Award for Comedy.
He penned a successful trilogy of live shows which were adapted into a Radio 4 series, Colin Hoult’s Carnival of Monsters.
Other writing credits include Romesh Presents: Inside Your Ancestors for Sky and Comedy: Shuffle for the BBC.
He reveals that Blackadder was “probably my biggest influence as a kid” and also expresses a strong appreciation for the Carry On films, South Park, American comedian Jerry Lewis, Laurel and Hardy, Frankie Howerd, and Keeping Up Appearances, with its larger-than-life protagonist, Hyacinth Bucket.
“I like people who put up a front,” says Colin of the ‘Bucket woman’, “but they’re actually quite horrendous underneath it.”
One of Colin’s most memorable roles came in Ricky Gervais’ Netflix comedy-drama After Life, where he played the hilarious Ken Otley, head of the local amateur dramatics society.
Who could ever forget, for example, his rendition of Taxi Driver: The Musical?
“At the time, it was around the pandemic, I was doing a lot of online shows.
“I had to really hone my coming-up-with-stuff-in-the-moment skills, because I was just doing these online shows to try and keep performing. It was the only way during that time…
“So I’d just come out with stuff every week because I’d burn through material really quickly. I had the same people coming back every week so I’d just get really good at improvising!”
When asked what he is looking forward to about coming to Cambridge, Colin says: “I shall walk the Mathematical Bridge that apparently Newton built without any screws or nails. What a clever fellow he was.”
Colin Hoult. Picture: Ed Moore
Colin Hoult’s new show, Colin, will be coming to the Cambridge Junction (J3) on Friday, 17 January. Tickets, priced £21, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on Colin, go to iamcolinhoult.com.