Paddy Young returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a new hour after smash-hit success of his debut. Here he chats to Pepper&Salt about If I Told You I’d Have to Kiss You, his foray into online sketch comedy and Quackers Theories.
How would you summarise your show?
It’s kind of about love and cars. There are different points in my life in which I was sort of in love and either had a car or didn’t have a car. I guess the first memory is the feeling of getting a car as a teenage boy and how it felt like the world was suddenly opening ahead of me, whilst at the same time still being in love as a teenager and thinking the car would help me with that. The show sort of goes back and forth through different periods of, of either being in love or not being in love. And, you know, I was a 17-year-old boy with a car, but now I’m a man in his thirties who has to rent a Lime bike to get into work every day. A lot of it is also about yearning and wanting things that you can’t have and how unbearable it is not to get what you want. And then also in large part, it’s about how getting the thing is actually incredibly disappointing and doesn’t make you feel the way you were hoping it to, whether it’s a burgeoning career or opening a packet of giant Wotsits for the first time. I’m incredibly excited for this show. The backbone – similar to the last show – is straight stand-up with high energy and an element of chaos, but then there’s a few heightened moments, and a few surprises. I think there’s a couple of moments in it which will surprise people, but I don’t want to say anything more than that.
If it’s not too much of a spoiler, what is your favourite Quackers Theory?
Quackers is a basically a good way of saying unforgivable theory. I’m from a small town. I believe, the smaller the town, the uglier the people.
How did you come to that conclusion?
Because I’m from a small town and I didn’t feel there was a lot of good-looking people there growing up. And now I live in London and it’s almost unbearable how good-looking people are here. And I think for my own mental health, I might have to move back to one of the ugly small towns that this nation has to offer.
How do you use observations of the mundane to analyse bigger more profound things?
I think I get fixated on things quite easily, once they’re on my mind, I can’t stop thinking about them. So, for example, I think most men in my life are slowly weaning themselves off solid foods and onto Huel. And so for me, I’m just like, what is it really about? Because on one hand, yes, it’s a convenient food and it’s cheap and it’s well marketed. But then I just think, is this really how men, is this the only way that men can look after themselves? Because it seems to be a very male thing. And then it gets me to think about like, how else do men like look after themselves? Well, we use Strava again. That’s a completely miserable way of existing, not being able to go for a run unless we share it with our ex-colleagues. I think a lot of these start quite mundane for me, but I always feel like there’s something going on there and it usually resulting in finding a subculture of people that I can test.
If the debut is all of your material from the start of your career, how would you then describe writing a second hour?
It’s incredibly exciting. Being able to go into years of material for the debut was in many ways a strong thing because I had so much back catalogue, but it also meant I was telling jokes that I’d written five years ago or opinions that I didn’t really believe in anymore. The great thing about this show is everything I’m talking about is really prescient and is really with me right now. Especially earlier in this year, just such an urgency to everything I was writing. I definitely think this show is far more representative of where I am right now and what’s going on for me than maybe the last one was.
How does this year’s show follow on from your debut?
One of the biggest matters is always going to be that I love a degree of crowd interaction. There’s always going to be pockets of it in which I can bring everyone inside. So, I think there’ll be a similar energy in that way. Oddly the last show was very situational and was very much about what it’s like to be stuck in a flat share and wanting to own a house and being part of generation rent. Whereas I actually feel like this show is much closer to what’s really going on with me. And really, I’ve really brought myself back to being a young lad and being in love and thinking about love itself and what I want from it. I think I’m probably going to give away a lot more about myself. I was a lot more careful previously. When I started and I was doing sets in clubs, I never told anything about myself. It was all fake. And then last year it was sort of true, but not true. And it was all again contextual, it was all sort of about being a renter. Whereas I think this one is much closer to how I feel, but don’t get me wrong, I’ll be sending people astray. There’ll be, there’ll be loads of red herrings.
How does creating online sketches compare to stand up?
They allow you to be funny in different ways. I mean, the main thing that springs to mind is what I love about making online sketches with Ed Knight is we love collaborating together. I really like performing standup comedy. I love going to a show and speaking with audiences, but in the daytime, I am sat on my, at my desk, looking out the window, praying that a funny thought comes. Whereas when I’m with my baby boy, Ed, we’re chuckling and we’re rubbing each other’s bellies and we’re having a good time. And then we treat ourselves to a game of pool afterwards. I really like that. But I guess the other thing is standup comedy is never finished. The show is never done. Like I could have a really good five days in a row. And then the sixth day just might not work at all. Or the seventh show, I might have a breakthrough and make it even better. And it’s always developing and maybe some jokes get old and don’t work anymore. I’m editing the special of my last show, which I’ll be putting out later this year, and even that it’s really hard. But the great thing about making online comedy and sketches is it’s done once it’s out there, you’re putting out a 90 second segment to the world and it’s never touched again. And there’s something quite satisfying about being able to do both of those things. I think if I did just one of those things, I’d be incredibly frustrated creatively. And also, I guess the other thing is some ideas just don’t work as standup and only work as sketch and vice versa.
What transferable skills have you learned and used in stand-up from sketch comedy and vice versa?
Well, I definitely think when you film yourself very close up, you become more aware of your facial expressions and when to use them. One thing I’ve always said is that I’m not sure my jokes have got better over the years, but I think the faces have. And I think the other thing is you learn how to cut the fat because again, for something to do well online, it has to be pretty speedy. When you write stuff, you can write, you can tell stories that just go on and on and don’t have enough jokes in it, but because no one’s telling you not to, you can just leave them to go on and on. Whereas making a sort of really average three minute sketch and then having to make really brutal decisions to make it into a brilliant one minute sketch. There’s jokes in my show that I originally thought would be like a really big anchor point, and I that thought I would have 10 minutes on and I tried and I tried and I tried. I tried for example, to have 10 whole minutes on city commuters wearing outdoor gear. I thought that was going to be a huge point. Fact of the matter is the stuff I’ve got on it that’s really, really, really funny, it’s two minutes long. And so, I think doing online sketches has helped me be really brutal and just condense, condense and condense. One thing I can’t stand is when in my set, in my own work and in other work, when there’s just not a lot of laughs and not a lot of jokes, not a lot of funny, I want it to be really dynamic. I want it to be really fast. I want it to be really surprising. And if I think even if a couple of minutes goes by and it isn’t that, I just have to completely change it.
What are you looking forward to at the Edinburgh Fringe?
I’m really excited to be at the Monkey Barrel. I really love that room. It’s incredibly fun. It’s going to be a bigger room, so there’ll be a little bit more chaos to it. I’m always excited to be with my pals. Edinburgh is a magnification of being a comedian. So, all the things that are good and all the things that are bad about it are all in Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a really odd thing. You know, you might have a show that doesn’t go so well, and then you go and watch another show that changes your life and makes you think that you could do this for the rest of your life. And then the next day you do a show again and it isn’t good again. So, it’s such a hard, such a hard thing to answer. I adore the Fringe so much. There’s nowhere else where I can do an hour, do what I want for an hour every single day for a month. And actually, I feel that more so with the second show. With the first show, with the debut, I really did feel a pressure that this is me putting myself out there to the world, and people have never seen me before. And so it had to be X, Y, Z. I guess the real blessing of the second show is, I know that I’m good. I’m pretty sure people will come. And so I just get to have fun for 27 days in a row. And that’s a pretty good privilege, considering that when I started and I first went up to the Fringe, people weren’t coming to the shows. And all I wanted, all I wanted was for people to turn up and see it.
Apart from your own hour what shows would you recommend?
Well, I saw a work in progress of Paul Williams’ show, and that was really good. So, I’m excited to see the finished version of that. I’m a big fan of Cat Cohen. So, I’ll be seeing her show. And then I reckon I might go and watch some rubbish theatre to remind myself how lucky I am to be doing comedy. Listen, I love theatre. But there’s something incredibly life affirming about watching a play that isn’t good. There’s nothing else like it. You know that feeling when you’re just trapped in a room, and the lights go down. And you know immediately this isn’t going to be good. And unlike comedy, where people are rude and walk out and say stuff, in a play, we have to pretend that it’s all right. And we just sort of sit there in silence. That’s an incredible, that’s a really pure feeling.
In Shakespeare, the role of the fool and the king are very distinct, with the idea that a fool can’t be a king and a king can’t be a fool. How do you think this applies to the modern context?
I think there’s something really embarrassing about a comedian who starts taking themselves really seriously. And I think a comedian can become incredibly good at what they do. And they’re really charismatic and obviously intelligent and really skilled at the one thing they do. And I feel like the mistake a lot of comedians and actors often make is because they’re really good at this one thing. They suddenly think they know about everything. And so, I often feel that when comedians start becoming politicians; I’m not saying that we shouldn’t stand for things or whatever, but I just think there’s something really embarrassing about a comedian who takes themselves seriously. I can’t speak for others, but that’s not my job. As Joe Biden would say, I’ve got the morals of an alley cat. I twist and turn at every point, but I mean, you know, put it this way, that sad bit that comedians do 45 minutes into their show, you’re not going to see that in mine. I want comedy to be funny. I go to see standup comedy. I want to laugh loads. I go to other things to feel other things, but I think a comedian’s job is to be funny and as funny in as many ways, in as many times as possible. And that’s all I think about. And I’m totally obsessed with that. That to me is a challenge in of itself before I can start worrying about being taken seriously and solving the world. All I think about every day is funny.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Michael Julings
Pepper & Salt 
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