STAND-UP Christopher Macarthur-Boyd has gone from strength to strength in recent years, and is just the latest in Scotland’s ever-growing pantheon of stellar comedic talents.
Hailing from Glasgow, Christopher has opened for the likes of Jason Manford, Kevin Bridges, and Kerry Godliman; hosted the BBC New Comedy Award; and co-hosts the Here Comes The Guillotine podcast with comedy royalty Frankie Boyle and Susie McCabe.
His latest tour, Howling at the Moon, follows hot on the heels of a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, and is set to come to Reading next year.
Christopher said of his sell-out run: “It feels pretty good, given that I’ve been doing stand up for about 13 years and had a show at the Fringe about ten times.
“I’ve done entire Fringe runs where I’ve had six people in the audience, and maybe sell out on one of the Fridays.
“In 2018 I had to perform a whole show to two people, so I’ve definitely seen the other side.
He’ll also be joined by another one of Scotland’s most exciting and engaging comedic exports, Rosco McClelland, the most recent recipient of the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit Of Glasgow Award.
“On my second Fringe run, at the Counting House, I was doing a two-hander with Rosco, who is still my best friend–he’s actually going to be supporting me on this tour too.
“We were playing a 30-seater, some of which were my parents and family, and eight of which were a hen-do who absolutely hated it.
“They were on this night out and were shouting and screaming and heckling– afterwards my parents were asking ‘what is this you’ve chosen to do?'”
As well as podcasting, one of the things Christopher has turned his hand to is streaming–where performers interact with audiences through services like Twitch and YouTube, showing games, art, or even just chatting to those watching along.
Though he has spent some time away from streaming, he explains: “I would love to get back to it, but I’m just not too hot on the tech.
“A lot of Scottish comedians really took to Twitch, and folk like Rosco, Marjolein [Robertson], Gareth Waugh, Liam Withnail; we were really making a go at it during the lockdowns.
“I think more than English comedians, there was a real route for us: Limmy does it, and he’s a proper comedian too, so we felt we could do it.
“We didn’t really realise he’d been quietly building up that audience for seven or eight years, so he really laid that ground work and was very generous.”
Streaming services like Twitch include a ”Raid’ feature, which means a performer can send their audience wholesale to someone else’s stream once they’re finished, often bringing a whole new audience to a channel.
“I remember playing Skyrim to about four people watching when Limmy raided, and all of a sudden I was playing to hundreds of people… I absolutely sh*t myself.
“With the new Pokémon game out, it would be really great to get it all back up and running, but also videogames are one of those things I like to relax with.
“Stand-up relies on a bit of a persona, but in podcasting and streaming, the persona tends to fall down and the real you comes out a wee bit more.”
He also notes that there are more practical, logistical differences between performing live and streaming.
“One of the things I love about stand-up is travelling to the gig, wondering about the show and getting a jumble of nerves in your belly.
“You go on, you do the thing, and you come off, and travel back home or to the hotel, and you decompress.
“With streaming, you get a very sudden interaction with people, then you turn it off, and you’re just in your house with that residual adrenaline comedown, and you can’t really shake it off.
“So during the lockdowns, I’d save one of my government-mandated walks for after streaming, and walk off the buzz.
“So there are similarities in terms of what your body goes through, for sure.”
He also co-hosts Here Comes the Guillotine with Frankie Boyle and Susie McCabe, with the trio embracing the unabashed, no-holds-barred iconoclasm that the title would suggest.
The podcast sees swingeing, sometimes cut-throat discourse on topics as diffuse as videogames, fantasy, music, conspiracy theories, and global politics.
One of the recurring motifs–to the chagrin of fellow host Susie–is the discussion of a certain life-giving emissions.
“That’s been an issue– in my first tour, I was in Aberdeen at the Blue Lamp, and someone came up to me and said that they couldn’t wait for loads of jokes about that.
“I had to break it to them that there wouldn’t be as much of that, but people seem to wanna hear it.
“In the early days there was a big joke about it right at the top, which involved the Arctic Monkeys and zero-gravity.
“It was too poetic, probably; but thankfully it doesn’t come up much in the show.”
He has described the show as ‘nocturnal’: “They make you come up with descriptors for what your show is gonna be like before you’ve really written it.
“This show is a bit more focused on my mental breakdown and how I kinda set my life on fire–and it still is kind of set in the night time, and the moon makes an appearance.
“And stand-up doesn’t really work in the day time; people don’t wanna crawl into some basement and hear someone tell mad stories for an hour when the sun’s out, so all stand-up is nocturnal is some way.”
It also hints towards a pessimism, however: “Optimism is very necessary, but it’s just not as funny as pointing out ‘oh this is sh*te.’
“Something like a climate conference, they always end on a happy note, because if you don’t people will just want to walk in front of cars or something.
“Things like Ted Lasso have shown that optimism can work–but I find that a bit disgusting!”
Despite his tongue-in-cheek aversion to optimism, he says: “It is a necessary response–but as the world crumbles into far-right fascism and violence, your job as an artist isn’t to cheer people up; you’re more like the canary in the coal mine.
“You need to be the person pointing out what’s going wrong, and if you can do it through observational stand-up, that’s fantastic.
“But I think you’re doing yourself–and your species–a disservice if you’re optimistic just now.”
Despite this, Christopher has plenty to be optimistic about, including the reviews of his latest show.
“I love the whole show. During the Fringe, I’ve had some of the best reviews I’ve had, but my Gran died on the second night of the run.
“So it means I wasn’t really there, mentally, I wasn’t celebrating that success–I was more emotionally dead.
“So I’m looking forward to getting to do such a fun show with a bit more emotional distance from that, and it includes some stuff I’ve not been able to talk about since I started out.
“I can’t wait.”
Christopher Macarthur-Boyd is bringing his headline stand-up show, Howling at the Moon, to Reading’s Just The Tonic Comedy Club, at Sub 89, Friar Street, on Thursday, May 7.
Full details and tickets available via: whatsonreading.com/venues/just-tonic-comedy-club
