You might recognise Kieran from smash-hit BBC sitcom, Two Doors Down. Now he’s coming to Leicester with his new stand up tour, Big in Scotland.
Three time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Kieran Hodgson moved from England to Scotland in 2020, and now he’s here to tell you about everything he’s noticed about the differences between the two countries. We caught up with him to find out more.
What can people expect from the Big In Scotland tour?
Some guy in a tartan jacket yammering on about the differences between England and Scotland for an hour. A song. An impression of Gordon Brown. A reasonable finishing time because I tend not to improvise.
Many people will know you from BBC One’s ‘Two Doors Down’, how much do you resonate with Gordon?
As the years go by I’ve come to see Gordon as an extended satire on me and how boring and finnicky I am, so yes, a great deal. All that walking in the woods and being vegetarian – we’re both so tragic. He’s also the wide-eyed English innocent amid the sweary idioms and micro-aggressions of the West of Scotland, like me. And he loves it all, like I do.
How much of a transition is it between TV sitcom performances and live shows?
It’s all about the big and little, really. On Two Doors Down, the camera is a microscope and the field of comedic activity is small: a living room, a story involving cups of tea. So you’re always trying to find the little reactions, the little touches so you can do justice to the script. Day after day on set, fine-tuning. On stage, I try to go big: an overambitious subject matter (Scotland and the Union and the nature of change), loads of accents and impressions and characters and jumping about, so that you can create a sense of scale on stage even though you’re just one person. Making that one hour a big explosion to justify people’s hard-earned money.
Have you performed at Leicester Comedy Festival before? If so, what’s your favourite thing about it? If not, what are you most looking forward to?
I have indeed performed at Leicester Comedy Festival before and my favourite things were: the big mural of all the Leicester City players near my friend’s house, the curry place my friend took me to after the gig, and the sound operator Andy who turned up at the venue as a last-minute replacement, did a tech rehearsal for the show in ten minutes, and managed to get every one of that show’s thirty sound cues bang on time. He said afterwards that is was nice having something to really focus on because he’d been tech-ing a gig at the O2 Academy the previous evening at which someone had died. So my show was a slight improvement on that. I hope Andy comes back to see my latest efforts.
What’s your favourite thing about Scotland?
Not having to feel guilty about using a lot of tap water. There’s a marvellous series of aqueducts bringing that stuff to Glasgow straight from the Highlands and not to flex but we are pretty much drought-proof as far as the next few decades are concerned. Take that, Kent!
What advice would you give to an English person thinking of moving up to Scotland?
Do it! They just call jacket potatoes ‘baked potatoes’, both otherwise it’s pretty much the same, language-wise. Don’t wear too much green or orange in Glasgow for reasons I won’t go into, and don’t start Munro-bagging without a proper timetable for finishing the whole lot because otherwise it’s just depressing. I’ve been stuck on 16 for three years.
What’s the best thing about performing live?
If it’s terrible, it only lives on in human memory. That is way less scary than the internet’s permanent archive of your mistakes and failures. So go out onto that stage and enjoy it!
How can people follow what you’re up to online?
I’m still clinging on to Twitter as @KieranCHodgson, and I think that’s my Insta account as well but I’ve only managed about seven posts on there and couldn’t really make head nor tail of it. I’m doomed, is what I’m saying.
Kieran is at Firebug on Wednesday 21 February. Tickets are available here.