Rosie Holt – What’s Your Problem?

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What’s Your Problem? is an interview podcast recorded at the Big Belly Comedy Club, where we try to figure out what’s wrong with comedians.

In this episode we were delighted to be joined by Rosie Holt (https://www.rosieholt.co.uk/). A comedian, writer and actor, she is probably best known for her satirical online videos that have taken social media by storm in recent years!

Rose Holt, what’s your problem?

I think a deep seated desire to be liked.

I think that’s probably going to be a very common answer on this podcast.

So when did that manifest into realising that making people laugh was a way to make them like you?

I’ve always been quite social and good at making people laugh. Professionally, I trained as an actor, but I wasn’t really doing very well at it and at the time, I was living with Harriet Kemsley, who just started doing comedy. It seemed really great to me.

What I like about comedy is you can come up with an idea and then you can go and perform it that night somewhere. It might be above a pub to three angry people, but you’re still performing something. I quite liked that.

So it was then really. No, actually, do you know what it was? It was before then, I had an awful one night stand. I was working at this gym and they made me wear a shirt saying “anything goes” and only the women had to wear it.

But I’d had this one night stand, I’d left my jacket at his place, and it was a really nice jacket and I didn’t have a lot of money so I was determined to get it back. And I was like, look I really need my jacket back. But he wouldn’t give it back to me. He was a bit famous and it was all really awkward.

Then he came to my place of work and I was wearing the t-shirt saying “anything goes”. And he came to deliver the jacket and it was so humiliating and painful, I wrote a comedy sketch about it. A friend convinced me to put it on the internet and that got a few views, so from that I thought, maybe I’ll try and mine my misery a bit further and make people laugh on stage.

So from there did you follow the typical route of grinding at open mics?

Yeah, so I did. I did a lot of open mics. But then weirdly, my acting started taking off again from things I did on open mics, because you meet people and then people cast you in their stuff. Then with stand up, I’d kind of hit a dead end with it. I’d loved it for years, and suddenly, I wasn’t enjoying it so much.

Over the pandemic, I sort of created a character of this hapless Tory MP, so I thought maybe I’ll see if that can work on stage. And it did, which was good. I say that, but I’m about to do a gig and it might absolutely die on its arse tonight. But usually it’s fun.

How did you find the transition from straight stand up to doing it in character?

I did straight stand up for about seven years and for most part, I was really enjoying it. I got to the point where I was getting to the finals of all those competitions, like Amused Moose and things like that. Then I think I stopped enjoying it. I found it a bit exposing in a way.

So which was why moving to character was actually really good for me because even though I was talking about my life in a really silly way, I actually don’t like doing that very much. To begin with I found it cathartic because you sort of share something’s going on in your life. And everyone laughs and you think “I’m not alone”. Then after a while I was going oh, god, my life, it’s a comedy set, how awful.

At what point did you start wanting to address politics in your comedy?

I was going to say it was when I started posting things in lockdown, but actually, that’s not true. I think my standup had already started getting a little bit political in the way that I you know, I had a set about Brexit and about Me Too, so I had started to kind of go in that direction.

But I think it only really became overtly political in lockdown when I was going out of my mind and I started posting these videos. Before I did the MP it was this righteous, right wing talk show host who just sort of parroted opinion.

In the first video I put up she was upset about the statues and she was like “People are erasing history just like Stalin did, who incidentally, I have a statue of in my garden.” Then people got angry and thought it was real and it kind of went from there. So since then, I’ve been gigging in character, which is really fun.

And that’s been working well for you?

I didn’t think it was going to. When it started taking off online I thought this is only going to work online, I can’t see this MP, working in a gig setting. Then I kind of thought that I really should at least give it a go, and very quickly, it became clear that it does work. It’s quite funny to have an MP in a comedy club, as long as you address it, and you say “Hi, I’m with MP in a comedy club, so I’m trying to connect with all you idiots.”

Well, she doesn’t say that, it’s implied, sort of patronising. And it’s really fun to do.

Was there a point when you were doing those videos that one just really went bananas and you realised you’re onto something?

My first went bananas and which was really, really insane. I think before that I posted a really stupid one that wasn’t anything to do with politics, which was just messing around in my house in lockdown, but otherwise no, it was the first one I posted and it went bananas.

It was a really strange feeling because it’s going viral, but you’re at home, you’re not seeing anyone because it’s lockdown. Then two months later, I had another one which went particularly insane. And nine months later, I posted the first MP one and that had 6 million views. It was insane. That one was the MP talking about the Sue Grey report, going “I can’t tell you vibes at the party till Sue Grey tells me I was at the party.”

Tell us about your Edinburgh show

It’s the Edinburgh Festival for the whole of August at the Pleasance. It’s called “Rosie Holt: That’s Politainment!”. It’s basically about MPs going into entertainment.

I’m previewing now until till then, all over the place, London, Brighton, Norwich, all sorts of places.

How do you feel about doing comedy as a full time job?

In lots of ways, I love it. It’s great, when your brain is ticking about something you can go and exercise that on stage, and that’s really fun. It’s really fun performing in front of crowds. I think it’s not a healthy lifestyle, just in terms of late nights, not getting meals at the right time, things like that.

My boyfriend’s a stand up and he’s been going a lot longer than I have, and it changes your whole routine, your body clock and everything.

How do you write, are you very disciplined?

I’m not lazy. But I go through periods from feeling inspired when I can write a lot, to days where I’m just staring at my laptop, banging my head against the sideboard.

The one thing I like about the videos I do online is I can write very them quickly, because I know exactly what the target is. I watch a video and I go, that’s funny how can I satirise that?

It’s much harder, I find, writing a show or set, because there’s not any direct thing that you’re using. I think what I find frustrating about comedy, and I think I’m not alone in this, is that some of the best jokes I’ve written on stage that do really well are things I came up with out of the blue. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen all the time.

So you spend a lot of time really trying to dig out something which will be a mediocre joke. And then the stuff that gets real laughs are  things that you just came up with on the spot one day. That’s irritating.

Any tips for comedy newbies?

I think you’ve got to hang in there and just do what makes you laugh. People can fall into the trap of thinking I need to I need to do this and I need to joke about that. But actually it’s a hard job and you might as well do it for yourself as much as anyone.  You’ll enjoy more when it is doing well if it’s something that you like.

You go through phases with it. The stuff I started doing comedy with, it would make me cringe to do that stuff now. But also at the time it was stuff I wanted to talk about. So I think also it’s just understanding you’re not going to be good straightaway, and you’re not necessarily going to do material that you’ll still love 10 years later. Respect the fact that you’re going to evolve and change.