Kathleen Hughes is a comedian from Glasgow who has performing stand-up since 2020. In that time she has made it to the finals of The Gilded Balloon’s, ‘So You Think You’re Funny?’ and the finals of Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year 2023. Kathleen brings her debut show ‘Cryptid!’ to the Fringe in August. We spoke to her about the show, her fascination with the paranormal, and her hopes for the festival.

Can you tell us about ‘Cryptid!’?

Its about getting past who you think you should be, and who you think other people want you to be. The kind of joy and freedom when you can allow yourself to actually just exist and be who you are, and then people will catch up. I did a work in progress last year that was about my relationship with feminism. When I was a little girl – I grew up in the 90s and noughties – there was a very rigid idea of what feminism was, and it was mostly being good at boy things; like, you had to be good at maths, and you had to be good at sports, and you had to be strong. And then becoming a bit older and realising the value of feminine things as well.  And doing that show, I really liked that dynamic of being at odds with my younger self, but I felt like I was a bit, I don’t know, a bit harsh with myself.

So I thought, okay, what are things that me and my younger self still have in common that I can kind of bring back in? And one of them is that I loved anything paranormal or spooky or weird, and I still do, so I thought that was a nice way to tie those two things together. The connection with my younger self and this idea of something unknown or not letting people perceive you properly, that sort of thing. So I tied all those together into ‘Cryptid!’

Using mythical beasts as a central metaphor for the show suggests that perhaps you were looking for an authentic self that’s kind of hard to find.

Yeah! Write that down!  That’s exactly it. This isn’t really part of the show with all the rewrites that there’s been, but part of it as well was becoming a comedian and having to market myself. I was like, ‘Who is that person that I’m writing a bio about, or this person that I’ve taken headshots for?’ Because it didn’t feel like me. It felt like I was putting on a persona to show everyone else that’s not really who I am. So I don’t think that’s as relatable or interesting or funny as this kind of search for the truth of who you are. But I think that was part of what inspired the show as well,

And it’s a little bit of a conversation with your younger self, and the only part that’s stayed constant is the fascination with the weird and the paranormal. What’s the continued appeal of horror and scary things for you?

I think I touch on this in the show, but I think I loved it when I was wee, because it was something where the whole point was no one had the answer to this. It was something that we could keep looking for, something undiscovered. No one had a definitive answer. But when I was wee, as I think a lot of kids are, I felt very stubborn, and I felt like I had to prove that I was clever enough and I was interesting enough and smart enough, and I was just as smart as all the boys. And there was this space where the fun of it was that there were no answers, and you get to go out and discover that yourself.

So I think that ties into this belief I have as an adult now, that part of the joy of being a bit scared means that there’s something you don’t know happening. And as someone who has had a lot of experience with mental illness and anxiety, reframing being afraid as something that, generally speaking, is positive. If I’m anxious or nervous, it means that I’m doing something I maybe wouldn’t normally do. Even if it goes horribly wrong, I may have learned something about myself, and has been exciting. And I think that’s a similar emotional response, having things that are scary be kind of fun. You know, they don’t have to hinder you.

I once heard John-Luke Roberts describe a laugh as like a delicious jump scare, so that’s probably a similar impulse.

I love that!

For anyone who might be new to you, could you describe your approach to comedy and performance?

I think comedy is a very cathartic experience, and I love comedy. Because I think a lot of the joy of it is taking something that everyone secretly thinks about themselves, or that everyone maybe privately worries about, and saying it out loud. And you take the power away from it then, and it makes this sense of community with people who are just all sitting in a dark room together, and it’s really silly, and I don’t need to be intellectualising it, because it can be something really silly and it can be something daft. The reason we find things funny is because they’re relatable, because we get it, you know.

So I love comedy that kind of deals with subjects that are scary or difficult to talk about, and then we make it easy. And so my approach to comedy is really finding things that are, you know, maybe difficult to talk about, or make us feel a bit anxious, or make us feel a bit strange or isolated, and just making them fun and accessible.

You work full time as well. How would you manage to fit that in with your comedy, and especially for a full month during August?

Yeah, so I’m actually still at my office. I just finished work!

It is extremely difficult, to be honest, and that is with having regular working hours. I work for an organization that is happy for me to use my annual leave at any point, even if I use it all for a month, which is what I’ve done. I don’t have any more annual leave until next April. And you know, I count myself really lucky in that, because they are supportive of what I want to do outside of work. I’ve had other jobs where that wasn’t the case. It wouldn’t have been allowed for me to do that. This is something a few people have asked me about, and I’m glad, because I think it’s something we need to be more aware of. You know, doing the Fringe sometimes, if you’re someone who has to have a full time job for the rest of the year, it means quitting a job. If you work zero hours, or you work somewhere that you’re not able to take that time off. And so to me, it is very difficult.

I try to keep on top of things and have all sorts of organisational techniques that I’ve worked on. And I think that I’m quite an anal person, so that’s something that comes to me quite easily. I don’t know very many comedians of my level, or even above, who don’t have a day job, and I do think we need to acknowledge that. The more time that we have with things that make us money throughout the rest of the year, the more difficult it is to, you know, make better shows and have more practice and have more input and do things like press. So it is a very difficult balance and and I think it’s worth acknowledging, because I know people who maybe feel like a bit of a failure to admit that they have a day job, when it’s a reality for almost everyone I know.

For the show itself, what are your hopes and expectations for August?

I hope people like it. That’s kind of the biggie. I hope that people enjoy it, that they find it funny, they find it relatable; that laughing at me makes stuff that they maybe feel a bit insecure about easier to work through. I don’t have an agent and I don’t have PR. So it is my hope that I get some nice reviews, and it is my hope that I make a little bit of an impact. But to be realistic with my expectations, I hope I have a good run. I hope I learn a lot, and I hope I reach a few more people who find what I do relatable and enjoyable. And I think if I start putting big, huge, ‘I need to do this, this and this,’ [then I need to remember] I also need to still enjoy doing comedy by the end of it, so I think I’ll try and be realistic.

What for you are the best and the worst things about the festival?

The best thing for me is, because you get to sit with someone for an hour. So this is, I guess, just comedy. You know, though there’s so much fun stuff to see. Usually when you’re watching comedy, you have about 20 minutes with someone talking if they’re headlining or whatever. [At the Fringe] you get to sit with someone for an hour, and you get to properly see inside their brain, and it’s all this mad stuff that maybe they would never say out loud in a conversation. And so you get to see how other people’s minds work and how they approach their comedy.

I remember last year when I was doing my work in progress is when I got really excited about the thought of this show, because I was watching so many people do so many interesting things, and I was kind of rewriting it as I was doing it every day. And so I’m excited to be part of that wheel of creative madness again.

And the worst thing is that it’s very expensive, it’s very tiring. I mean, it’s not a hot take, but the worst thing is that in order to take part in the festival, I have had to do a lot of work, which, I mean, yeah, everyone does, And that has impacted my ability to actually write and make stuff. I live in Glasgow, it’s not that difficult for me to commute. It would be much more inaccessible if I had to stay in Edinburgh, for example, but it’s already been a fairly expensive process.

I think that’s part of the reason as well, to keep my expectations quite realistic, is that I don’t want to over promise myself and look back on this and go, ‘Oh no, I spent all that money!’ And the planning, the organization… I don’t want to call it stress, because I genuinely, really enjoyed it. I feel like I’ve learned so much from doing it, and I think I will be a better comedian, producer, like everything, for having done this. And it’s just as I go through the process of actually taking a show to the Fringe, I keep noticing little hurdles that I think, ‘Oh, if I didn’t have a supportive job’, or if I didn’t have, you know, a long term partner these would all be things that would catch me up. So it’s noticing that there are these little bits that we still have to work on to make the festival more accessible. I think.

Apart from the show, will you be performing elsewhere during the Fringe?

Yes. I run, with the help of various other Glaswegian comedians, I set up and run the Humour Mill, which is a comedy creatives network. We run workshops, we run drop in writing sessions, and we share resources, things like that. And as part of that, I like to make sure that we’re highlighting different alternative comedy voices. And so we have a couple of live shows, and we’re bringing a couple of those to the Fringe. So there will be drag, there will be stand-up, there will be musical comedy, there will be live sketch. So I’m really excited about those as well. That’s going to be very fun.

Are there any other acts at the Fringe that you would recommend audiences see that might not get as much attention as they should?

Yes, I should have written these down before! My friend Chris Weir is doing his show ‘Well Flung‘ at Gilded Balloon. I saw the work in progress recently, and it is like a very a very fun kind of holiday romance show. He’s so funny. He has such a strange way of phrasing things that always really, really makes me laugh and catches me off guard. I love everything Sam Lake does, but I love Sam Lake‘s [new] show. And Eleanor Morton, I saw her work in progress for ‘Haunted House‘ last year, and thought it was genius. And Kate Hammer is one of my favorite acts in the world, and she’s doing, I think, a week or two weeks at the end of the month, at the Stand. Jade Kelly, Amanda Dwyer, they’re also doing shows at the Stand, and there will be five million more people I’ve forgotten. And, yeah, there’s so many exciting Scottish-based acts. And so I can’t wait to see them all do what I see them do all year long, for so many more people. It’s going to be so exciting!

Cryptid!‘ is at Gilded Balloon Patter House – Snug from Wed 31 Jul to Mon 26 Aug 2024 (except Mon 12)