Mark Watson is a comedian, novelist, and producer who has been a prominent staple of the British comedy scene since first appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Cambridge Footlights in 2001. He is a regular on television, has written several novels, and produces comedy shows alongside his own stand-up. He has just begun a UK tour for his new show, ‘Before it Overtakes Us’, which includes a date at the Aberdeen Comedy Festival. We spoke to Mark about the show, the achivements he’s most proud of, and a recent pre-tour anxiety dream.

Can you tell us about ‘Before it Overtakes Us’?

The starting point for the show was that I had a conversation with what I took to be a customer service host. I’d had to complain to a company about a thing that never arrived, but it turned out to be a chat bot and AI. This was about a year ago, when it was slightly less of a talking point. It was my first experience of being tricked into talking something that I believed was a human but wasn’t, and it made me feel quite kind of old, basically. 45 and I already feel kind of behind the curve of technology and stuff fairly often. But that was a particular moment where I felt it so I wanted to do a show partly about what makes us human, and how we hang on to that, given that there’s so many attempts to sort of phase us out now.

And the tour is just about to begin, is that right?

Yeah. I did the whole month of the Fringe. And then the tour in fact begins [on September 17] jn Cambridge. And after that, for the next year I’ll be on this tour basically, in some form or other, with a couple of breaks. But when you look at the list of all of the tour dates together it looks insane, actually. And sometimes you stop and think, ‘Why have I taken on so much?’ But having put a lot of effort into making the show, obviously you want to keep it alive for a while and take it everywhere you can.

How does a tour compare to a month at the Fringe?

One of the nice things about being at the Fringe is just to be in the same place every day. It’s really only at Edinburgh and sometimes Melbourne Comedy Festival that I actually do have that feeling. Most of my life, even if I’m not directly touring, I’m traveling around to do a show somewhere or other, or a gig, or corporate things and so on. So the month of in Edinburgh in August is kind of the most continuity I have in my life.

But on the other hand, touring around provides you with a bit of variety, I suppose. The audiences are different; not that different from place to place, but enough that you have to think about where you are. Whereas the Fringe, you can kind of become a bit robotic. You’re doing the same thing in the same room at the same time every night. I’m lucky, I’ve got an audience in Edinburgh, my room is like 300 people. So that’s enough to keep the keep the fear in you. So I don’t think I’ve ever managed to go on autopilot at the Fringe, but certainly there is a bit of a Groundhog Day element to it for some people. It iss a long month, whereas touring you’re always on your toes with something, even if it’s just train logistics.

What’s your writing process for a show? In this instance, you’ve come from that almost ‘Eureka!’ moment of the interaction with the chatbot, but in terms of expanding on the initial idea, do you write first, or do a lot of gigging to bring it together piecemeal?

Quite a lot of that takes place just in work in progress shows in smaller venues and stuff. I do also work with a director and I try and tease out the themes and work out how to piece the show together. But yeah, a fair bit of the process is, even with a director involved, is still just getting on your feet and trying it out in front of people. It’s very difficult to work out what works in comedy without actually trying it.

But some people are much more the sort of comedians that sit and actually write scripts; you know, piece material together. Despite the fact that I am a writer, I don’t seem to work that way with comedy. I prefer to kind of embellish what I’ve already got by a process of trial and error basically, which does mean doing a lot of work in progress shows, some of which won’t be very good! So you just have to make sure that those are under the radar a bit. But that’s kind of the only way I can get to a fully-rounded show really, is just a lot of chipping away at it on stage itself.

Does a show evolve during its run? Do you constantly tinker, or do you lock it in place once it’s ready?

A lot of people would suggest it’d be better to lock it in place, because then any new stuff you come up with becomes part of a different show, and you’re banking that stuff for the future. But in reality it’s pretty hard to do a show 70 or 80 or a hundred times without starting to automatically play around with it. So the longer the tour goes on, the more I kind of give myself latitude to just play with it and introduce new stuff. Even at the end of the tour, the bulk of the material, the most important nuts and bolts of the show should still be in place. But gradually, one show evolves into a new one, or at least that’s the theory.

And also, the longer a tour goes on, the more likely I am to improvise, mess around with the audience, and introduce new elements of chaos. Because again, that’s one of the ways that you can stop yourself from getting tired of the same material. I never really get tired of doing stand-up itself. I always enjoy the shows, but there are individual moments of the show that you do get sick of hearing yourself say again and again and again, so just varying it a bit is a good way to ameliorate that.

There have been shows where you’ve came on stage after sitting in the audience waiting to be announced, and you’ve often performed in unusual locations. What’s the weirdest place you’d like to perform that you haven’t managed to yet?

You’re right, I’ve done some odd ones. Ferries, trains, I’ve performed in many modes of transport. For years. I thought I’d like to do something in the London Eye, because you can get a relatively private compartment of it, and you could just sell sort of 30 tickets and do it like a bespoke comedy attraction. I think it would be pretty fun to see London going around beneath you as you did the show. But I think they have done something like this; not a specific comedian, but I think they’ve had a comedy night there now, so that takes a bit of my appetite away.

I’d want it to be somewhere where no one else has done any. A few years ago somebody sent me a photo of a cave in Derbyshire I think it is, which is just about kitted out for live shows. They’ve got a licence to do things like that. Something like that would be good, I think; a weird geographical landmark of some kind.

Actually, I had a dream last night that I was doing my thing of starting in the audience and sort of doing it acoustically, just yelling at them. But the gig was vast. It was sort of like an arena gig, thousands and thousands of people. And as I was doing I thought, ‘This is a disaster, half of the audience can’t hear! This is really, really poorly thought out!’ It was funny. It should have been a dream about having a massive audience and fulfilling your desires for success, but actually was just a really panicky experience, and I was glad when I woke up!

You’ve been a comedian for around half your lifetime now. What advice would you give your younger self, if that was possible?

I think it would be something to do with not getting too carried away by either the highs or the lows of it. I mean, when I was my younger self, in my 20s and actually well into my 30s, I was very, very ambitious to be sort of a huge name. Not make loads of money, though I did want to make money, but it was more about the status of it all, really. So I was always chasing things, and I was taking on gigs that weren’t necessarily right for me, or TV things.

I think I basically my advice to myself would be just be chill out a little bit, enjoy what you’re doing. I think everyone knows there are ups and downs in this career. But that’s the funny thing. Any advice that I would give to my 22-year-old self, he’d probably ignore anyway, because you always think that you know better when you’re 22! But yeah, it would be along the lines of, ‘You’re going to have a good career. Always remember that you’re lucky to do something that you enjoy. Not everyone has that by a long way, and even the worst things that could happen to you in this career are nowhere near as big as the things that can happen to people in life in general. So just try and enjoy it a bit more.’ I think these days I enjoy it a lot, but it’s taken me a while to get that perspective.

And are you comfortable with the position you’re at? Is it good to be very well known in your chosen field, instead of being mega famous?

It is a pretty nice position, I’d say. I mean, this is the thing; I certainly at one time would have wanted to be, like a major household name, I suppose – where Michael McIntyre is, and of course, you could always do with being a bit more successful. I suppose I have friends who are just that little bit better-known and maybe making a bit more money and getting a bit more recognition. So, I can always look at other people and think, ‘Oh, I wish I had that’.

But broadly speaking, yeah, I’m pretty happy with it, because I have a nice life. I’m still doing, most of the time, things that I enjoy, and really when I started out, I mostly just wanted to be doing this, which is a touring comedian able to make a living just from being on the road doing gigs. So I’d have been very pleased if I’d been told that in my 40s that would be my main lifestyle. But again, as you go on you set more and more goal posts, or you move your own goal posts endlessly. So I’ve gradually started to not do that as much, I think. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with them where I am, but part of you always stays hungry, I suppose. I think I’ve even met and heard from people in their 60s and 70s that still have that little spark of ambition and competitiveness, I guess otherwise, without that maybe you wouldn’t do any at all.

And you’ve also been supportive of other comedians as they have been up and coming in their careers.

Yeah, I’ve kind of taken a pride in doing that where possible, just encouraging other people. I host a lot of events, gigs for up and coming comedians, that sort of thing. Just in general, I enjoy it. I think it’s partly because… certainly I look back to when I was starting out, and there were a couple of people like Adam Hills and Harry Enfield, but Hills in particular, who were very generous to me, and you never forget that help and you’re grateful for it. As much as anything, I feel like I’ve required a lot of helping hands to get to the stage I am at, so it’s nice if I can do a bit of that.

And among that crop of up-and-coming comedians, are there any in particular you think are going to be the the big names going forward?

It’s an interesting question, because I’ve just been to the Fringe, and I saw a lot of good stuff. I was involved with producing various shows, one of which Sam Nicoresti won the [Comedy] Award. So obviously Sam is very much one to watch. But yeah, the funny thing is, even though I’m very immersed in comedy, both as a comedian and producer, I still probably don’t know who the next big things are. Especially because so much happens online now, so doing the Fringe and even being plugged into the live comedy circuit is only part of the story. You have to have eyes everywhere.

And so my honest answer is the next major name in comedy is probably someone that I don’t know. Or, I’ve heard of, but don’t know anything about really, which is a bit annoying! But then again, when you get to middle age, you have to accept your finger can’t always be on the pulse in the same way. As much as anything, I’m not at as many gigs as I used to be. When I’m not doing my tour shows, I’m happy at home.

And overall, what’s been your biggest achievement, and is there anything you’d like to achieve that you haven’t yet?

I’d still like to be writing more long-form stuff. I’ve written quite a lot of novels, but I’d be interested in writing for the screen at some point, perhaps, or for the stage. I’ve had various projects like that come and go over the years, which happens to most people, I suppose. So there’s loads left to achieve.

In terms of what I’ve already done… It’s interesting, in a way I think I’m probably proudest of having written the number of novels I have, just because that takes so long, it’s such a big undertaking, and you don’t necessarily get much credit or attention for that, like you do for some of these shows. Some of the things that I’m proudest of are even 24-hour shows. I suppose they do get a lot of attention, but it’s still quite an under-the-radar thing, and you’d only really do it if you if you were desperate to do it. So I suppose the things I’m proudest of are just the things that I’ve put a huge amount of effort into and accomplished – got them over the finish line whether, you know, they were the most well-known things or not.

To what extent does your approach to writing a novel differ from writing a stand-up show?

It differs a lot, I think. As I said, I don’t spend a lot of time sitting and writing for a stand-up show, whereas with a novel there’s no option to do that, and I think that’s probably why I don’t write much of my actual comedy down. I’m spending a long time on a novel, on a fiction project. I’m sitting for long periods at the laptop and having to think and restructure and redraft endlessly. So I think maybe comedy for me is sort of a break from that. They’re almost opposite. You know, I relish the fact that with stand-up, if I have an idea, I can just show up and and do it that night, rather than writing it all down, taking it to pieces the next day, carrying on forever.

Is there any cross-pollination of ideas between the two formats?

I think there probably is. I mean, it’s tricky. When I’m writing a book, I don’t want it to sound too much like my stand up, unless that’s the sort of persona I’m adopting. So a lot of them hopefully don’t sound that much like it. But, of course there’s the same kind of ideas, I suppose. On stage I’m trying to talk about the things that make us human, and drawing from my own life and observations, and writing a novel is not so different from that.

I suppose there are some subjects though, which lend themselves to the stage, especially the day to day observations. And then there are bigger, broader, or maybe darker themes, which you just have to work out on on the page. With a novel, nothing can be too topical or observational or anything, because it takes years for them to come out. So that’s the main difference. There is cross pollination, but the stuff that makes it to stand-up are probably things that I still think are relevant in that moment, and the things that the books end up being about, I suppose, are things, themes, or worries or issues that preoccupy me over the years.

‘Before it Overtakes Us‘ is at Lemon Tree, Aberdeen on Fri 3 Oct 2025 as part of Aberdeen Comedy Festival