“I spent so many years waking up, staring at the ceiling and thinking, ‘What am I doing? Is it all leading anywhere?’” Paddy Young says. “It is weird how quickly that has been replaced with, ‘Oh my God, I hope I don’t mess this thing up.’”
For years, Young yearned to make a steady income from making people laugh. Now, at the age of 35, he is doing just that as part of the Saturday Night Live UK cast, and is about to embark on a stand-up tour, where he will be performing to bigger rooms than ever before. Yet the arrival of the career he had spent years chasing has brought him an unexpected problem: he continues to worry about whether he is actually funny.
“Every week on SNL feels like a referendum,” he says. “There’s honestly times where I don’t know if anyone, including me, has ever even heard of a good joke. Every day we all fall flat. At every gig too, I’m like, ‘Will I be allowed to do another one?’”
When SNL UK launched earlier this year, there were inevitable questions about whether an American comedy behemoth could translate to a British audience. It has since built steady ratings, racked up millions of social media views and attracted a string of high-profile hosts for its second series, including Cynthia Erivo and Danny Dyer. Young, however, still can’t relax.
“Someone told me you never know happiness, only relief,” he says. “It completely broke my heart because it’s true. I go up to stuff thinking this will be terrible, then it goes well, and I just sigh a breath of relief. A lot of comedians are overthinkers.”
Friday is the toughest day on SNL, but luckily the “magic” starts to come together on Saturdays, which reminds me of what Strictly Come Dancing contestants have often said. “SNL is like Strictly for people who can’t make eye contact,” he quips, depicting how his self-deprecating tendencies quickly turn into material, dryly adding: “I’ve got a picture of a train on my screen, so I don’t have to look at you.”
Young grew up watching sketch shows Big Train and Brass Eye, Eddie Izzard and Eddie Murphy standup gigs, and reading Beano comics alongside his dad’s Viz magazines, quietly developing his own form of comedy – a sarcastic and modest demeanor that leans into surreal storytelling or “true lies” as he refers to it – which he would test out by trying to make his three sisters laugh. When he trained as an actor at the Manchester School of Theatre, his wit is what set him apart.
“Other people had gravitas, could do accents, sing and dance. While on every other metric, I couldn’t top them, I had that in my back pocket.”
There’s only so many times a person can be told they’re the funniest person in the room before they consider a career in comedy. But, in a twist worthy of an Alanis Morissette lyric, that was when Young began to doubt his skillset. “I felt funny until I started doing stand-up comedy. Trying to monetise my humour was so humiliating. I would go to rubbish comedy nights and be the worst one on the bill.
“A lot of my peers found the first few years of open mics fun, but because I’d already been trying with acting for a while, I couldn’t believe I was still in pubs being bad. I was panicking.”
Young says audiences could smell his fear, but dealing with difficult crowds proved a valuable training ground in handling criticism. I saw this myself at the Roundhouse Comedy Festival’s opening night in August, when a spectator repeatedly heckled him, their shouts of “I’m funnier than you”, felt like an attempt to derail the show.
“The moments can’t be good for you, but those harrowing things that happen are par for the course, and I guess it’s in some ways funny, actually,” he ponders. “If something’s going well, I can be really transfixed on negative things, but when someone does that the contrarian in me just goes, ‘You’re thick’. Apathy is the hardest thing to deal with – a group of people that aren’t saying anything wrong, but they’re just not giving you much.”
He continues: “Comedy, unlike many other art forms, is based on failure. The only way you can ever get feedback is by going in front of an audience and seeing if they laugh.
“I used to work in theatre and I love theatre so sorry to say this, but they don’t have that so much. It’s why I think some of the people can like the smell of their own farts.”
His comedy draws on things that can be sold as failures – in his standup tour, Hungry, Horny, Scared, he spoke about life as a bachelor in a flat share and career struggles (“I can’t even be the funniest thing out of Scarborough since the New Year’s Eve fireworks were cancelled for Wally the masturbating walrus”). Before speaking to him, I wondered if it was part of an act, but he is keen to emphasise that he really is that negative.
“Someone said in a review, “How much longer is he going to keep up this sad shtick?” I am sad,” he states. “I love this job, but there’s an intense pressure all the time and I love my friends dearly, but living in a flatshare has its problems.
“When me and my housemate have just finished watching a film, and then the screen goes black, ain’t nothing sadder than seeing our reflection because we’re of fathering age. We are infantilised being in London, and then comedians are a whole other level of infantilised – it’s man baby central.”
Young isn’t concerned about running out of things to joke about if more success does find him and if home ownership happens, he already has a plan – doing 15 minutes of jokes on mortgage rates. I suggest writing a rom-com might be a good avenue to explore, with friends already telling me that Young is their crush. “Surely it is inevitable. Comedians are pretty good at writing for themselves. They are like, ‘What about a guy who is a comedian and get this… he is going out with a supermodel,” he says, with a small snigger. Aside from the possibility that one day he’ll write a Hollywood script that casts himself as a lead, SNL fame has also meant that he was properly booked and busy.
“Before SNL, my busyness was self-enforced. I made myself go to Edinburgh and write sketches, but I knew in the back of my mind, if I wanted to, I could just take a few days off. Since doing this job I am genuinely so busy, and I’ve realised I am built to work two days a week,” he says.
With Young heading out on his third solo standup tour, Will Sir be Laughing Alone? it feels like there is an obvious but needed question – what does he find funny when nobody is around? “Male patheticness, for sure, macho men trying to prove himself, people accidentally hurting themselves,” Young shares, which is ideal as he injured his hand with a samurai sword belonging to Sam Campbell in June.
Pushing the realms of what can be funny is something he does on his podcast, Paddy Will Help, in which callers ask for advice. In a wedding special, he “advised” one man whose friends were getting married on the same date as a previously booked holiday to pretend he was dying so they moved the date earlier – and to shave his head to make it more believable. He also practises it on SNL’s satirical news segment Weekend Update, which he co-anchors with Ania Magliano. It was previously hosted by huge names such as Chevy Chase, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the US.
“On Weekend Update, we had to make jokes about the Strait of Hormuz for four weeks, and that was absolutely heartbreaking, but I always get a really weird vibe from the hall monitors who wag their fingers and scold me for telling certain jokes because it’s a serious thing.
“Anytime something terrible has happened with my friends or in my family it’s always been laughter that’s got us through it. It is the most natural and healthy thing,” he says.
“Ultimately, funny always wins.”
The Paddy Will Help podcast is available on all major platforms. SNL UK continues Saturdays at 10pm on Sky and streaming service NOW