The Big Interview with Ian Smith

Ian Smith received an Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination for his 2023 show Crushing and repeated the feat last year with Foot Spa Half Empty, which tours the UK with from next month. The Yorkshire-born stand-up, who hosts the Northern News podcast with Amy Gledhill, is also recording a second series of Radio 4's Ian Smith Is Stressed next month. Here he speaks to JAY RICHARDSON about fertility treatment, finding his comic voice and his frustrations with class in comedy.

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So, are you all set for going on the road?

There's a bit of relearning the show after I did the Soho Theatre in November. I'm gigging in Estonia this week which has somehow become part of it. Technically, this is now a world tour.

Estonia? Why? Because they asked?

Yeah. They just got in touch and asked if I'd like to do a date in Tallinn. I've never been to Estonia and am genuinely excited to do it. I'm intrigued as to who's going to be there.

Presumably you're hoping to get a routine out of it, as you did visiting Chernobyl and driving a tank in Bratislava?

I didn't really travel too much when I was younger, so I'm trying to tick off as many countries as I can. I'm not anticipating getting a mad anecdote out of it as I did on some of my previous holidays. But it should be fun.

How do you find touring, because you've portrayed yourself as perpetually stressed and consuming countless energy drinks ...

Yeah, I went through a phase of writing where I would buy those 35p energy drinks with really generic names. A shop near my old flat had these plain cans with 'Energy Drink', written on the side. And it didn't feel healthy but it really spurred my writing.

I'm off those energy drinks now. I don't trust them and they scare me a bit. But yeah, I guess I'm usually pretty stressed about something. 

I'm looking forward to the tour though, it's my second proper one. It feels a real privilege to do 20, 30 minutes of crowd work at the top of the show and then your own hour. Having people's attention for that long is the ultimate thing.

With the Edinburgh Comedy Awards recognition, did your two most recent shows feel like a creative leap forward?

The main difference is that before I would have a projector, set-pieces, little theatrical bits. And for various reasons, I really wanted to do a show where I proved that I could just do stand-up for an hour with no other elements. 

I love those old shows but it felt like a big shift. And these two shows have been significantly better for getting rid of all of those things.

Do you feel as if audiences are connecting more with the personal material too?

These last two shows have definitely been more personal. But maybe that's just life. Whenever I write a show, I try to think of the main thing that's going on with me. And probably in the past I didn't have as much going on. So I was less invested in the starting points and they were more surreal.

One of my shows, [2018's Craft] was about not really having a hobby and getting into origami. It was a good show. But I don't care about origami at all. And because my persona is quite highly strung, if you're doing a show about something you actually care about, it's much easier to be passionate.

Still, you didn't want to completely dismiss the surreal or theatrical elements did you? In Foot Spa, you're still balancing the more relatable material of your struggles to conceive with the striking visual image of a seagull wielding a steak knife ...

Yeah, I still love that stuff. I've always loved the theatricality that Johnny Vegas and Tim Key put into their stand-up.

Your girlfriend Becky appears in the first series of Ian Smith Is Stressed. How much do you discuss your relationship material with her?

Particularly with the fertility stuff, one of my main concerns is that we're both comfortable with me talking about it. I was asking her throughout the writing and she listened to a preview. I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about her if I sensed that there was anything that she wouldn't want me talking about. 

At the same time, I didn't want my material about fertility to come across as flippant. Or to do a show with that clichéd sad bit in it. It's quite easy if you have something sad or frustrating in your life to get people to empathise. And I wanted that. But I wanted to make them laugh more.

If it's something that you're still dealing with, how can you talk about it night after night and not make the experience feel routine?

I don't really have a conclusive answer for that because there's definitely an argument that it's not a great idea. I was still having various tests done in June [before the Edinburgh Fringe began in July] and I hadn't emotionally processed everything. So doing stand-up wasn't the healthiest thing. There's a reason why they say that comedy is tragedy plus time.

But it felt disingenuous to do a show about being stressed out and to keep this thing that I'm really stressed about to myself. I would have found it hard to do material about finding self-service checkouts annoying when my mind was focused elsewhere. It was all I was really thinking about.

I also feel there is some value in me going on stage and saying: 'This is what's going on in my head right now'. Rather than waiting a couple of years until I've processed it and can look back at it almost academically. I wanted to show the stress of it right then.

From having been a bit taboo, infertility is a subject that's increasingly discussed by stand-ups, with comics such as Rhod Gilbert, Sara Pascoe and Carl Donnelly sharing their experiences recently. Did you feel any pressure to make your take really distinctive?

I was only aware of Rhod Gilbert doing his documentary. And I was potentially going to watch that but it wasn't available on iPlayer at the time, so I couldn't. And that felt like a good thing. I didn't want to be influenced.

I was keen for this just to be my story. I imagine there's comfort in hearing others talk about it and this perhaps wasn't the healthiest way to deal with it. But I didn't want to consume anyone else's experience while I was writing my own show.

You're often compared to Rhod. Is that fair? 

Yeah, it's a big compliment. I really love the full-bodied stress of what he does, he's brilliant. I remember the 2023 Guardian review of my show compared me to him. And with the fertility diagnosis, knowing that I was talking about that, I realised it was going to cement that with this reviewer. So I started anticipating it.

When did you realise being stressed was the defining aspect of your persona?

Looking back at my shows, it's maybe the sixth, seventh and eighth shows where it felt like the main theme. Over time, you realise that's naturally what's coming out. And even little comments, whether it's in reviews or from other comedians, you think, oh yeah, that's what I do. Sometimes it takes someone else to distil it for you with clarity. 

I remember a review that basically said that I get annoyed about things that most people wouldn't be bothered about and over-excited about stuff that isn't that good. And I thought that was quite a good way of looking at what I do.

Even talking to friends, it became apparent that stress and overthinking is such a big part of my personality. Organically you just find something and go oh, I've now hit on a persona that's truthful, funny and working for me.

You've talked about dispensing with theatrical gimmicks. But Crushing had you repeatedly running a joke into the ground and resurrecting it. And in Foot Spa there's a sight gag version of Chekhov's Gun. Why is it important for you to retain such bits?

There's a few reasons. The comedy I love has those creative aspects. If not theatrical flourishes, then structural flourishes. [James] Acaster is so good at weaving in callbacks and slightly theatrical elements that elevate the show. So it's partly that. I want people to leave saying that was really funny but also really well put together, a bit unique. There was something about it that they hadn't seen before.

My style is quite conversational and doesn't seem heavily scripted, maybe because it's a bit mumbling. A producer said after my first show that it's really important that I have a lot of callbacks, a lot of structure to show that it is scripted, written and crafted. Being Northern, working-class and conversational, I really want to show that I've put a lot of effort in. That the bits link and things come back. 

Even when my shows are reviewed well, they get called ''likeable', 'silly' or, for contrast, 'no-nonsense', quotes like that, which are sort of complimentary. But I don't get praised as a writer in the same way that some other comedians do.

Class is still so rarely spoken about in UK society, let alone comedy. Do you write from a place of anger, resentment or just trying to gently shift some preconceptions?

A lot of the comedy I love is a real mix of traditional northern sitcoms and creative stand-up. So I just want to get across that I'm obsessed with comedy, I work hard and agonise from May onwards putting these shows together. It's all I really think about. 

But generally, I am frustrated with class, in comedy and the arts in general. Financially, it's so invisible. When someone's being pushed and you can't see the disparity in resources, it's not a very visual thing. So that's hard to rectify. And it's easy for some [organisations] to get away with a lack of representation.

What's in the second series of Ian Smith Is Stressed, will you talk about your fertility journey?

Yes, that'll be one episode. And there's an episode about moving house, about sleep, and about the fact that I don't drink enough water. Some of the things we've booked include me going go-karting and a water survival course. I can't really swim but I'm going to jump into a pool fully clothed and someone's going to teach me how to turn my jeans into a life jacket. I don't think I'll die because someone can fish me out. But I shouldn't be doing that. 

We're trying to find a witch. It's actually quite hard to find a modern witch but I'm going to find one to put a spell on me.

And I'm also wanting to get hypnotised on stage. We're hoping that Dave Green, a comedian who does lucid dreaming, will have a dream about me and we'll talk about it on stage. We'll also be asking a lot of questions of the audience. So it's exciting and all over the place in a fun way. 

Where are you going to? I understand that since Sunil Patel: An Idiot's Guide To Cryptocurrency went to El Salvador, there's been a tightening of Radio 4 comedy travel budgets...

Yeah, Sunil's ruined travel for the Radio 4 community! At one point, I wanted to go to Sweden to do this thing called the Flogsta Scream. There's a university campus in Uppsala, near Stockholm. And every night at a certain time everyone screams out of their window as a release of exam-related stress. But because you can't fly to Sweden because of Sunil, it takes so long to get there by train or car that it would have meant taking a week out of my diary to go, scream, then immediately drive back. So this will be a very UK-based series.

The Weird Weekends aspect of what you do, blending comedy and light-hearted gonzo journalism, would you consider adapting that for television?

That's something I need to pitch, we'll look into it once this series is done. Doing that kind of travelogue would be the dream, a Rob & Romesh Vs-style programme. I've had ideas for that in the past but it's so hard to get made. There has to be so much money thrown at you that I probably need a bigger profile.

I understand you're working on a BBC sitcom. Can you tell me anything about that?

I don't know what I'm allowed to say but it's coming along and I hope they want to commission it. I love the script and that's something I really want to do more of. When I was a teenager wanting to do comedy, the dream was always to write a sitcom. So yeah, it's exciting but it feels like there's quite a long way to go for it to happen. 

You're hoping to play the lead?

Yeah.

You started performing in sketches while still at school. How do you think you've changed as a stand-up in the 20 or so years that you've been doing it?

So I did my first gig when I was 17. But I maybe only did a gig every three or four months with my parents driving me places. And then, during university, I was doing the student competitions like Chortle. But I was really focusing on my uni course. When I graduated, I had some good opportunities but was still in a bit of a university mindset. My work-ethic wasn't good, I was still a bit of a student.

The big thing that really helped was being in the writers’ room for The News Quiz, then getting to be on the show. We would get a couple of hours and be told we needed to write a certain number of jokes on two subjects, sometimes subjects that I had no real knowledge of or interest in. But it would get done because you had a deadline.

It made me realise that if I apply myself I can write a lot of material quickly. I developed more of a technique in my head for how I generate material. I started working a lot harder in the years before the pandemic.

So writing topical material changed how you wrote stand-up?

Maybe not style-wise. But particularly back then I found writing a show stressful because I care a lot about it and would struggle to pinpoint an idea and stick with it. Being in those writers’ rooms gave me more belief in my ability as a writer, having written ten pages over two days of jokes about topical subjects that I don't care about or like. 

And I realised, that if I apply myself in this way to my own life and the stand-up I do care about, I can really generate a lot of ideas.

You directed Amy Gledhill's 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated debut show The Girl Before The Girl You Marry. And your podcast together, Northern News, seems to be going strong. Why do you work so well with Amy?

It's always awkward speaking for someone else. But we genuinely like each other, get along and make each other laugh. And that's what I really want to hear in a podcast, friends laughing with each other, whatever the framework is. With Off Menu, it's so clear that Ed [Gamble] and James [Acaster] are great friends. 

I love working with Amy, she's so naturally funny, so generous with her laughter and enthusiasm for what you're saying. I feel funnier around Amy. And we have such a constant stream of bizarre stories from the North. Luckily, it feels like we've picked a subject that's never going to run out.

Stories like the bloke having porridge poured through his letterbox are part of the podcast's lore, essentially catchphrases and feed into your stand-up too don't they?

Scripted-wise, so many elements of these stories would be great as a plotline, a little scene or just a joke. There's a film script I want to write about a story that was too involved to make it onto Northern News about werewolf sightings just outside of Beverley [near Hull]. The podcast throws up all these bizarre characters. And like my radio stuff it's really rubbing off on my stand-up.

From the outside, it seems as if you've put your hometown of Goole on the map. Are you a local celebrity?

No, not at all. I was described as a 'local celebrity' at a gig in Selby, which is a nearby town. And I don't think anyone was aware of me. Amy and I had a drink in the Wetherspoons in Goole on Boxing Day and I don't think anyone was thinking: 'Oh my God! Northern News Live!' I've got a long way to go before I'm the Goole celebrity.

You're likely taking a work-in-progress show to this year's Edinburgh Fringe. Have you any idea what it'll be about?

Yes, that's what I want to do if I have time with other deadlines. No big theme, just a case of seeing what happens in my life. At the moment, the main bit is a routine about me staying in a hotel where the door wouldn't lock on my room and I was quite worried. It wasn't a very nice hotel so I moved the cupboard in front of the door, woke up and forgot I'd done it, so I didn't know how to get out of the room. That's the main crux right now. But I can't imagine that's what the show will end up being about.

• Ian Smith plays Tallinn tonight, before kicking off the UK tour of Foot Spa Half Empty at the Monkey Barrel in Edinburgh on February 3. (Ian Smith tour dates). He is recording series 2 of his Radio 4 stand-up series, Ian Smith Is Stressed on February 22 and 23 at Up the Creek comedy club in Greenwich, South London. Free tickets are available here.

Published: 21 Jan 2026