Chloe Petts interview

After a series of well-received Edinburgh Fringe shows and being regular tour support for Ed Gamble, Chloe Petts has become a TV regular with appearances including  Have I Got News For You, Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda Netflix special and, starting tonight, the U&Dave escape-room based show The Way Out, joining Gamble and Lou Sanders in competition against Nish Kumar, David O'Doherty and Amy Annette. Here Petts talks to Jay Richardson about that show, about growing as a comedian, and being in Olga Koch’s wedding band…

How did you get involved in The Way Out?

I've been a bit of a nepo friend. Ed was going to be a team captain and it's very clear how much we both love escape rooms. We were a good choice though. What's more fun than watching someone go into something headfirst, really try their best and absolutely love what they're doing? It was understood that we would bring enthusiasm and competitiveness to something that is ultimately stupid and pointless. It's what the format probably needs.

You're constantly sledging Nish and David. Was it tacitly understood that your team were the cocky ones and they were the underdogs?

I mean, they kind of positioned themselves as underdogs by being incredibly stupid all of the time. You can see their team is the silly boys and Amy. And we're the competitive boys and Lou. We never meant to put them down too much but it just kind of happened. I always have the best intentions to not have fighting talk. But then I get into the situation and I'm like: 'You're going down suckers!'

You've credited Ed with helping you get sillier in your comedy. How would you describe your relationship?

One of the things I love about him as a friend is he's just so generous. He's also just really good at pushing every bit of comedy he can out of something. Through toppers, an act out or silly voice. He's always keen to find the funniest thing he can. 

But as a friend, too, he's just so encouraging. Even when I'm just being myself in the car, he's always really laughing, really engaged and topping what I say. Having a mate like him and Paul, the tour manager, has made me confident in the bits about myself that are funny. And confident in sharing them on stage. Not sequestering them away as much.

Your relationship with Lou comes across as equal parts love and frustration.

Yeah, I love her so much but she's mad. And I say that with the greatest love, she's just one of the most idiosyncratic people I know. Before I started stand-up she was my favourite comedian because she's so uncensored. So totally herself and herself is so funny. Over the years, she's harnessed her raw instincts into top stand-up. 

My main worry was that I would be going into the rooms and laughing at her so much. Unfortunately, she just behaved absolutely inexplicably. So instead I was annoyed.

What do you think is the show's appeal? Is it inverting Taskmaster, in that you have to solve the tasks in a very set, pre-determined way? But your personalities get in the way of that?

What's great about the show, similar to Taskmaster, is that there's no time to think about whether you're being funny or not. You're sent somewhere and suddenly 10 fish are being thrown at you. In that moment, you're not thinking about a funny gag, it's just your pure, unadulterated response to 10 fish being thrown at you. It asked us to be ourselves.

Were you having fight-or-flight responses, similar to those you might get being heckled?

For me, it used to be fight or flight if someone heckled, while still hoping that something great would come out of it. But with this show and crowd work, heckles or whatever, I've got to a point where I know I want to do it and I go into this mindful state where I'm not fight-or-flight activated. Totally in the moment, totally concentrating on this one thing.

That's why I love escape rooms generally. Our lives as stand-ups are so chaotic, you're thinking about the gig you've got later, the 17 emails you have to answer. But when you're just locked in a room for an hour and you've put your phone away, you can't think about anything else. You can focus on this one thing.

I understand you were beset by anxiety as an open mic act, how did you get beyond that?

Probably just time, doing it for ages and growing up. I try to never look sideways at what my colleagues are doing. Career stuff's come at the right time for me because of how my stand-up's going, how I'm feeling as a person. The stuff I'm getting now I just wouldn't have been ready for five years ago because I was too young, anxious or insecure. Boring answer, I just got older.

There was more material about sex and relationships in your last show, Big Naturals. Are you getting more ambitious in your subject matter?

Consciously, no. I realised that my second show [If You Can't Say Anything Nice] was probably my trickiest because I had a lot less time to write it than the first one. And because I was trying to say too much, I ended up saying nothing. It had good bits of stand-up but didn't hang together.

Still, it was a really good lesson. Because I realised that I couldn't just be writing something with a message, I've got to write something because it's funny. Counter-intuitively, that's now allowed me to delve into things a little deeper because being less issue-based, I've felt freer. And I want the audience to feel that I'm being authentically true to me. So I'm less didactic. If the audience takes something away from my show, fantastic. But my primary aim is to make them laugh.

How do you write?

One of my favourite routines I've ever written was about going to a wedding and getting lifted like I was in a rugby line-out when the bouquet was tossed. That image was really funny to me. So I sat down with it and bullet pointed, bullet pointed, bullet pointed, mind mapped, mind mapped, mind mapped, made it really baggy and really expansive. Then I took it on stage, tried it out, kept the stuff that worked, got rid of the stuff that didn't, wrote more, wrote more, wrote more. It's a war of attrition, continual expansion and contraction. 

That's a really distinctive routine that expresses your everyperson credentials. Does it feel like a signature bit?

I would never have those lofty ambitions about any routine. But it did feel self-enclosed. Back in the day I used to get worried that I was just doing a handful of jokes that I squished together. And I really wanted a routine that I could lift out and put on Live At The Apollo. 

I didn't watch that much stand-up until that show came out. And I remember Rhod Gilbert's suitcase handle, I remember Michael McIntyre's man drawer. They were the only routines I knew but they were kind of magic. I'm not so delusional to think that Chloe Petts' wedding routine is anywhere near those but it's cool that it gets talked about.

Do you think being exceptionally tall as an adolescent set you on a path to becoming a comic by trying to influence others' perceptions of you? 

Rosie Jones and I have spoken about this a lot. She had it to a much greater extent than I have and I'm not equating my experience with Rosie's. The shit she gets is awful. But we've agreed that because we look a bit different, when you walk into a room, people look at you. They're trying to work out who you are. 

I walk into a room and they're like, is that a man, a woman, or whatever? So I guess, on a subconscious level, if they're looking anyway, I wanted to control that. I wanted it to be on my terms. And obviously, as I've got a bit into the public eye, I've realised it's not all it's cracked up to be. 

So that was partially it. But it's the answer to why I wanted to be on stage rather than a stand-up specifically. I originally wanted to be an actor but then I thought that was too hard work. Stand-up was something I fell into because I did this course. And it felt a lot more egalitarian than acting. I came out of university in tonnes of debt and knew I needed to get a job to stay in London. So I thought, well, what can I do in the evenings? And that's not reliant on anyone else? 

I didn't have to pay loads to go and learn. I didn't have to wait for someone to write a play that I could be in and for me to be the right person for that play. I could do it all on my own terms.

I was 21 when I did the Soho Theatre course and it made sense. We were given a set of rules that I could follow. You do at least two five-minute gigs a week, maybe you progress to a 10 and then you do the competitions. It felt like I had markers to follow.

What was it like graduating from that course with an established group of friends, Olga Koch, Sam Lake and Huge Davies, with whom you can share your career struggles and aspirations?

It was awesome, just having that community made things so much easier because you always had someone to sound things off, recommend gigs to each other and just support and help each other. I don't think I would have kept doing it if I didn't have that. There were some absolutely awful people coming up on the open mic circuit. We often needed the group chat just to be like, guys, what the fuck was that all about?

Tell me about the band you've started with Flo and Joan. You're playing Olga's wedding right?

That's my main project at the moment! So me, Nicola and Rosie [the Dempsey sisters of Flo and Joan], Charlene Kaye and Mel & Sam did School Of Rock together in Australia last year for Comedians On Stage Auditioning For Musicals. And if you've watched that video, Rosie's just playing the drums like a labrador, she looks so happy. All of us came off stage thinking that was the happiest we'd ever been on it, ever. So I asked Nicola and Rosie if they want to keep playing together. Because it's so fun and freeing, just playing music really loudly.

Now Olga's getting married. She wants a snake person at her wedding, a guy walking around with a snake. I said to her, 'we can play some songs if you want'. And now it's got a bit out of hand. We're a wedding covers band called The Spooky Richards.

You're doing a podcast with Olga too. What's that about? 

It's called Hot Beef and will be out around July. We're interviewing people about their relationship to beef and conflict. We're doing it because everything I've ever done with Olga has been really fun, people have said that we have amazing chemistry. And we figured we should probably monetise that chemistry. But it's a real passion project. I only wanted to do a podcast if it was fun and this one is, it forces me to spend time with my friends.

Why beef?

Well, because our friendship started through conflict. And one of the things we've come back to most throughout our 11 or 12-year friendship is that we have totally different conflict styles. Olga is willing to have it out. And I'm not. I'm very repressed. That's been an ongoing thing that we've had to grapple with together and we feel it's an interesting thing to talk about. 

We recorded a bunch of episodes in Australia with people from loads of different nationalities and backgrounds. And it's been great to hear so many culturally different attitudes to conflict and fighting, the willingness to do it or otherwise.

I'm assuming clichés about the British being buttoned up hold pretty true?

Yeah, so true. My partner's Australian and it was probably only four or five years ago that I started travelling outside the UK. We holidayed in this country when I was growing up and I've always been very much a homebody. Now though, my personality gets reflected back to me from other nationalities. And they tend to say you're very repressed, you drink a lot, that's very British. It's a wake-up call.

Have you begun working on your next show?

No, I'm not really sure what it's going to be yet.

Are you aiming for a 2027 Edinburgh Fringe return? Or have you outgrown the festival?

Maybe. To be honest, the thing about the Fringe is, if you like it, you should do it. And maybe that's a privileged thing to say because I know it's extremely expensive and a massive drain on people but I just really like it. I like doing shows, seeing shows and being around other comedians. Sure, sometimes you get to the third week and it's a bit of a drag, you're kind of thinking oh God, get me to the end. 

But I want to go back. Maybe if you come to me in September, I'll tell you I loved having August off and I'm never doing it again. It probably will be part of my next tour, though.

You're one of those comics whose first Fringe experience was in terrible student plays. Do you think that benefited you later?

It was probably good that I knew the city and what it all felt like, that I got my mental breakdown out of the way. I learned later about doing the Fringe as a stand-up but I benefited from already understanding the general chaos of the mise-en-scène.

How did it feel landing a spot on Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda? Because it looked brilliant. But from the outside it seemed like a bit of a sop from Netflix to the LGBTQ+ community for the platform's backing of anti-trans comics?

I can't speak to what happened behind the scenes with Hannah, Netflix or the production team. But I can say it was an incredible experience because it kind of came out of nowhere and none of us really knew what it was or what was happening. We all got selected, went to this hotel, met each other, had drinks and canapés. Graham Norton was there. I lost my mind a bit because it was the coolest thing ever. We did these warm-ups at the Soho Theatre but we still didn't really know what it was.

Then we did two recordings on the day and it was just so beautiful because it all clicked together. It was really special to see a group of people, coming to that show, who were just buzzing to see themselves represented and how kind it was. 

But we didn't pull any punches. It was subversive and there was loads of interesting stuff being spoken about. It wasn't sanitised at all. It just felt like a room of people seeing themselves reflected on stage, knowing they were going to be looked after. There was such a beautiful sense of camaraderie, love and trust and there was a big standing ovation. 

I thought I'd be cynical about that. Because of course that would happen, it's the end of a TV show. 

But honestly, I was so emotional because it felt like we'd made a thing happen. At a time when some people are being pretty horrid we stuck our heads above the parapet and tried to do something.

Might you do another social history series like Chloe Petts' Toilet Humour on Radio 4?

I don't know. Toilet Humour really developed my writing because I basically wrote two-and-a-half hours of stand-up in one year. And that felt like it took my writing to the next level. I'm maybe thinking about doing something about banned books but I'm not going to put my full effort behind that because that's not where my focus is right now. I loved doing it, though.

And with the World Cup approaching, will there be any more Comedians Taking Penalties?

I'd love to do a second series because it was a really cool experience. That also came out of Gender Agenda because I got on so well with the two producers, they wanted to work with me again and we all love football. We learned a lot shooting it on a shoestring. So I would be really keen to see what we could do with another run.

• The Way Out is on U&Dave at 9pm tonight.  

» Chloe Petts forthcoming gigs

Published: 12 May 2026