Until recently, Colin Hoult was doing very nicely indeed as a character-based comic and actor.

You may be familiar with his work from several sitcoms by Ricky Gervais (notably as Geoff in Derek and Ken in Afterlife). He also created a number of memorable characters of his own, such as karate enthusiast Len Parker, St Germain enthusiast Eddie Cartesian, and nationalism enthusiast Nick Crippen, as heard on his Radio 4 sketch show Colin Hoult’s Carnival of Monsters and featured on TV shows from Russell Howard’s Good News to Harry Hill’s Clubnite.

Increasingly, Hoult – who grew up in Nottingham and studied drama at MMU – focused his energies on the character of delightfully waspish, Redgrave-adjacent actress Anna Mann. In 2022, though, after starring in several live productions, she was killed off in the widely-acclaimed show Death of Anna Mann. Now, Hoult is touring a brand new show that takes a brand new tack: it’s called Colin and is essentially stand-up, with Hoult as himself for the first time.

“I had a little routine about a Ouija board that I’d done in the past and it always went down really well, but I’d never dared to do stand-up,” Hoult says. “I’ve never thought of myself as having very good opinions or anything. I’d look at other stand-ups and go ‘why do they think they can talk about this?’. I always used to be characters.”

Killing off Anna Mann changed all that, though. “I just felt like I’d gone as far as I could with her, and I didn’t want to get stuck as one character. I was like ‘I think I need to do something else’, and I’d always wanted to be myself on stage. I think you just get to an age where you’re like ‘I want to just tell a story myself’. I’ve always been a big fan of things like Richard Pryor. He brought all his family to life. I just feel like there’s a lot of humour in my family – as in, not the sitcom – and I wanted to bring them bring them to life. It was a challenge, really, but I feel like I’m always having to change what I do. I can never quite settle down on one thing.”

Back to his youth

Colin centres on Hoult’s family during his childhood, and he seems to have found the experience of leaving characters behind invigorating.

“I feel like there’s a broader world that I can dip my toe into, where I’m being myself and exploring real things, as opposed to a mad character, you know? I just realized there’s all these stories to tell. It’s funny, but with characters now, it’s almost made me like…yeuucch! Someone says ‘why don’t you do a new character?’ and I’m like ‘uhh, the idea of having to come up with a new one’. I feel like I’ve done so many over the years.”

There’s another factor in the mix here. In the run-up to The Death of Anna Mann, Hoult received an ADHD diagnosis, which has become a massive part of his understanding of himself.

“Completely,” he says. “For ages I’d go ‘they’re probably making it up’. I have so many voices in my head that are going ‘shut up, what are you on about?’ and all that kind of thing, so it’s quite hard to stay true to it. But then, actually, it was watching videos – there’s one called How to ADHD on YouTube and I remember just sitting and bursting into tears watching it, because that was the realisation.”

He’s fully embraced the diagnosis now – indeed, he hosts his own popular podcast on neurodiversity, Into the Neuroverse – and in retrospect, Hoult feels like that it explained a whole lot.

“It’s not like I was a kid who was always jumping on tables. I was a very good kid in some ways, but I was just in this state of heightened stress and anxiety. I was constantly doing things wrong – like, if I dropped the ball in any way, that people would somehow get me. I just had this terror of getting things wrong and a feeling like there’s loads going on in my head. I felt different and sort of wrong. I had friends, but even amongst my friends, I was odd and unreliable. All these basic things, like being late, never having any money generally, spending all my money on a night out and then people having to help me get home, all that stuff.”

In itself this is another key element of the Colin show, as Hoult reflects on his childhood and unwittingly growing up with ADHD. “Sometimes, when my kids are struggling with something – swimming, running, whatever it is – I’ll say ‘if they can do it, you can do it’. But I definitely grew up feeling that if they could do it, we probably shouldn’t. That’s probably not for us. It’s almost like there’s a world of people living their best lives, and then our world is just trying to not be seen and get through and be okay. And that’s no good. That’s sad.”

It goes without saying that in making this career shift, from performing in character to performing as himself (and talking about some hugely revealing stuff), Hoult risked feeling very vulnerable.

“Oh, really raw,” he admits. “I kind of want to stop halfway through the show and go ‘you don’t want to see me, do you?’. But last night I played Guildford, and they put the lights on at the end when I did the bow. I could just see everyone, but it was lovely, because they all had glee on their faces. I was like ‘ah, that’s remarkable’, that I’d brought joy to them. You don’t always get that moment.

“But, yeah, it’s really exposing. I mean, a tricky thing is talking about my family – again, not the sitcom – but I wanted to kind of honour them, but be truthful about stuff, and it’s quite hard. With neurodiversity, I don’t want to diagnose other people because I don’t think that’s okay, but there’s definitely a thread throughout my family, We’ve talked about it, and I think there’s a lot of shame that comes with it, especially for previous generations.”

Hoult’s family members have now been to see the new show. “I think it was okay. I spoke to my mum the next day and she was totally fine about it. I think there’s a lot of love in the show, and it’s been really lovely how much people have responded with affection and love towards them. When you’re in your family, they drive you mad, don’t they? But it’s funny how everyone says ‘oh, your family seems so warm and lovely’. Like, really?’”

Proper funny

One of the great delights of Colin is that, while dealing with potentially hefty subjects, it’s seriously funny throughout. Hoult is a gifted comic writer and performer who knows what he’s doing. Sure enough, at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe the show received a raft of glowing reviews, and streaming service Next Up presented it with The Biggest Award in Comedy (literally – the inflatable trophy is two metres high).

Hoult is clearly gratified, but has no plans to sit on his laurels. “I’m never satisfied, to be honest. Obviously, it’s gone down very well and that’s lovely, but I’m always like, ‘have I done right by the people and the stories and myself?’ and I never quite feel that enough. And that’s good, I think, to always be wanting more. I’m already thinking about what I want to do next. I’ve got a new idea for a follow-up show, and I’m like ‘I want to do more of that but less of that’ and so on.”

It’s probably far too early to reveal much, but will those future plans continue to feature Hoult as himself? Is this just what he does now?

“Yeah, I think so. I like to do things in trilogies generally. I’ve always meant to sit down and start really trying to write scripts, and then I just get hooked on live stuff, because I love it, but I’m trying to reduce that a little bit. So it might be the case that next year I do a smaller run. But yeah, I’ve got a few ideas, as myself – expanding on this show, really. Because this is sort of between now and up to when I was seven, so I could almost do the next few years. So yeah, I think it’s me.”

For now, though, Hoult is happy soaking up the appreciative reactions his change of direction has generated.

“I’m glad it went well. If it hadn’t, I don’t know, I’d have to go back to the drawing board. But it’s funny. Some people do the same thing over and over again very effectively, and I really envy that. I was talking to a brilliant stand-up and he was like, ‘yeah, I’m on my tenth show, basically doing the same thing in a row’. I was like, ‘oh man, I’d love to do that,’ but I can’t. I just get bored, you know?”

By Andy Murray

All photographs of Colin Hoult, including the main image: credit Ed Moore

 

Hoult’s live show Colin is on tour throughout November, with dates including Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. For more information, click here.

Hoult’s Into the Neuroverse podcast: