Comedian Paddy Young: ‘Some people in Cambridge were naughty, I quite enjoyed that’
Following the success of his Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2023 Best Newcomer nomination, comedian Paddy Young’s first ever UK tour is titled Hungry, Horny, Scared.
Described as “one of the most exciting new comics I’ve seen for a long time” by fellow entertainer Joe Lycett, Scarborough-born Paddy has already performed at the Cambridge Junction this year – as the opening act for Tom Houghton (aka The Honourable Tom Houghton) on February 1.
“I really enjoyed it,” he says of the gig. “I’d say his crowd and my crowd are very different from each other – there’s a lot more gilets in his than there are in mine, but it was really fun.
“It was the first day of his tour and it felt really nice to do it just before my tour started – but I did make him run to get the train home afterwards and then his laptop fell out of his bag, and that was pretty much entirely my fault. So it may have cost him £2,000 to have me open for him.”
Paddy moved to London from ‘up north’ around four years ago and has been doing stand-up “for about six years”.
“When I started I was really slow,” he recalls, “I did I think three gigs in my first year, because the second one went so badly that I ran home and didn’t do it again for six months.
“Then the second year I didn’t do many and then I guess a couple of years in, I started really going for it. So it feels like four years really trying.”
Paddy’s debut UK solo show mixes his charismatic, cult leader vibe with the inevitable reality that underneath it all he is hungry, horny and scared (aren’t we all?).
Join him as he asks the hard-hitting questions: is everyone in his generation going to die still living in a flatshare? If Hitler was on drugs, how bad was his comedown?
And what happens to TikTok families after their 15 minutes of fame?
“A lot of it [Hungry, Horny, Scared] is about being stuck in flatshares forever, being part of Generation Rent and being bitter about people that have got houses and money and not having that,” explains Paddy.
“And a lot of it’s about Scarborough; there was a walrus that turned up in Scarborough on New Year’s Eve a year ago, I don’t know if you remember that? It was the first time a walrus had been seen in Yorkshire…
“Really, it’s an amalgamation of all my favourite bits; it’s very joke-heavy, there’s a lot of crowd work – I’d say it’s like 80 per cent the same show and then the other 20 just gives in to what happens on the night, so it can be quite chaotic.
“Then there’s a few set pieces as well, so the backbone of it is straight stand-up, and then there’s a heightened element of music, or poetry and a lighting change, and it’s a little bit more theatrical.”
Paddy, who remembers seeing Eddie Murphy do stand-up live on stage when he was “really young” (“it completely blew my mind”), has appeared on television and he also makes daft videos that have been viewed more than 10 million times, occasionally teaming up with fellow comedians Horatio Gould and Ed Night.
He hosts his own sell-out night Rodeo in London, which he brought to the 2023 Fringe for a limited sell-out run, and has performed at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush alongside comedians James Acaster and Mark Watson in a special one-off show titled A Night for Ukraine.
Paddy also came to Cambridge in 2023 for a work-in-progress show.
“I did a preview there [in Cambridge] last summer and it was so much fun,” he says.
“The show was really loose then, it wasn’t finished, and the crowd were really fun. And it was quite early; it’s always amazing when you set up to do a gig at 5pm and everyone’s a bit wild.
“I remember some people were really naughty, I quite enjoyed that.”
We got on to the subject of the grass in the University of Cambridge colleges and how generally visitors must keep off it – although you are allowed to walk across it if you’re with one of that particular college’s fellows.
“Can you hook me up with a fellow?” asks Paddy, noting that he would “love” to be made an honorary fellow of a Cambridge college.
“I’ve got huge respect for the people of Cambridge; I’d love it if there’s someone reading this that could make me a fellow, or point me towards how to be a fellow, I’d really appreciate it.
“Or just if a fellow’s reading this and if they want to meet me at the station on the 23 March and just let me sit on the grass… if I could sit on the grass before my show, it would be that much better.”
Paddy Young will be appearing at the Cambridge Junction (J3) on Saturday, 23 March. Tickets, priced £18, are available from junction.co.uk. Follow him at @paddyisyoung.