Craig Hill

How did you get into comedy? One of my very clever, clever Irish friends worked at a venue during the Edinburgh Festival, and she said to me, "I am having more fun with you than I am at work. I think you should try comedy." At the time I didn't know what comedy was: I was an actor, but I didn't really know stand up. Anyway, she was very wise and realized if she left it to me I probably would never do anything about it. She went ahead and she booked a gig for me. And she told me two days before the gig, "I booked a gig for you." And I said, "I am not a comedian," and she said, "I think you are." And so I had to do the gig. And I did it, and the rest is history.  

How did you come across your stage attire? I love, love, love wearing a kilt. I started doing that because I did a show called, ‘Craig Hill's Alive With The Sound of Music', and it was me doing Julie Andrews singing punk songs and other musical parodies. I wanted the poster to look like a replica of the Sound of Music poster, and I couldn't think how to do that. I thought, "I don't want to dress up in drag as Julie Andrews, because that would be a very unattractive poster." I decided I could get the feminine shape of her outfit if I wore my kilt. So I wore my kilt for the poster and consequently I decided I should probably wear the kilt on stage because I wore it on the poster. And that is how me and the kilt were born.

Where do you find your kilts? We found this fabulous company based in Edinburgh called, 21st Century Kilts. And when I saw that leather kilt... I have to tell you, I saw that before Vin Diesel saw it. I've seen him wearing it and I've though "come on Vin, I was there first."

Where do you get most of your material? My material is 100% anecdotal. Some people say to me, "No way, that could never have happened." The truth is every thing I talk about onstage has really happened to me. To me there is nothing funnier than real life. For me that is what comedy is. Comedy is looking at real life and laughing at the circumstances we find ourselves in, and the things we see, inappropriate circumstances and the way people behave. Christie LaPlante