Comedian Carl Donnelly previews his new gig at The Squire Performing Arts Centre

Your Nottingham show is coming up in November. What’s new to tempt us out on a cold wintry night?

It's a pretty fun show. I haven't done a tour in ages. I used to tour every couple of years, and then I've just been busy. We had a baby during Covid. Then, my dad died, my mum got ill. So many things happened. For five years I've not been able to do much other than gigging around London. So, this is the first time I've got out around the country again.

Do you touch upon any of these serious matters in your show?

Well, we had a baby five years ago. My dad died three years ago. My mum's had dementia for about six years. But that’s all a bit old now, so actually, I talk more about health. My daughter got sick last year and I got sick. We were both hospitalized and both seriously as well. We're both absolutely fine now. So, I talk in the show about people's health obsessions nowadays. Like, if you open Instagram or TikTok, it's all people telling you what to eat and how to live forever and ice baths and all this new wave health advice. Actually, having gone through a total freak accident, it's made me relax more about health. It made me really stop overthinking health. Because I realized that you can think about it all you want, but still get ill out of the blue, so you might as well relax.

(Although you look way too young), how are you finding middle age?

In the show, I talk positively about it but there's a few funny gripes. Mostly, I'm enjoying it. I've never felt more that an age suited me than my mid-40s. A lot of things that used to bother me have gone away. Things that are come with aging are less bother than things that bothered me previously. Maybe I've just been through enough stuff now that I've calmed down about everything.

How did you get into comedy?

The pivotal moment was seeing it live. I always liked stand up, sketch and sitcoms. Not alternative comedy, I was a bit too young for it. But I caught all the surreal stuff, your Harry Hills, your Vic and Bobs. All that made me interested in comedy, but I'd never had any design to do it, until I was about 23. My ex took me to a comedy club for the first time, and genuinely, I felt I was watching magic. Somebody just walks on stage alone and has everyone howling and doubled over laughing. I got obsessed. Even then, I didn't have any idea I wanted to do it. Then, as a Christmas present, my ex signed me up to a comedy workshop. I was so nervous, but out of curiosity I went to it. On the first day, the teacher challenged us to write five minutes of material and next week, come in and do five minutes of stand up. I spent the week stressing and terrified, because I've always been really scared of public speaking. Never done any performance before. Writing five minutes of stand-up was, weirdly, not the tricky part. It was performing it.

And I did mine, and people liked it. I wasn't sure I was going to go back, but I did and wrote another five minutes and another five and within weeks, I felt I’d opened up a little muscle I didn't know I had. A few months later, I did my first open spot and I was obsessed, from that moment forward.

Is the applause addictive?

I think that definitely, in the early days, there's something intoxicating about a room of people laughing at something you've just said. Then once you start doing longer shows you travel with it. I've been to all these festivals: the Edinburgh Festival, 16 times or something, the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Montreal, Just for Laughs. And once you start traveling with it, you’re also thinking about stretching yourself with what you're writing and what you're saying, and seeing how much you can get out of a joke. Not just 'here's the punchline'. But how much can you stretch it. Even an observation about bus drivers or something. If you watch a new comedian, that joke will be about 20 seconds long. With the better comedians that you watch, the big, amazing observational comedians that you see on telly, then a bus driver observation is 10 minutes long. So, the laughs are one thing, but then you're also thinking, how much can I get out of this idea?

Do you mean developing your craft?

Yes. Once you get long enough in the tooth, and you've probably been booed off a couple of times at terrible corporate gigs, or rowdy Christmas gigs full of office parties, then that fear drifts into the background. It becomes, how can I have a good gig saying what I want to say.

Have you ever been booed off?

Once, at a Christmas corporate gig in London, I reckon 2009. They were impossible. Everyone's eating Christmas dinners. Nobody's looking at the stage. Everyone who did look shouted something. The host brought an act on. They absolutely died, couldn't even get the audience to listen. And then I went on. Stupidly, I had a go at them, rather than just drift into the background as if you're a radio. I decided to win them over. So, when they didn't even look, I started having a go at them, but they started shouting and booing. After about 10 minutes, I was meant to do 20 minutes, there's people shouting and I went, oh, Happy Christmas, and walked off. The promoters were really apologetic. And I said, no one could do anything with this. Next, Hal Cruttenden the comedian, was on. And Hal managed to not only win them over, but he absolutely smashed it. And I remember thinking, oh, it can be done. He'd been doing stand-up 10 years longer than me. And I just misjudged how to navigate such a rough gig.

Do people expect you to be funny all the time? 

Most people, after a gig, are pretty chilled. At the Edinburgh Fringe, I've got this weird thing where I float around the venue before the show, saying hello to people as they're coming in. And they're not expecting you to be doing jokes in conversation. But, when you're at a social event like weddings, if you're on a table with people you don't know, and somebody goes, oh, Carl's a comedian, they're the people most likely to say, oh, tell us a joke. They suddenly shift in their behaviour, expecting you to behave a certain way. Which is not how I am offstage. During the day, I couldn't be less needy for laughs.

You're a vegan. Why?

I went vegan 13 years ago. In a big life-changing period, I got divorced and moved and had all this stuff going on, I suddenly had this almost early midlife crisis. I was reassessing what I was about and where I was going and part of that, was this weird epiphany that I needed to give up meat. I'd already given up dairy, because dairy always disagreed with me. So, I wasn't one of these people, that try vegan, then say, I'd miss cheese too much. I wouldn't miss cheese because it gave me a bad reaction. So, it was only meat and eggs. I had this weird feeling like, if you're turning over a new leaf in life, maybe you should make another big change. I did all these weird hippie things, like drank Ayahuasca with shamans. All this crazy stuff to sort myself out. Then, out of the blue, I went full vegan. And I've never once regretted it. I feel great, physically, mentally, and much clearer. I was always a reluctant meat eater. I always ate the meats that others didn't. I'd cook offal and stuff like that. Everyone else was getting prime cuts. And I'd buy the livers and the hearts and the kidneys. I was doing that subconsciously to feel good. And then I said, why don't you not eat any of it?

It's one of the few things in my life that I've never been like oh, this is a slog. Sometimes, I'll have a few months where I don't touch a drop of alcohol. But within a few months, a part of me wants it again, whereas with veganism, it doesn't. That’s never happened.

Any plans for the future?

Well, big plans, actually. We've got a second child on the way.

Congratulations!

We've decided to decamp down to Australia to have the baby, because my wife's Australian. Normally, we spend four months a year in Australia. Then when we found out we're having the baby, we decided to do it differently this time. Because, my wife is keen to have the baby with her family. Last time we did it here, and that was really hard. As we didn't really have a family network. So, we're decamping to Melbourne. I'll be coming back for periods, and we'll come as a family once a year. At the minute, it's stressful. We're starting to pack up. We're also homeschooling our daughter. Well, my wife works, so I'm homeschooling our daughter. We didn't want to start her in school, then pull her out.

So, I'm currently packing a house to move overseas, got another baby on the way, I'm homeschooling while doing a tour. I've literally never been busier. I've often heard comedians talk about being burnt out, during a tour. Come on, they're just doing comedy in the evenings and nothing in the daytimes! And now, I wake up at 6:30am and I don’t get to look at my emails until midnight. I've never been busier in my life.

Carl Donnelly's Another Round performs at The Squire Performing Arts Centre on 28 November 2025, 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm.