Ashley Storrie helps launch Glassgow International Comedy Festival 2025

The Scotsman

Ashley Storrie helps launch Glassgow International Comedy Festival 2025  GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL COMEDY FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FULL  LINE UP FOR BIGGEST EVER EVENT  PAUL BLACK, JENNY ECLAIR, LARRY DEAN, FERN BRADY AND MORE  ADDED TO THE BILL  19 DAYS OF COMEDY WILL CELEBRATE GLASGOW AS FUNNIEST CITY IN THE WORLD

Transcript

00:00I'm part of the Alistair Gray Project, which is celebrating, I think, probably one of Scotland's

00:05greatest artists, if not the world's. He captured a time and place in Glasgow and

00:11Anbar in his art and his writing and it's really exciting to get to celebrate that.

00:17I kind of want to honour him, his work and the stories within it and at the same time

00:24honour where I come from, so I might be doing some form of a voiceover with his paintings,

00:30maybe giving some voices to some of his murals. I grew up in the east end of Glasgow but I went

00:35to school in the west end and my parents, when I was very little, were super conscious that I was

00:40coming from this place of... I lived in a cupboards in a flat above a pub, like Harry Potter, but then

00:47they sent me to this private school in the west end. They used to take me to the breakfast chip

00:51and the staff there would teach me how to eat with knife and fork, silver service style,

00:56and they taught me about forks, knives and butter knives and crab tongs and stuff like that and I

01:02would always see Alistair Gray's paintings on the wall in the chip of the patrons and I was always

01:08so curious about it and then when Oranmore opened and I got to see his paintings there and then I

01:13would see them all over the place and I didn't know who he was and when I saw a picture of him

01:17I was like, oh I know that guy! I used to see him when I would walk about the west end by myself

01:23as a child. I remember that man, he was really nice to me. He's had a huge influence on me but

01:28also he's just like, he's very real, he's very approachable, not as a person but just as an

01:36idea, he's approachable. A lot of artists you kind of don't understand where they're coming from but

01:39him you can completely see his point of view. The school I went to has been closed down,

01:44the only remnants of it is a mural that he painted on Hillhead Underground. It's always exciting to

01:51be part of Glasgow Comedy Festival. This was a huge thing for my mum, the Glasgow Comedy Festival

01:58and I knew even though I wasn't going to be doing stand-up at it, I wanted to. I wanted to be

02:03involved somehow to honour her as well as Alistair. So I love the Glasgow Comedy Festival, it's super

02:11important to support it. It supports us, there's not a lot of places for people with our voices

02:16and this comedy festival has always supported our voices so yeah, I love it.

02:22Were you here when your mum got the award? Yeah, I was outside, I didn't come in, I was so nervous.

02:28I was like, this is going to be really awkward if she doesn't win.

02:30She didn't know in advance? No, no, it was a big secret. I was really anxious for her

02:36but I waited outside and then we had a lovely night that night celebrating her and it's one

02:42of my favourite clips of footage of her is when she got that award because she got recognition

02:48and that was really nice for her. I think she'd just be glad that I've kept working,

02:52that seemed to be her big main drive at the end of her life was don't you stop working.

02:56It's like right, okay, mum. Scottish Baftas were a blur, I honestly don't remember most of it.

03:03I remember I met a guy at the Game of Thrones, got so excited, forgot I'd won a Bafta,

03:07anything, I was like, it's Podrick Payne and everybody was like you need to calm down,

03:11actually that's awfully weird and that's basically what I remember about that night.

03:16Also I had to keep secret that we had a second season commissioned for Dinosaur and you know,

03:22because it's a co-production between Hulu and BBC, there's a lot of people in charge that I'm

03:28scared of doing something wrong so it's very anxiety riddled but also super exciting and

03:36it was very special and then getting to tell everybody that we're getting a second series,

03:40that we're bringing, it's not just like oh I'm getting to make another bit of telly,

03:45it's I'm getting to make a bit of telly where people who make telly in Glasgow can have jobs

03:51and actors can have jobs and everybody can get a bit of work and I always think that's a nice

03:57knowing that you're bringing a bit of industry. And it's not easy to make TV these days or even

04:01to make new Scottish comedies. Yeah I'm definitely pleased we've got a new series but it is

04:06incredibly hard to get anything put on Scottish telling. I studied filmmaking and I'm in my 30s

04:14and this is the first thing I've ever made properly that's scripted, that's got any money

04:19behind it and that's been more pitching every year since I was 18, pitching radio shows,

04:25pitching telly shows, pitching constantly, just throwing anything at a lawn being like oh here's

04:30a thing set in an island about fishermen, no do you know like that, here's a thing set in a farm

04:33about farmers, do you know like that, here's a paleontologist. So just throwing everything

04:38and constantly trying. Have you got any other ideas or are you really focused on this for the

04:43time being? No I've got hundreds of things in my head. I'm working on a crime drama which is

04:49dead exciting because I love crime, it's my favourite genre of television. I want to bring

04:53back the bell at some point, that's my dream. Hopefully I can convince somebody to say it's

04:58not a bell. I want to hear it again. I've got hundreds of ideas in my head and I'm just constantly

05:06flying them at you, would you like that? So you'd be very much taking it home with you to keep

05:09working? Yeah definitely. I can feel a ghost dipping at my nose whenever I slow down slightly.

05:15Do you think comedy is valued as it should be in Scotland these days or is it a bit undervalued?

05:20I think comedy is definitely valued. I think the internet helped immensely. I think for a

05:25really long time the media told us, oh nobody understands you, nobody knows what you're saying

05:32and then we put videos on the internet of people in America, like that's hilarious. I'm like he

05:37understood what I said, maybe you don't but he did and he lives in Louisiana so it does work

05:44and I think that that's proof of the amount of online creators who come from Scotland

05:49who are killing it on the internet and are getting like 40 million views on videos when

05:55it can't just all be Scotch people, there's only like 6 million of us so it must be other folk

06:00as well. If anyone has not been to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival before,

06:05somehow, what would you advise to them? If you're coming to the Glasgow International Comedy

06:10Festival, see some local comedy, see Christopher MacArthur Boyd, see Roscoe, see Rachel Jackson,

06:16there's nobody like them, they're different, they're funny, they're weird. See something weird,

06:22don't see something off the telly, see something that you've not seen on the telly and then it'll

06:26get put on the telly and then it'll get ruined by the telly because that's the telly. You'll like it!

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