Nominated for Best Show at the 2022 Edinburgh Comedy Awards, acclaimed comedian, Colin Hoult is set to embark on a national tour in the autumn, after a full run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His new show Colin sees him set aside his trademark characters to perform as himself for the first time.

After years of playing characters, Colin is finally showing the person behind them in a hugely joyous stand-up show. Colin explores his relationship with his father (also named Colin) and his son, and how more than just a name can be handed down through a family.

How can Colin understand his repressed (but quite bonkers) parents and make sure his children are given more freedom to be themselves? On the flipside, how can he live up to his ‘proper bloke’ of a dad who was such a natural leader with strong principles? And was his dad right to behave as he did, the ‘proper bloke’ who always asked ‘why can’t we be a normal family?’? Now with children of his own, Colin wants to leave the world better than he found it, and not repeat the complicated mistakes of the generations before him.

But whilst you can take the man out of character, you can’t take the character out of the man – and Colin intersperses his stand-up with fleeting comic snapshots of his family in deliriously funny act-outs.

From gorillas and Ouija boards to Christmas memories, Colin’s journey of self-discovery sees him explore his background, in his own unique way, as he looks back at his working-class roots and the importance of the name Colin: his rather drab birth right, and a handy shorthand for how literal the passing down of family problems can be!

Acknowledging that his bizarre family was clearly full of undiagnosed neurodiverse people, Colin, who was diagnosed with ADHD two years ago, talks about how in his childhood, people weren’t labelled as neurodiverse or had proper diagnoses, but whispered about as people deemed simply ‘not right’ – and this progress made with proper diagnoses and sensitivity to difference is, at least, something to feel positive about.

Colin Hoult is a celebrated comedian, actor and writer in television, radio and theatre. He is best known for appearing as larger than life characters on stage as Anna Mann, and on TV in the likes of After Life (Netflix), Ghosts (BBC), and This Time with Alan Partridge (BBC). He’s also been seen in Trying (Apple), Derek (Channel 4), Life’s Too Short (BBC), Four Weddings and a Funeral (Hulu), Being Human (BBC) and BBC3’s award-winning Murder in Successville.

Hoult is a successful character comedian – he is well known for his celebrated ‘has-been actress’ character Anna Mann and has received great critical acclaim for his live shows, which were listed among the best-reviewed comedy shows at the Fringe by British Comedy Guide. Hoult is a prolific writer and former winner of the Writers’ Guild Award for Comedy. He penned a hugely successful trilogy of live shows which were adapted into a Radio 4 series, Colin Hoult’s Carnival of Monsters. Other writing credits include Romesh Presents: Inside Your Ancestors for Sky and Comedy: Shuffle for BBC.