{"id":711933,"date":"2026-07-26T12:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/711933\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:04:13","slug":"andy-burnham-can-grow-a-moustache-snl-uks-paddy-young-on-breakout-stardom-and-impersonating-the-new-pm-saturday-night-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/711933\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Andy Burnham can grow a moustache!\u2019: SNL UK\u2019s Paddy Young on breakout stardom \u2013 and impersonating the new PM | Saturday Night Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day before I\u2019m supposed to watch Paddy Young perform a work-in-progress version of his new show Will Sir Be Laughing Alone?, I\u2019m told the gig has been cancelled; the standup has sliced his hand open and is about to have surgery. Soon after, Young shares a photo of himself on Instagram<\/a> in a hospital gown, thanking the Australian comedian Sam Campbell for \u201cbringing the sword to my home\u201d \u2013 a post quickly rehashed by the tabloids (The Mirror<\/a>: \u201cSNL UK star Paddy Young hospitalised after samurai sword accident\u201d). When I finally see him on stage a fortnight later, he\u2019s dosed up on codeine, his arm is in a sling and he\u2019s in the uncertain early stages of refashioning this bizarre anecdote into a routine.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re getting an exclusive on the hand,\u201d he tells me in an east London coffee shop the next day, after I\u2019ve opened a bottle of water for him. Young and Campbell, who recently collaborated on the winningly madcap Channel 4 series Make That Movie, were preparing to host their occasional comedy night Floggers, which involves them dressing up as old men (fat suits, wigs, prosthetics) and helming a real daytime TV-style auction. Campbell had ordered the sword online as a prop, and when the pair\u2019s Uber arrived Young hurriedly picked up the bag it was in. \u201cBlood splattered up the wall like Kill Bill \u2013 we all laughed initially.\u201d When his housemates removed the tea towel they\u2019d wrapped around his hand \u201cthey could see yellow, which I think is tendon or muscle. Then I fainted.\u201d He went to A&E for stitches but still did the show afterwards \u2013 \u201cI cringe thinking about it because I was basically juggling [in the show]\u201d \u2013 returning to hospital later to learn that one tendon was 90% lacerated and required an operation. Just before surgery, Young passed out again.<\/p>\n

Have they got news for you \u2026 Paddy with his Weekend Update co-anchor Ania Magliano. Photograph: Sky UK<\/p>\n

Riding high on the triumph of Saturday Night Live<\/a> UK\u2019s critically acclaimed first series \u2013 he co-anchors Weekend Update, the show\u2019s satirical news segment, alongside Ania Magliano \u2013 Young was already about to embark on the busiest summer of his life: the Edinburgh fringe, an acting job, a new podcast, numerous Floggers shows. Now he\u2019s cramming various medical appointments into his overstuffed diary, his recovery complicated by his inability to stay conscious. This is partly due to a severe phobia of needles, something that\u2019s making him feel \u201ctruly pathetic\u201d. As a veteran fainter myself, I tell him something I only recently discovered; it\u2019s one of the five trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, fawn and, in this case, flop. The term could describe \u201chow I respond to a lot of things\u201d, nods the 34-year-old. \u201cI\u2019m such a flop it\u2019s unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve only ever seen Young behind his desk at SNL \u2013 dapper, puckish, impossibly telegenic and armed with an arsenal of edgy current affairs zingers (plus a faintly worrying fixation with K-pop boyband BTS) \u2013 you might struggle to picture him as a failure. But in his sublimely funny standup, he\u2019s a different beast: an indignant northern underdog, a messy millennial manchild of the people, a mordant poster boy for Generation Rent hissing at home-owning audience members. In his 2023 Edinburgh newcomer award-nominated show Hungry, Horny, Scared, he mined comic gold from bleak houseshares (his flat may have been freezing but at least he had an overheating 2012 Lenovo laptop for warmth), interspersed with anecdotes about his medical-grade childhood bed-wetting. (He was eventually assigned a specialist nurse: \u201cHow much piss is that? The NHS is getting involved \u2026\u201d)<\/p>\n

double quotation markYou pat yourself on the back because your video gets 200,000 views but someone getting hit with a frying pan might get 30m<\/p>\n

I had imagined this low-status shtick was mostly an act, but in person Young really does seem preoccupied with his weaknesses and rotten luck. He possesses none of the himbo-ish mischievousness of his Weekend Update performance. Instead, he\u2019s a fast-talking, winningly candid overthinker with an \u201cincredible talent\u201d for seeing himself as a loser and a compulsion for self-reproach that is both completely ridiculous and extremely relatable. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m constantly either wronging someone or being wronged. I leave most situations thinking I really fumbled and fucked it up \u2013 or I\u2019ve been betrayed.\u201d (Same.)<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s living situation is the overarching theme of his standup; this new show sees him contemplate singledom and his \u201cbachelor\u201d lifestyle (he finds the term amusing). Although he no longer cohabits with strangers in misery \u2013 he lives with fellow comedians Horatio Gould and Bebe Cave \u2013 he has a grim fascination with \u201cpeople that have never got out of flatshares. I\u2019ve\u00a0always thought that\u2019s going to be me.\u201d He\u2019s so fixated on this fate that he often imagines it\u2019s already a reality. \u201cI sort of feel like a 68-year-old bloke \u2013 like it\u2019s all gone to pot and it hasn\u2019t at all.\u201d While some of his anxieties stem from his precarious profession, Young\u2019s jokes are ultimately rooted in a near-universal struggle: making ends meet in London if you don\u2019t come \u201cfrom insane wealth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018A messy millennial manchild of the people\u2019 \u2026 Paddy Young on stage. Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan<\/p>\n

Young grew up in Scarborough, north Yorkshire. As a schoolboy he was \u201cso small\u201d with no sporting talent, finding a social circle and sense of direction through his drama lessons at the Stephen Joseph theatre. It was helmed at the time by Alan Ayckbourn, one of Britain\u2019s most prolific and popular playwrights, who cast a 10-year-old Young in one of his productions, his first professional acting gig. Ayckbourn even gave Young financial support after he won a place at Manchester School of Theatre<\/a>. He was an inconsistent student, he claims; revelling in small comic turns yet performing poorly when cast as a serious lead.<\/p>\n

After graduating, he tentatively tried standup. He was a comedy obsessive: Laurel and Hardy, Derek and Clive, Blue Jam, his dad\u2019s collection of Viz comics, which \u201clooked like the Beano but they were saying terrible things \u2013 that literally changed my brain chemistry\u201d. His \u201cextremely funny\u201d mum was also an inspiration. Yet his early years on the circuit were awful; \u201cgoing to these rubbish nights and being truly, truly depressed, then bombing and running away\u201d. He has since realised his shtick doesn\u2019t work at the open-mic nights that are a rite of passage for most fledgling comedians because of how he \u201cplays with status\u201d on stage. \u201cI love the game of pretending it\u2019s all falling apart, even though it actually isn\u2019t. That doesn\u2019t work at a gig that is actually bad.\u201d What made him stick with comedy through the tough times? \u201cI\u2019m really fascinated by it \u2013 there is nothing else I think about.\u201d He felt \u201cmad\u201d but had a deep-seated conviction he \u201ccould be good\u201d.<\/p>\n

double quotation markShave off my moustache? I don\u2019t know where my career would be without it. It\u2019s like scaffolding<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s career first began gaining traction in 2022, partly as a result of his Instagram sketches with the comedian Ed Night (\u201cThe love of my life\u201d), which I return to repeatedly like favourite songs. The pair often parody content creators \u2013 conspiracy-minded podcasters, board game influencers and whatever people who make day-in-the-life vlogs are called \u2013 whose output Young describes as \u201cthe end of culture, but I can\u2019t take my eyes off it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet virality is relative. \u201cYou might pat yourself on the back because 200,000 people watch your video but then you scroll down and someone\u2019s getting hit with a frying pan and it\u2019s got 30m.\u201d He doesn\u2019t particularly like social media and thinks he\u2019s \u201cprobably doing it completely wrong. It\u2019s geared to be all about consistency\u201d \u2013 posting \u201call the time\u201d \u2013 whereas he and Night have a backlog of sketches they\u2019ve never uploaded because they don\u2019t think they\u2019re up to scratch. He also feels slightly unsettled by how little work this kind of content requires compared with crafting an hour of standup. It\u2019s a similar story with his new agony uncle podcast, Paddy Will Help (working tagline: \u201cOprah for blokes\u201d). When we speak he\u2019s in the process of workshopping the format, but knows he won\u2019t be winging it with the kind of free-flowing parasocial banter his peers churn out. He likes finessing his material. \u201cI couldn\u2019t just be sat on the sofa chatting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sounds to me as if he\u2019s got integrity, yet Young also sees this as a failure to capitalise on his success (he has learned from friends that standups who pivot to podcasting \u201cearn more than TV comedians\u201d). While his peers discuss their five-year plans and audition strategies, \u201cI\u2019m fumbling in the dark. Everything I do, genuinely, there is no plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end he didn\u2019t need one. Last year, he was cast in SNL UK: a huge opportunity he knew he was perfectly suited for (when he was told about the British version, his first thought was: \u201cI have to do this. There\u2019s less being made than ever and it just feels like you\u2019re not quite right [for most TV projects],\u201d he told me in February<\/a>). The show has offered him unexpected job security, the chance to break out of his own social media bubble \u2013 after just one month its sketches had amassed more than 86m online views \u2013 and a dose of surreal glamour. \u201cYou\u2019re running down the corridor to get a wig fitted and then you pass Louis Theroux chatting to a beefeater. It really does feel like showbusiness, which nothing else does.\u201d That said, being recognised in public isn\u2019t the panacea he imagined. \u201cYou feel like someone\u2019s got something on you \u2013 they know me and I don\u2019t know them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young may need to prepare for more fan encounters: his SNL star is rising. Weekend Update has featured some surprisingly bracing satire and some genuinely great comic writing (\u201cThis week, former entertainer and entertainer of sixth-formers, Russell Brand \u2026\u201d). The more I watched, however, the more I became convinced of Young\u2019s ability to sell literally any gag with a choice look or inflection. Initially, he begs to differ: \u201cIf it\u2019s a joke I don\u2019t like, I can\u2019t say it \u2013 it pains me.\u201d Yet trapped behind his desk, he is gradually finding \u201ca way to pretend\u201d if he\u2019s not fully on board. Although he\u2019s allowed to veto any quips he really doesn\u2019t like \u2013 he tries to steer away from poking fun at voters of specific political parties, for example \u2013 he thinks it\u2019s important to take this rare chance to really push the envelope. \u201cThere are people on set that are 30 years older than me that tell me they\u2019ve never got away with this on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

One slightly disappointing thing about the first series of SNL UK was how underutilised Young was as a comic actor. No longer: in the final episode of last season, he played Andy Burnham in a sketch about politicians jostling to become the next prime minister. Given the former mayor of Manchester ascent to the top job, Young looks set to reprise the role regularly next season. His Burnham isn\u2019t a million miles away from his standup persona \u2013 they both use \u201cshagger\u201d as a term of endearment and hold southern extravagance in theatrical contempt \u2013 but the icing on the cake would be if Burnham \u201ccould grow a moustache over the summer\u201d. Couldn\u2019t Young shave his off? Nope \u2013 apparently it has talismanic properties. \u201cI don\u2019t know where my career would be without it. It\u2019s like scaffolding.\u201d<\/p>\n

SNL UK will be back in September and then again in January. In between, Young will tour the UK. It\u2019s a strange sensation, having a full schedule until March. \u201cI\u2019m 34 and I\u2019ve never known what I\u2019m doing for more than six months.\u201d Yet his success still hasn\u2019t sunk in \u2013 besides, what if this good fortune is merely a flash in the pan? He\u2019s so haunted by an encounter with an older comic who outlined his rapidly declining income after a career peak (\u201cIt\u2019s always those stories that stick with me \u2013 any time I hear about someone who earns \u00a35m a year, I forget\u201d) that he\u2019s considering drastic measures in the hope of turning what he fears could be a brief moment in the sun into a lifelong safety net.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a gambler, but I have thought: do I put all of my pay on red? Insane thoughts like that.\u201d Young may not believe he\u2019s made the big time yet, but I\u2019d still bet against him being in that flatshare at 68.<\/p>\n

Paddy Young tours the UK<\/a> from 17 September to 12\u00a0December; tour starts Plymouth.<\/p>\n