Comedy isn\u2019t just a career for Bella Hull. It\u2019s a compulsion. \u201cStandup for me is like \u2013 I have to do it,\u201d says Hull, who first picked up a mic aged 17. \u201cRegardless of what the response is.\u201d<\/p>\n
A decade in, the response is resoundingly positive. The 28-year-old had a sell-out show at last year\u2019s Edinburgh fringe (Doctors Hate Her<\/a>, which explored a break-up, insanity and the occult), appearances on Have I Got News For You and The News Quiz, and a coveted role as writer on the new UK version of Saturday Night Live. \u201cThere\u2019s something symbolic about being the person with the voice,\u201d she says of standup. \u201cA lot of situations in my personal life, I don\u2019t feel like that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markA famous older male comic made jokes about how they were going to rape me after the show. Everyone was laughing<\/p>\n Hull was a shy child, constantly on edge amid her parents\u2019 \u201cmessy\u201d marriage breakdown, an outsider at a private girls\u2019 school where she was \u201cmixed race and overweight\u201d. She lived in London and Kent, including formative years with her \u201cexpressive\u201d grandma, who was often found barefoot or gardening naked. Comedy provided solace and she would watch standup specials and record her observations in a journal, until the urge to do it herself became too strong to ignore.<\/p>\n The decade since has been spent \u201cin some of the most unsafe basements you could possibly imagine\u201d, Hull jokes, as she threw herself into the comedy circuit. She studied history of art at Cambridge, drawn there by its comedy heritage. But the ubiquity of Footlights\u2019 alumni among the comedy pantheon led Hull to the grittier world of comedy clubs. \u201cI was obsessed with paying my dues,\u201d she says. \u201cI met a lot of people at Cambridge that had \u2018golden boy syndrome\u2019. They would sit back and think, \u2018Where\u2019s my TV show?\u2019 Well, you don\u2019t fucking deserve a TV show because you\u2019re not good enough. Can you make a stag party in Nottingham laugh? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Golden boy \u2013 can you make a stag party in Nottingham laugh? I don\u2019t think so\u2019 \u2026 Hull on stage. Photograph: Stephen Keable\/Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy Live News.<\/p>\n On stage, she melds a compelling persona \u2013 a woman on the edge, fixed smile concealing a spikier centre \u2013 with formidable craft, tightly written gags peppering every topic. \u201cI just got a personal trainer,\u201d goes a line from Doctors Hate Her that made this paper\u2019s best jokes list<\/a> from last year\u2019s Edinburgh festival. \u201cShe\u2019s horrible to me but my body goal is a thicker skin.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the neat punchlines, her shows traverse disordered eating, family breakdown, relationship issues and mental health. As the old meme goes, inside Hull there are two wolves: one, the club-drilled comic subduing audiences with an unprecedented gag rate; the other, a tortured artist forging meaning from her darkest experiences.<\/p>\n Her parallel obsessions as a teenager were comedy and art, her idols Ali Wong and Tracey Emin. She now recognises Emin\u2019s influence on her comedy: \u201cShe\u2019s so unapologetically intense.\u201d This year\u2019s Fringe show, Mad Cow Disease, will be \u201cvery Emin-coded\u201d, a collection of \u201cfeminine shameful detritus\u201d ranging from ant infestations and the dread of revealing her true self to a new boyfriend, to fears of inheriting mental health conditions and yearning for a baby \u201cwhich I think is very taboo for a female comedian\u201d. That she can turn something \u201csad or dark or heartbreaking\u201d into laughs has always felt magical.<\/p>\n A chance to try some weirder stuff \u2026 Hull (third from left front row) with fellow Saturday Night Live UK writers. Photograph: Saturday Night Live UK\/PA<\/p>\n Hull\u2019s love for club comedy is clear and it\u2019s been a \u201crigorous\u201d training ground for her joke-writing and stage confidence. Initially, she\u2019d shake and even vomit with nerves before shows. Yet it forced her to inhabit a version of womanhood that audiences would accept. \u201cYou\u2019ve got 30 seconds to make them laugh when you get on stage,\u201d Hull says. \u201cIf you\u2019re a woman, you\u2019ve maybe got 10.\u201d<\/p>\n She was told never to wear revealing clothes and found out why after being \u201chorrendously heckled and wolf-whistled\u201d. Aged 21 and in a remote part of England, she had a famous older male comic making \u201cconsistent jokes about how they were going to rape me after the show. Everyone was laughing. That was the norm.\u201d Many women don\u2019t last long in that environment, she says, but she doesn\u2019t regret this path.<\/p>\n \u201cI love having something to push against,\u201d Hull says. \u201cI love proving people wrong. You have to have a bit of teeth.\u201d They were on full display in her HIGNFY appearances, where she playfully roasted Ian Hislop and scored an off-the-cuff zinger at the expense of Russell Brand. \u201cGags are your armour,\u201d Hull says, and so she became used to hiding behind punchlines.<\/p>\n Increasingly though, she\u2019s pushing against that club instinct, exploring her poetic, sillier side, and introducing surreal monologues, act-outs and props into her shows. On SNL, she spent six-day weeks hammering out topical jokes and sketches, but it was also a chance to try \u201cweirder\u201d stuff. There was a sketch set at baggage claim where a scatty hun (Aimee Lou Wood) admits that her lost suitcase contains a bomb. Or the Weekend Update dating correspondent Scrimpch, a \u201creally sexual Italian man who was stuck in London because they\u2019d left him on a school trip\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI love when she\u2019s written a feature that a cast member is going to do with me because I know I\u2019m going to find it really funny,\u201d says Ania Magliano, star of Weekend Update, who first met Hull at Cambridge. Even back then, Hull was naturally funny and daringly honest, says Magliano. \u201cShe is a true weirdo, a real eccentric, and she\u2019s confident leaning into that. All of us girls go through a phase of thinking we have to be \u2018cool\u2019 and she\u2019s a great example to embrace your weirdness and follow your instincts.\u201d<\/p>\n Hull seems genuinely surprised that she got the SNL job \u2013 initially, she didn\u2019t even want to apply \u2013 but being part of something bigger, so different from the solo world of standup, has been \u201cso meaningful\u201d.<\/p>\n Scrimpch was a hit on TikTok and Instagram: Hull\u2019s own posts often do big numbers (one video about a fashion disaster has 24.6m views)<\/a>, but social media\u2019s growing presence in comedy doesn\u2019t always sit comfortably. \u201cThere\u2019s something about having to show everyone everything all of the time that can upset the artistic process,\u201d she says. \u201cWorking away in the darkness makes it much more likely that it will be authentic.\u201d There\u2019s also a pressure to virtue signal and \u201cstand for something\u201d, but she\u2019s drawn towards riskier, more divisive jokes. \u201cI want to be horrified. That\u2019s what I find impressive, when people can scoop out their shame and make it funny. It\u2019s not brave to have the right opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n After August in Edinburgh, then series two of SNL in September, what\u2019s Hull up to next? \u201cI don\u2019t want it to stop,\u201d she says. \u201cBut if it does, I\u2019ll be OK, because I\u2019ll go back to the clubs. Being able to make people laugh is the meaning of my life. It\u2019s what I\u2019m alive to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Bella Hull: Mad Cow Disease is at Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh<\/a>, until 30 August<\/p>\n