Craig Hill

[faceless]

“I have no desire to be cruel. I think people would be surprised by how much I care.”
Susan Swarbrick
28 Mar 2011
heraldscotland.com

Craig Hill comes bursting into the majestic Antler Room at Prestonfield House, Edinburgh, like a whirling dervish. “Do you like it?” he says, gesturing grandly. “I did a gig here and thought it would be brilliant for photographs, you know, all Vanity Fair. But then, after I suggested it, I thought perhaps I should just have said to meet in a wee cafe somewhere?” He says it all without so much as pausing to draw breath.

Hill plonks himself down with a grin, but then his face crumples. “Oh no Susan, I’m sitting in the dark here,” he wails. I offer to swap places. “Could we? Ah, yes. This is much better,” says Hill, as the sunlight bounces in through the window on to his face. He shifts this way and that, getting comfortable. “Yes, this is good,” he confirms.

Seating arrangements sorted, we get down to the interview. Do a Google search for Hill’s name and the word that tends to come up most often is “camp”, followed by “bitchy”. The Edinburgh-based comedian, it transpires, is fond of neither and looks crestfallen when asked whether the tag “walking the thin line between cute and corrosive” is an apt description. “I have honestly never thought of myself as bitchy,” he says. “I’m not motivated by any bitterness – it’s all tongue-in-cheek. I often wonder, though, as a gay comedian, if I can get away with an awful lot more? There are things that, if a straight man said them, it would sound judgemental whereas a gay man can seem more playful.”

Didn’t he once quip that a woman in the audience looked like a man in make-up? Hill looks appalled. “Like a man? Noooooo. Oh, that’s awful. I don’t remember saying that. It seems a bit cruel for me. There was a time I initially mistook a transsexual for a woman, then a man, then I went back to woman. It became painful.

“I have no desire to be cruel, though. I don’t get any hit from that. I want to be sarcastic and say what’s in everyone’s head, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have regard for people’s feelings. I think people would be surprised how much I care. I don’t go on stage and not give a s**t. It would upset me if I thought I’d hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t like the word bitchy at all.”

Perhaps acerbic would be a better word, then? “Isn’t it just another way of saying bitchy?” he says. “I was going to say scathing but even that could sound a bit cruel if you don’t hear it in context. I’m sarcastic, although cheeky is perhaps a better word. There is no malice behind it. People have paid to laugh, not have a horrible time where they go home afterwards and cry.”

East Kilbride-born Hill made his stage debut age 10, impersonating jazz singer Cleo Laine. While he loved to entertain, he never realised comedian was a job real people did and his earliest aspiration was to be a hairdresser. “It took me years to have the courage to come out and say I wanted to be a hairdresser,” he says. “It’s almost easier to say you are gay than say you want to be a hairdresser in East Kilbride.”

After learning his trade as a scissorsmith, Hill then studied drama at Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh. He famously got his start in comedy when a friend working at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh, secretly booked Hill – then a struggling actor – an open mic slot and pushed him on stage. That was 13 years ago and he hasn’t looked back.

While his comedy style is continually evolving – “I’m much braver, bolder and trust myself more” – away from the spotlight, Hill is at a content stage in life. “I turned 42 this month. God, I’ve never said that out loud before,” he says, in mock horror. “The great thing about being in your forties is that you know who you are and what you want. Whereas, when you are younger, you are more willing to compromise.”

Having split from a long-term partner two years ago, Hill is relishing single life. “I’m very good friends with my ex-partner. We were together for 10 years and broke up amicably, carefully, and with a lot of love,” he says. “Both of us feel strongly we did the right thing. We spent a long time not doing the right thing. You stay in a relationship, try everything but eventually realise you are flogging a dead horse.

“The past two years have been rejuvenating for me. It’s an exciting chapter in my life. I have become more sure of how I want to live my life, the people I want to spend it with and the qualities I want to find in someone in the future. I’m open to mini adventures and being spontaneous.”

One of his biggest fears, he says, is of dying young. “I have such an appetite and appreciation for life,” says Hill. “I actually have a bigger fear, though, of one of my friends dying. I’ve never had a close friend die. My dad died of a brain tumour when I was seven and my mum, who had Alzeimer’s, died when I was 21. Instead of having a sad or negative effect on me, it’s had the opposite and made me cherish life.

“I never grew up with any sense of loss because my mum was so wonderful. She was a wee gentle Irish lady and I think that’s where my sensitive side comes from. My dad was funny and entertaining, which is something I get from him, but I have my mum’s attitude to life. I’m positive and savour everything.”

Growing up, though, Hill admits to often feeling like the odd one out. “I have five brothers including a non-identical twin called Russell. He’s a lad, into football and works in Sainsbury’s – my brothers all do very ordinary jobs in factories. I’m the youngest and was definitely the black sheep in that family. They are a bunch of lads and when they heard I was going to the World Cup in South Africa last year, they said: ‘Of all of us, the one that doesn’t give a shit about football gets to go to the World Cup?’” At least they had enough for a five-a-side team without him? “My dad was a football coach and into us all playing, but I stayed at home with my mum. I was definitely a mummy’s boy. I think, because I was so like my dad, she had a real soft spot for me.”

Although dressed today in a denim shirt and jeans – a look called a “Canadian tuxedo” I believe – Hill is well known for his penchant for kilts. “Were you surprised when I showed up without it?” he asks. “The kilt has become synonymous with me on stage now, but I don’t wear it in my normal life. People come up and say: ‘I hardly recognised you without your kilt,’ which I find hysterical, because it’s not like a kilt covers your face.” He first wore a kilt on the poster for his debut Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Craig Hill’s Alive with the Sound of Music (“I didn’t want to dress in drag as Julie Andrews and realised a kilt would give the same silhouette as a frock”) and has amassed an impressive collection. “I own 10. I have one in Royal Stewart tartan, one in red PVC and one in black leather,” he says, checking them off on his fingers. “Well, actually, the latter is not leather – it’s pleather. The real leather didn’t swing well and was heavy. You would be on drip dry if you wore that. The pleather one moves beautifully. The red PVC one is probably the wrong side of slutty. It gets a bit sweaty, but okay to wear if it’s just for wee while. I have a white wool kilt and some smart ones for corporate events, including a light grey wool one and a black pin-striped one.”

Hill is gregarious company be it revealing his biggest fashion faux pas (“I once went to a fancy dress party wearing my flatmate’s black velvet, gold buttoned, tapered, tight-until-the-ankle and wide-on-the-hip suit with a half moon silver mask, a black pirate bandana and the most ridiculous scarf.”) or the strangest place he’s ever woken up (“On a night bus to East Kilbride, slavering on the shoulder of the stranger next to me. I was so embarrassed I got off five stops early.”).

He harbours a notion, says Hill, to play a hard man in BBC Scotland soap River City. The Phil Mitchell of Shieldinch? “I would love that,” he enthuses. “It’s the idea of doing something so outside of myself that appeals. I trained as an actor so it would be good to see if I could make it look convincing or whether it would be hammy.

“What else would I like to do? Oh, I don’t know. My life has always been whatever comes along. I’m not terribly ambitious. If I was, I don’t think I would have ended up doing comedy. I wasn’t looking for it: comedy came and found me. I’m not bloody-minded and don’t chase after things that might not be what I really want. I think it’s good to take life as it comes.”

Craig Hill’s Why Don’t You Come Down the Front is at Oran Mor, as part of the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival, on April 1 and 2.