When one thinks about the famous comedians they might spot around the West End, Kevin Bridges, Limmy, or Frankie Boyle may come to mind. However, on campus it’s becoming increasingly common to hear excited chatter about sightings of Zara Gladman on the streets of Hillhead and Partick.
The 30-year-old’s “millenial-coded” brand of humour has been a hit on Instagram and Tiktok, propelling her onto our TV screens with her debut sketch show ‘Good For Her’ which aired on BBC Scotland last Monday.
“I’ve had really nice comments from so many people,” says Zara discussing the feedback from her show, “I actually got an email from my high school drama teacher, which made me cry because, well, I mean, it’s been a long time since I was at high school and she was one of my favorite teachers.
“And I loved drama at school, but I didn’t choose drama…I was too scared. I thought I could never do anything like that”
So how does a girl too nervous to study standard grade drama turn into the person known by thousands as the ‘woman who’s secretly a rat’?
Perhaps the medium of online comedy has something to do with it. In her own words, Zara wasn’t determined to become a comedian from a young age. Instead she pursued a degree in Zoology at the University of Glasgow, eventually graduating with a PhD studying invasive crayfish species. She tells me she’s been at Glasgow for so long it feels like she’s “institutionalised”.
Post-graduation, Dr Gladman has worked at her alma mater in various roles but comedy is something that she’s been involved in “off and on”. She mentions starting a comedy night in 2011 “getting academics to do stand-up about their research”, which later moved to the renowned Stand Comedy Club, as well as dipping her toe into the political satire scene in those tumultuous months in 2014 surrounding the independence referendum.
But it was when she began posting online during lockdown to “entertain herself” because there “was nothing else to do, and everybody was staring at TikTok” that she and her characters really broke through.
One stand-out character is Gladman’s “west end mum”, which went viral on social media for a music video substituting the lyrics to the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ to form a ditty about gossiping over an oat milk latte from a Hyndland Cafe.
‘Aileen’, as Gladman has named her, is a satire on the middle-class bubble around the West-End which some very conspicuous people live inside. Whether you’re serving them from behind the bar or passing them in Ashton Lane, everyone from Glasgow knows who she’s talking about. Gladman, who grew up in Jordanhill, says that “being of this place, the character has seeped in.”
I ask her if she worries the character won’t translate well to an audience outside Glasgow, especially later this month when she takes the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
“Although Aileen is very much rooted in Glasgow and in the West End in particular, I think the character is universal,” she says. “I have had people reach out to me and say: ‘this is the Aileen equivalent in Mumbai’ or ‘this is the equivalent of Aileen in Victoria, in Canada’.”
She also raises the example of Victor and Barry, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s comedy double-act made up of two Kelvinside thespians, which was a hit when it toured in Australia. Gladman says she thinks one would be able to easily find Aileen equivalents across the country if you were to “draw a map of all the Waitrose locations in the UK.”
“Women on set were cringing and shuddering at the sight of me…”
“The concept of my Fringe show is that she’s come to Edinburgh to raise money for her son, Cameron, to go in his gap here, because I thought there was something funny about the idea of someone very privileged going and asking people for money…I also love the idea of putting her in the fringe in the middle of this big international festival, but her maintaining this little bubble.”
However, one way in which Gladman admits her comedy may have a specific appeal is with regards to women. One of Good For Her’s most successful sketches involved Zara dawning a comical fake wig and beard to take on the character of “sleazy indie boy” who sits down the viewer in his bedroom and woefully plays guitar for them.
“Women on set were cringing and shuddering at the sight of me”, says Zara, “it was really fun for me to play that character as well, because I think women in particular have all met that guy. Guys have probably met him as well, but not had the same kind of sleazy interaction.
“Another one that’s had a big response from women is the online troll character who seems like this really lovely guy, but then at the same time, is leaving these crazy comments on women’s social media.”
Gladman also acknowledges that she thinks that her comedy has a generational dimension. Her aforementioned Drama teacher who got in touch after the show went out has invited Zara to speak at her former school, something that has prompted her to consider how Gen Alpha might relate to her sketches.
“I’m so curious because it is quite millennial coded in the way that the show is put together. I’ve got old internet dial up noises in it, for example, so it’s definitely nostalgic for people that grew up in the 90s or the 2000s.”
Whether or not Gladman’s comedy resonates particularly with millennial women, arguably, her success is based predominantly on the themes she taps into. For example, the theme of love and relationships is recurring in Good For Her, albeit with a sardonic tone.
“I guess, like for most of my twenties I was mostly single or dating, and I’ve got a brilliant backlog of kind of dating disasters and just daft stuff that you do in your twenties, which at the time felt like a disaster but now is this beautiful mine that I can drill for material.”
Zara also discussed career struggles in her twenties, trying to establish herself post-University amidst the financial crisis and subsequent years of austerity: “it’s been a tough time, but we can laugh about it. And we need escapisms, and that’s what the show tries to do.”
As of the time of writing, her Fringe run has sold-out, and Zara is clearly optimistic for what the opportunity will bring: “when I put started doing Tiktok, I didn’t think that I would end up doing live comedy based on a Tiktok character, and then when I did that character live, I didn’t think that would end up being as part of a TV show.
“I’m really just working out as I go along and trying not to overthink it. And I would love to do more TV stuff if I can, but it’s kind of out of my hands. It’ll just need to depend on what the reception is to what I’ve made and on BBC budgets.
“And with the Fringe, really, what I hope to get out of that is the experience of doing the festival, which, as a comedy fan, is the dream, because I love comedy, and I’m excited to be around other comedians and to learn and to see what it’s like to do the show”
Good For Her is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now and a small number of tickets for Zara Gladman’s Edinburgh Fringe Show can be purchased at the door on the dates listed here.
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