Kevin Bridges

26 March 2014 | 8:49 am | Baz McAlister

“You can go on and experiment and fuck about every night.”

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Comedians don't come much more down-to-earth than Kevin Bridges. Raised in a working-class area of Glasgow, the 27-year-old has been doing comedy for more than a decade, and now routinely sells out 10,000-seaters all around the UK. Bridges has never been to Australia, not even for a holiday, however, he dodged a bullet a couple of years back when he turned down an invitation to be on the I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here reality TV show.


“That would have been quite a stressful Australian debut, rather than waiting to play a nice few festival gigs,” he says wryly. “Aye, if I was divorced and had a few kids, and I had some gold digger taking me to the cleaners, I'd have accepted it,  but everything's going okay. If the offer's still there and everything goes tits-up in a couple of years I'll maybe phone them back.”
Bridges is refreshingly modest about his own success. Ask any stand-up their dream and they'll probably mention playing an arena-sized venue. Bridges is in that sweet spot, but he still likes to book more intimate gigs where, “You can go on and experiment and fuck about every night.”


Right now the comic is taking a year off his stand-up commitments in the UK. He's recently finished penning his autobiography (“At 27, I thought it's time,” he mocks), and he remains close with Scottish comedy legend Frankie Boyle, who was his mentor in the early days; they live in the same street in Glasgow's west end. “I'm looking at his house right now, his window's totally dark – he's probably in there crafting some evil joke,” Bridges says.


But as far as leaving the north for the bright lights of London, Bridges remains uninterested. “It's dangerous territory if you move away from your family and mates to a city where you only really know people through TV and work,” Bridges says. “You can maybe lose sight of the fact that being a comedian, you're supposed to be the underdog. That can then take a back seat to becoming a celebrity, or whatever. So I'm glad that I still come back to Glasgow at the end of it all.”

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