Holmfirth-born comedian Kieran Hodgson heads to Yorkshire this week on UK tour

“It had been five years since my last proper live show and I came to it with a combination of nerves and pleasure but also a desire to do justice to this thing that I adore doing,” he says. “Stand-up was my first go at performing and seeing the way the show was received has been joyful. I really love all the things I have done – on television, radio and online but there is nothing quite the same as live performance and that magic you can create with a roomful of strangers.”

Hodgson and his husband moved up to Scotland from London in 2020 and are now settled in Glasgow. The show explores themes of identity and belonging and the notion of what it means to be an almost immigrant in a country that is very familiar yet feels quite different. It also looks at the complicated, sometimes fractious, relationship between Scotland and England. As subject matter for comedy it is perhaps untypical but that is part of Hodgson’s unique appeal as a comedian – he is not afraid to address complex issues or delve into esoteric areas of interest for his material. Previous shows have investigated the politics of Brexit, environmentalism, professional cycling and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler.

“If I have a formula as a comedian, it is to tie together something I am looking out at and something I am looking in at,” he says. “I really want my comedy to talk about something fresh and unexpected, so maybe that sometimes means my subjects might be obscure or bookish but I think they are just as worthy of comic exploration. The challenge then is to connect with an audience on an emotional level.” A gifted impressionist and engaging natural storyteller, he skilfully combines the personal and political to make that connection. “My approach is to share some of my own experiences,” he says. “It is about meeting an audience halfway and bringing them along with me.”

During lockdown Hodgson started creating online parody versions of TV series that we were all watching at the time including The Crown, Bridgerton and The Queen’s Gambit. With spot-on impersonations and inventive use of minimal props – a scarf, a pair of glasses, a hat, a mug – he created superb spoofs, condensing entire series into a few minutes and they quickly went viral. “Necessity really is the mother of invention especially in an unsubsidized section of the arts such as comedy,” he says. “I had tried a little bit of online stuff before, but not much. Then during the pandemic everyone was giving it a go. Some of my friends were doing it successfully so I studied them and thought I would try it.

"The first one I did was a parody of a 1963 episode of Dr Who. I think it got around a thousand likes which was more than anything I had done online before. So I just thought I would keep going. I think lightning struck with The Crown 4 – it blew up, went all around the world and had millions of views. It transformed my career – I got an American agent as a result of that and it put me on the radar of people that wouldn’t otherwise have known about me.”

He has continued to make them when he has time between other commitments. His version of Line of Duty series six was, deservedly, very well received and he surpassed himself with his most recent one – an absolutely hilarious take on the third and final series of Happy Valley; if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to seek it out.

“It is quite a nice academic exercise,” he says. “You have to watch an entire series and then render that into a two minute 20 second piece, film it and edit it. It usually takes me a day or a day and a half to do that. We all know the internet can be a pretty horrible place so I have been very grateful that people have responded so positively to them.”

Kieran Hodgson appears at the Bradford Alhambra Studio on October 4, Theatre@41 in York on October 5 and Selby Town Hall on October 6.