Glasgow Comedy: Christopher Macarthur Boyd tells us about his latest show Howling at the Moon

Christopher Macarthur Boyd has had an interesting year, a break up, a flitting and a new relationship all comes ahead of his biggest ever show at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival in March.

His new show, Howling at the Moon, is a deeply personal examination of the self and is further proof why he is one of the country’s best stand ups.

We discuss his year, how he once fell foul of the internet and the power of taking comedy on the road.

Glasgow World: I think when we spoke last time you were going to be doing the biggest show of your career, and it just seems like it's been a hell of a year. What has the last year been?

Christopher MacArthur Boyd: “Yeah, I had a big breakup last year, moved house. I moved back to my mum and dad's, and then got a new flat, and been doing the Here Comes the Guillotine podcast with Frankie [Boyle] and Susie [McCabe], and it just feels like the start of my 30s. It certainly feels like a new time in my life. So it's been pretty good. I've got a girlfriend as well and a new relationship, she lives in London, so I've been going down there twice a month, and being alone up here is kind of what this show is about.

GW: How has it been on your own, in your own city? Has that changed how you experience Glasgow?

CMB: I mean, it's great. When I became single, I hadn't really been single for more than three months, for like nine years. I was saying to people I know who'd had breakups and stuff, I was like, ‘what do you do when you live by yourself?’ And they were like, ‘you just need to make sure that you're out of bed by 12, and maybe put the radio on.’ It’s completely mental. But I've just been walking a lot and like, I'm just trying to do the things that I like to do, which is walking and going to the park and seeing grey herons and ducks and listening to thrash metal while I do it.

GW: You sort of find yourself as this person that you didn't know who you were.

CMB: It's slightly maudlin. But it's also really nice. I've had a beautiful year. It's been really cool, and I'm doing gigs, and people are coming, not just to see comedy, but they're coming to see me now, which is kind of still a novelty, that people are like, excited to see me. So yeah, it's been great career wise, and my personal life's been really wonderful. It's been a great year.

GW: It feels like this year I’ve seen you popping up on more shows here and there, and especially online, has it felt like things have gone into hyperdrive?

CMB: There's a great comedian called Gary Faulds from Glasgow, and me and him kind of started at the same time. But he used social media a few years before me, he was doing videos where he was just in his car, and he would tell a funny story about something he'd seen that day. People absolutely loved it. He was doing the armadillo, and he was going on tour, and he said to me once, ‘you need to get on Facebook and Instagram and talk to people, because people want to have a new favorite comedian, yeah?’ And they just don't know who you're. At the time, I was kind of offended by that, but now I realise, yeah, no, I spot on.

GW: Is there an element of trying to keep true to what you want to release, as an artistic thing and that you want to be proud of them?

CMB: Yeah, I filmed the show down at the Pavilion. I put it on YouTube. I cut the jokes into wee bits. One or two of them went absolutely massive, which is more than I could have dreamed of. But overall, you know, those are out of context clips. And the thing that I made, the special that's on YouTube for free, that I'm re-releasing, I think that's like the thing I've made, and those things are just adverts for the thing I've made, and I only put out one new show every two years now, because I really want to take time doing I think I'd done 30 work in progresses before the Fringe. So I toured all around the country already. Then I went to Edinburgh in August, and I done it another maybe 32 times because the extra shows, and now I'm ready to tour it next year, like I really want people to know if they come and see me, and it doesn't say work in progress in the title, that I've got an absolutely banging show that I've took my time with, and it's got depth, And it's funny as f***.

So, yeah, I'm really proud of those clips.

GW: In terms of embracing social media, can it being jarring to work in such a toxic place?

CMB: A clip I put up a few years ago, and it put me off clips because it was, like football related, and it was a joke that I would do kind of 20 minutes into a set where the crowd would know who I was and what I was about and how I was self deprecating, and then I would do this mad thing about football that was like, super provocative, designed to provoke a reaction, and I love doing it in dodgy comedy clubs like the Rotunda, where the crowds are all in on Groupon deals, and then you start talking about Rangers and Celtic and you get a laugh at the end of it. Yeah, whereas I recorded that and put it out of context a few years ago, and people absolutely hated it, and honestly, I do agree with them, because out of context on social media, you just want to get in the full story like I always presupposed it with a joke about how I loved wrestling. So who cares what I think? But yeah, I really was getting death threats and stuff over this clip a few years ago, but thankfully, that's completely died down and none of those people really contact anymore. And you know, it's an incredible privilege as a male comedian that I don't get much abuse, whereas if you look at any woman comedian, they get everything under the sun said, and I'm just a wee speccy guy from Glasgow, so nobody. There's not much to be gained for slagging me. It's actually almost embarrassing. It's like me, because it's like he's slagging him. He's already been slagged by God.

GW: What are the emotions about playing at the Kings, it's one of those theaters that is just so synonymous with Glasgow, and especially comedy?

CMB: I think the first stand up show I saw live was there. I think there was a lassie that I had fancied. She was like ‘oh, I'm gonna go see Jim Jeffries’ And I was like, ‘yeah, let's go to that’. And I remember the support act was a guy called Jason John Whitehead. I think the guy's name is, and I was like, ‘wow, this is amazing’. So, my first stand up experience was there. Then I got the chance to do wee spots at it on charity gigs. And then I started, like, doing support for people who were playing the Kings. So I'd done support for Russell Kane there, and I'd done support for Susie McCabe there two or three times. Then I'd done support for Frankie there, maybe 10-12, times at the Kings. And it's just such a beautiful room. I do not believe in manifesting stuff, but I do think it's good to decide what you want in your life and then try and get it. And I think every New Year's Eve for the last four years, or something, three years, I've written down King's Theater, because that's just been my life goal, I guess, is to do this gig. So to get it, and then it looks like it's selling quite well already.

GW: When we spoke about your last show, you called it a bag of rats tied together, what’s the subtitle for this show?

CMB: I can’t believe I said that [laughs]. I genuinely tried to make a thing that was less like a bag of rats, because the last show was, it was big, long stories about really awful stuff that happened to me. I think I remember seeing someone, like a filmmaker or something, talk about how to do a good sequel. Everybody always thinks a good sequel is like, bigger and massive, but I think actually, most of the good sequels, whether that's the Godfather II or Toy Story 2, they're always like, more personal and this one's just drilling a wee bit more down about what's wrong with me and who I blame. So that's where the insurance is really going. Why did this happen? Who is this, wee guy? Who made them this way? And obviously the answer is, the people who brought me up and the society that I live in, I'm perfect. But, I really love the show, and I've really enjoyed putting it together, and like being able to tour it all, because I'm not just doing the Kings, I'm doing Monkey Bar, and later on in the year I'm doing Troon and Irvine and Cumbernauld. I'm going to Shetland. And that's just the Scottish stuff. I'm also going to England, I'm going to Ireland, I'm going to Cardiff. I wish I had more Welsh dates, Swansea phone me. But I can't wait. I intentionally wrote something that was neat, because the last one had a big chunk that was about Glasgow and Edinburgh, and then I would go into like Brighton, and they'd be like, ‘we do not care’. And this one, I really, really tried to make something that would make sense. But actually, now there is a big chunk about the Forge retail park, among other things, I mean, so I tried to make something that was less parochial. But I've actually, you can't help it with stuff like that.

GW: Comedy is interesting in that it can take you to all these interesting places, that quite often other art forms like music don’t necessarily take you.

CMB: I just want to do it everywhere, and I want to go and see how Troon feels about what I've got to say about the British Empire. So I really enjoy going, and it's also the scale. So if you're like, like, my favorite band is called Los campesinos, and they go on tour, and they've all got day jobs, because music industry as an indie band can't really sustain a life, so what they'll do is they'll all agree to take the same two weeks off work a year, and then they'll go every day, they will go, and they'll have to hire childcare, and they'll have to hire a bus for them all to stay on. And like, there's like nine of them in the band, so that's like nine hotel rooms, and then the tour managers hotel rooms, and then the merch person's hotel rooms, whereas the economics of stand up is you show up and you have a friend who's with you, and then that's it. We don't have to carry amplifiers or guitars or anything like we just go to a bar. They claim to have a microphone, sometimes they don't. And hopefully it's an arts center or something that has just been a pub sometimes.

Me and Suzy done a gig, I can't remember the name of this place, it's the most westernly, never, ever sunny weather. It's the most westernly point of mainland Britain, it's a wee, tiny village, like you go to Oban and then you drive another three hours on winding paths, and you drive over like an extinct volcano, and then you’re there. It's a wee village on the edge of civilization, and I mean, Susie is like a mainstream comedian, but she's a gay woman talking about her life experience, and she's driving out to the most westernly point of Britain. And they were up for it, but it was, it was a town hall for a town that had less than 1000 people living in it. The last person to do a show there was, I think, 10 years before we went, and it was the guy named Dave Gorman. And the only reason he was doing a show there was because he was doing a show about the four most extreme points of Britain. And I mean, we were the only stand ups to do that gig. And it was great, because I just think the great thing about stand ups is just someone saying, ‘This is what it's like to be me, and here's why I'm the way I am’. And sometimes people cannot relate to that in the slightest but it's still fun. And sometimes you go to a wee place where no one's ever done it before, very few people dare do it. And people are like, thank you so much for doing this, because nothing comes here. And I think it's cool.

Christopher Macarthur Boyd will appear at the King’s Theatre as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival on Thursday, 19 March 2026.