Rosie Holt is a comedian and satirist. She is the winner of the Chortle Social Media Award and a nominee for the BPG Emerging Creators Award. For her last comedy show, That’s Politainment!, The Observer and the Evening Standard both gave it four stars, with the Evening Standard calling it a “tightly crafted and brutal political satire with Orwellian flourishes” while the Guardian said, “Can Holt’s comedy career survive the advent of a Labour government? On this evidence, you’d fancy her chances.” This year she is performing Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens Have Landed! at Pleasance Courtyard at 6.30pm every day.
How did you get into comedy?
I trained as an actor at LAMDA but was getting fed up of the lack of creative control and being reliant on others to do creative work. I was living with the stand-up Harriet Kemsley at the time, and loved the freedom of the London open mic circuit, where you could write an idea and be performing it a few days later at the back of a pub. Then a few years later during lockdown, I started putting sketches up online pretending to be a Tory MP and they went viral, which took my comedy in a much more political direction.
What is your show about?
My show Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens Have Landed! is a character comedy show about aliens landing in the UK and how the political landscape responds. So Labour is scared about doing anything, Reform is demanding we send the aliens back where they came from, and the YouTube commentariat are hosting panels on “what to do when the aliens take our women”. It’s a satirical show about the fear of the other, immigration fears, and the rise of the manosphere, told through a host of different characters.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
For this show, as well as keeping an eye on the news, I have been watching a hell of a lot of old sci-fi movies. What is fascinating about the alien movies of the 1950s is they were often reflecting a lot of the anxieties of the time: Invasion of the Body Snatchers was about the communist “red scare”, Quatermass 2 was a critique of the British Conservative government, and The Day the Earth Stood Still was delivering warnings about the Cold War. It has been interesting to transpose these ideas to a show about modern anxieties.
Who are the funny women you would recommend seeing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?
So many! If you haven’t seen Jess Robinson’s show, do: she sings Elton John songs with a variety of pitch-perfect impressions and it is so fun, so uplifting, and she is jaw-droppingly talented. I saw a preview of Elf Lyons’ The Woman on the Edge, which is uniquely sensational. Anna Leong Brophy’s show is inventive, thoughtful, and huge amounts of fun. Davina Bentley is doing her debut this year about ageing, and she is so funny and so clever. I am also looking forward to checking out Cecily Hitchcock and Harriet Richardson, as I haven’t seen them live but I love their online work.
What have you been working on?
As well as my comedy show, which after the Edinburgh Fringe I am taking on tour (you can find dates on my website rosieholt.co.uk), I also wrote a play, Churchill’s Urinal, a two-hander which I also star in with the actor Michael Lambourne. It’s a comedy about the first female Chancellor trying to remove the urinal in her private bathroom, only to find it has been marked an object of historical significance because Winston Churchill used to piss in it, and the whole ruckus causes a culture war which becomes increasingly deranged. I am performing this for a limited run at the Edinburgh Fringe at 2pm at the EICC.
Keep up to date with and follow Rosie Holt on Instagram.
Tickets and information for Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens Have Landed! can be found here!
