“It comes naturally to me to almost downplay the seriousness of what happened. Even as it was happening, I was being quite flippant about it and joking about it with my mates in text messages. That’s just the way I am. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I’ve never been that sort of person. I didn’t want people looking at me horrified. There’s a line in the show about how I needed a tracheotomy to save my life, and I almost just throw it out there. I don’t go into it too much. I actually find it’s more of a challenge for me to make the show serious than it is for me to make it funny.”

“I’m not really nervous about it. I’m happy with the show,” Molly says of her upcoming Fringe debut. “I say I’m not nervous, but I’ve got a massive sty on my eye right now,” she laughs. “I’m just going to make sure I have some alone time, too. I’ll be going down to Edinburgh with my partner and one of my best friends, who I do a double act with, so I’ll be with people I’m comfortable with. I think it’s important not to talk about comedy all the time, because I think that would get too much. I’m going to make sure I switch off a bit. I’m also going to try and not drink too much. It’s hard because everybody’s there. But I don’t want one bad hangover to fuck everything up.”

In terms of getting the material together for her show, Molly has been performing stand up since 2018, although she only started focusing on it properly after lockdown, garnering much acclaim and getting to the finals of the BBC New Comedy Awards in 2021.

“My material before this show was more about embarrassing things that had happened to me, and there’s some of that in there now, but it’s got more of a story to it now. Before the coma, the show started off being about how I felt like I wasn’t doing enough with my life. Like I was a bit of a slob. That’s where the title comes from. You know, you get to your thirties and you feel like you’ve not done enough. So it was about that. But then the coma happened. And then I was told to rest and not do anything and be a slob. And I had a different perspective. I wasn’t really thinking about all those things while I was poorly and resting. I was more focused on the simple things in life.”

But what drove her to get into comedy in the first place?

“I didn’t want to be a comedian when I was younger. I started out wanting to be a writer. I studied Creative Writing and I did a Masters in Scriptwriting. I loved The Royle Family. It was Caroline Aherne who made me think I could do stand up. She was a hero of mine and she did stand up. I thought she came across so natural on stage. It was like she was just having a conversation with the audience. Seeing her made me think I could do it.”

And, indeed, you get the sense with Molly, like with Caroline Aherne, that everything happening onstage is natural and genuine. “I’m not really a performer in the sense that I put on an act. I’m just myself on stage. The downside to that is if I’m having a bad day, I can’t really hide it.”

Molly is also part of a double act with fellow comedian Paul Campbell. In some ways, her shows with Paul couldn’t be further from her solo ventures in terms of subject matter. “The double act started out because we used to love going to Herons together. Herons is great. They have all these discontinued products. Like, they’ll have all this Tango stuff, but they won’t have a Tango drink, it’ll be a Tango muffin or something. Anyway, we thought we’d do a mukbang video with us trying out Herons products, but someone suggested we should do it as a live show instead. And we get an air fryer on stage. Now it’s turned into a kind of rock opera. We’ve done our own music for it. It’s a good balance really because I can do a show about being in a coma but also be doing a rock opera about Herons.”

Molly may already have a lot on her plate (mainly from Heron), but she’s looking forward to future projects, circling back to her initial desire to be a writer.

“After this show I want to write a book about being in the coma. There’s less restrictions with a book. I want it to be it very Lynchian. There’s so many TV shows and movies and media about people being in a coma but none of them have got it right. It wasn’t like being in a dream. It felt real. The human mind comes up with stories to try and explain to itself what’s happening. It was like a psychedelic trip. Very bizarre and surreal. At one point, Ozzy Osbourne was there. It was like I kept dying over and over again, but I couldn’t actually die. It was almost annoying. And then I saw a figure at the foot of my bed and it said: ‘Remember what the psychic in Blackpool told you. You’re going to have a long life.’ Because I went to this psychic in Blackpool once and she told me I was going to have a long life. I mean, she also said I was going to have bad acid reflux. But yeah, after the figure appeared, I felt calm.”

Molly McGuinness is performing her show Slob at Edinburgh Fringe from 31st July-25th August 2025. 

interview by Danny Lamb