Howard Read (aka Big Howard) Guest Blog

As a stand-up comedian it’s always great to play Glasgow, and as a festival performer, it’s always lovely to go to Scotland and come home with your shirt.

My festival act, Big Howard and Little Howard, is almost exactly the same age as the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.  Both started ten years ago and both seemed like a ridiculous idea at the time: Glasgow was trying to start a comedy festival in Scotland that wasn’t the Edinburgh Fringe, and me trying to make a cartoon perform stand-up.

Over the years Their Stupid Idea has always been incredibly supportive of My Stupid Idea. The GICF (not sure I should call it that; sounds like a porn acronym to do with gimps) has always given me a stage to play on, paid me (which is surprisingly rare in the business of comedy festivals) and come up with great ways to let people know my show is on. 

Last time we came, the GICF Team arranged to for us to appear on STV’s The Hour (I can confidently say I’m the only cartoon boy Michelle McManus has ever interviewed) and this year they’ve come up with a doozy.  To celebrate the Glasgow International ComedyFestival’s 10th birthday and Little Howard’s 10th 6th birthday (it’s complicated) we’re doing something really cool at 10am on the 10th of March at the Apple Store, with my 10-year-old 6-year-old cartoon boy, and 10 ten-year-olds.  Full details aren’t confirmed yet but we did a test-run last week of the various ground-breaking bits of technology involved, and it worked a treat.  I’m actually looking forward to that stunt almost as much as I’m looking forward to the show itself, which is on the 24th of March at the King’s Theatre.

If you haven’t seen Little Howard have a look at www.littlehoward.co.uk, for kids we’ve done three series of Little Howard’s Big Question for CBBC and for adults we’ve been on The Royal Variety Performance, This Morning and Jay Leno amongst other things.

Little Howard will be recording a special Video Diary for the festival every week running up to our appearance.  The first one is here: 

Little Howard's BIG Question will be on at the King's Theatre on 24 March at 2.30pm. For more information and to book tickets, click here or call 0844 395 4005.