Interviews | The Snigger

John Carruthers - GIFT OF THE BLAG

This interview is dedicated to Alana Nicole Carruthers family, and John niece. Alana sadly passed away from Crohn’s Disease at the end of 2025. She was 24 years old.

I meet John in a café that I have been going to a lot recently, Café Love Is in Partick. The vibe is good and so is the food, so we agree to meet there. I arrive ahead of John, order a tea and wait until he bounds in the door a short while later.

John is my pal, but that doesn’t mean I am going to say wonderful things about him. He sat across from me, ordered and ate a whole Scottish breakfast, while I was being good on a fast day! Rude.

John is a regular on the circuit and among other notable endeavours is the regular MC of the Panopticon Comedy nights.

“I started comedy, my first time, in 2006 (age 28). I had gigs at Red Raw, The State Bar. I got into it because of two friends. They hated each other which was funny but although they never agreed on anything, they both agreed that I should be doing comedy.”

At that time of life, John had got married and he and his wife began looking to start a family through adoption. Comedy was stressful, adoption was stressful so John had to make a choice.

“I had to pick a lane so I quit comedy to focus on growing our family.”

Fortunately, John returned to comedy in 2013 and went on to run the Iron Horse “Charity Comedy Night” over a 7-year period, raising money for Scottish Huntington’s and other nominated charities. He is still involved with the Huntington’s charity today and organises and MC’s the Gingerbread charity nights to raise funds for out of school care.

Comedy style and approach

When I watch John, I think of him doing anti-comedy - that alternative, surreal or absurdist humour that is based on the surprise factor of the absence of an expected joke which can result in the funny coming over in awkwardness, shame, embarrassment – that, and the fact I know that he likes getting his kit off.

“But,” he says “my body confidence is inversely proportionate to my body!”

Young John is different to who he is now of course but growing up was an isolating time for him. John speaks slowly on stage but he explains that this is deliberate and is because of his “terrible stutter.”

“My stutter filled me with dread so I never went out. “

“I was introverted when I was growing up. I wasn’t confident and always reading, I was bookish and mostly stayed at home.” I didn’t want to be teased about my stutter but people had plenty of other things to tease me about...” he says wryly.

“There is a thin line between who I am on stage and off but John on-stage is more confident than John off-stage.

John rarely records himself and it wasn’t until he heard himself from a recording and heard how he was speaking that he understood how his voice could be used to support his comedy and material.

“On stage, I don’t think that I emulate anyone because I speak in such a pronounced way. But I think the nuance and the flow of how I do things is quite different. It is because I don’t want to trip over my words.

“I didn’t realise it and I don’t record myself but when I hear myself on other people’s recordings, I go, oh, there’s something there.”

Comedy Inspo

John mentions that his comedy inspirations are Bill Hicks – who John’s dad loved - and he was a fan of Eddie Izzard but he couldn’t and isn’t like them. He doesn’t watch the Netflix comedy specials but he loves going to watch comedy.

“I love gigging and watching people do it. I would do it every night if I could. I still get low level nerves ahead of gigging because I don’t know what is coming, for example if I haven’t slept well or had and have a bad day in work and it might reflect on that night. I don’t sleep well.

“That’s one thing I hate about comedy is that I would be out gigging every night, if I could, but I have my family to think of.”

Comedy Process

John finds that he has ideas around what he wants to do on stage but when it comes to notating or transcribing material, he cannot do it.

“I don’t write anything down on paper. I used to but now I sculpt ideas in my head. I am not a very good actor.”

“Obviously, I come up with ideas of course but as soon as I write something down, it just feels like I am acting it out. I write in a very specific way that I do not think or speak in. As soon as something is scripted, I would screw it up. I would have to blag it.”

When you see John MC, he does have the gift of the blag which looks improvised but John will approach his work from his back catalogue of jokes, but also his energy and the environment he thrives in and brings the audience into his world – about his family.

“When I get off stage, I am always buzzing."

“A lot of my material is about my kids, the things they do and I have posted some of that stuff on Facebook Not so much now as they are getting older. I have a son, Scott who is 11 and my daughter Morgan who is 18.!

Morgan had her first paid gig - age 8 – while John was doing tech for Kenny Sinclair and Ronnie Black at the Glasgow Comedy Festival. Morgan told them a visual joke which they then said to her to come up on stage during the show. She did it and afterwards, the audience members gave her cash – she got about £40!

Outside of work and comedy John is a Dungeons and Dragons gaming geek, a podcast host and in 2014 trained to become a funeral servant. Whilst his father was unwell with cancer, his dad said that he did not want anyone he didn’t know doing his funeral service. John asked his dad if that was his way of saying he wanted him to do it, and his dad said; yes.

Since then, he has attended at his friend’s mother’s funeral and sadly more recently his niece, Alana.

“Comedy has had such a positive impact on my life in that I am a more confident speaker in my day job, and now as a Humanist funeral servant, I would not have done that were it not for comedy.

“I recently lost my niece to Crohn’s Disease. I did her funeral service – then I went out that night and hosted a gig.”

“When Alana died, our family was devastated. She is my brother’s daughter. I was able to offer to do her funeral because, for me, it was one less thing my brother had to worry about, and knowing Alana."

Then after it was over, John went out and hosted the Panopticon.

John explains “It was a coping mechanism. And the fact that we were also devastated, so a way to deal with it, I suppose.”

We talk a bit more about family and wind up our conversation. John was getting hungry again…

Finally, and with all our Comedy Corner interviewees I ask John what image he is drawn to, and why.

“Food, definitely. I eat well (yes John we know).

“I am always eating. Every Sunday I cook with my daughter, I am her sous chef. We will try new stuff each week. My daughter selects what we are going to eat by each Thursday and then we go and get the ingredients. Spicy food is my go-to, but we have cooked carbonara, cottage pie, sloppy joes, whatever we want. It is time for us.”