The Hour

After winning the Take The Mic, John Scott has now been crowned as the UK’s funniest man – but he disagrees.

The Bonnybrigg-born stand-up cites fellow Scot, comedy legend Billy Connolly, as his main inspiration, dubbing him the ‘king of comedy’, and said that the circuit wouldn’t be what it is today without him.

“I get annoyed by some young Scottish comedians who say ‘I don’t really listen to Billy Connolly’ and it’s like ‘no, you don’t realise, if there wasn’t Billy Connolly we wouldn’t have the live stand-up comedy circuit that we have today. So I still find him the king of comedy,” John explained on STV's The Hour.

The 40-year-old wowed the audience and the judges of the first ever Take The Mic contest which was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe, beating off stiff competition from 700 other stand-ups.

As part of his prize, John lifted a whopping £12,000 cash prize – something which he admits has made his fellow comics green with envy.

“For me it’s hard work for comedians at the Fringe. For me, I had to come up and do seven nights of 10 minutes a night, and walk away with £12,000 at the end of it. So most of my comedian friends that were properly working the Festival, they hate me now,” John joked.

John, 40, now hopes to continue working the live stand-up scene, and admits that TV show fame doesn’t really interest him.

“I’m not too fussed about that, I just want to be doing live comedy,” he said. “I’d like to come to the Glasgow Comedy Festival next year, which I’ve never done properly. I’ve got a brother that lives in Melbourne so some of the money I’ve won I’m going to use to go to Melbourne, do the Melbourne Comedy Festival and visit my brother at the same time. I really just like doing live comedy.”

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