Ania Magliano: Edinburgh Fringe Best Show nominee, Chicken Shop Date co-writer, and self-proclaimed patron saint of Colin the Caterpillar. The way the 26-year-old comedian’s eyes light up as she speaks of Colin the Caterpillar is on par with how she spoke about performing at Live at the Apollo – a dream come true for any comedian. Magliano quips that whilst filming, the comedy kingmaking show quickly felt like a normal gig – aside from the cloud of blinding smoke and the slight pressuring thought of “I need to do the best performance I’ve ever done in my life.”
And she did just that. Offering her thoughts on the Last Supper and a vibrator which could break the space-time continuum, Magliano’s got scope. Her gossipy but laid-back story-telling style is the kind that confidently builds till you can’t help but break.
Her new tour, Forgive Me, Father, is what she describes as the remaining 30% of what she’s worked through in therapy. At its core stands the difficulties that came with moving in with a boyfriend for the first time, which brought up childhood issues and resulted in a near-break up. “It doesn’t sound very funny when I say it like that, but… I like doing comedy where it gets to the bottom of what’s going on.”
She doesn’t just do stand-up, however. Writing for Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date is a role she often receives the best reaction for – though, as she mentioned in The Times, Dimoldenberg mostly improvises. Magliano also films street interviews on Instagram, and has starred on podcasts including The Comedian’s Comedian podcast, and Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster – her choices are considered one of the worst menus of all time.
On top of that, she’s supported Ed Gamble, Marc Maron and Cat Cohen on tour. In fact, one of her “core memories” of the city of Manchester was alongside Gamble and his tour manager, who lured her into doing an escape room.
“I was a bit anti-escape room before because I was like: what a stupid pastime. Pretending to be stuck in a room, that sounds so boring. We went and we did it (we escaped) and I was so alive. I felt so alive. I felt so present for the first time in my life, I was like this is the most mindful activity I’ve ever done”. Besides just escaping rooms, however, Manchester is also a city where she’s gigged and giggled in, a lot, and she’ll be bringing her tour here on January 24th.
Before touring as the successful comedian she is today, she worked as a receptionist at the Edinburgh Fringe at age 18 – the same festival where she was nominated Best Comedy Show in 2024 for her second stand-up show, I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This. While working as a receptionist, Magliano watched many performers at the Fringe. Inspired, she did a stand-up show in a pub just 5 days after returning to London, having never tried it before.
“It was kind of insane. That’s the way I am; I will not think through if it’s a good idea. It wasn’t great, but the gig that I was doing was incredibly …” She ponders, gazing out the window, conjuring the right word, until she decides on: “Shit.”
“It had no other audience apart from the other comedians and two people in the pub who didn’t want there to be stand-up; they wanted it to be a normal pub. They were very reluctantly watching.” But another performing comedian, David McIver, reassured her to keep going, and that not all gigs were like that.
Keep going she did. While studying at the University of Cambridge, she got involved with the comedy scene where sketchwork was the dominant form of comedy. She preferred stand-up, and the freedom of creative control that it granted. Entering the wider city sphere of comedy is where she truly found that freedom, firmly believing that “trusting your instinct is the right thing to do.”
“I was just very suddenly like ‘Oh my god. I love this. I’ve found something that I fully love.’ When you hit upon that, it becomes very easy to just throw everything into it.”
What comes with being a young woman in comedy, however, is a sense of restriction: “I don’t fucking know anything yet. I do think it sometimes limits what I can talk about on stage, because I’m a young woman. No one wants me to have any authority.”
As a young woman, rather than subsequently receiving a more critical crowd response, she feels as though her jokes can evoke more of a feeling of worry from some crowd members: “If I do any jokes that are a bit close to the bone or a bit too self-deprecating, or a bit darker, I feel people are like ‘oh god is she okay? She’s a nice young girl, she looks like my daughter, I don’t want anything bad to be happening to her.’ I’m like, I’m alright, this is funny.”
Despite often being labelled a Gen-Z comedian, this wasn’t the label she set out to acquire. After all, people of any age can find jokes about monstrous vibrators funny, as proven by her diverse audiences; “At the Fringe I have audiences that go way old – they go so old. And they have a good time.”
The Quick-Fire Questions
Rate from best to worst: ventriloquism, slapstick and musical
“Slapstick, musical comedy middle, ventriloquism bottom.”
You’ve been on House of Games recently – what other British TV show would you love to go on?
“I’d love to do Would I Lie to You. I loved that growing up.”
No.1 artist on Spotify wrapped?
“Charli XCX. Yeah. Nothing surprising there.”
If you were to name your own Colin the Caterpillar, what would it be?
“That is such a hard question. It would have to be something to do with my name. Colin? Colania?… When I was on Off Menu they had a go at me for saying a stupid name, it would be whatever name it was there. What was it it? It was like Mark. I would call it Mark. Mark the Caterpillar. Because they said that was a stupid name but it wasn’t even that far off. Anyway, I’m not bitter about that.”
Finally, it seems important to verify her commitment to stand-up, given her chocolatey loyalties elsewhere. So, a Mancunion exclusive: when Ania Magliano was asked whether she’d rather stand up or sit down in these situations, she declared that she would rather sit down at a music gig, sit down at a comedy gig – “or stand up, if I’m performing” – and “sit down in the shower. Cry… fuck, I’m in the wrong career”.
With that, you can buy tickets now to experience Ania Magliano’s expert charm in real life – while she may like resting her legs, she is very funny when she does stand up, and you’ll be glad you checked her out.
Tickets are available now for Forgive Me, Father
