SNL UK’s Paddy Young on fame, impressions and playing the PM

Paddy Young didn’t expect to become a household name. But that’s exactly what’s happened since SNL UK launched on Sky Max earlier this year, and the 29-year-old Leeds-born comedian found himself doing pitch-perfect impressions of everyone from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham in front of millions of viewers.

Now, in a candid interview with The Guardian, Young opens up about the surreal ride of breakout stardom, the craft behind political mimicry, and what it actually takes to impersonate a sitting Prime Minister on live television.

From open mics to prime time

Young started doing stand-up at 19 in a pub in Headingley with an audience of roughly eleven people, most of them his friends. He spent nearly a decade grinding through the circuit before a self-taped audition for SNL UK — filmed in his bathroom, he admits — landed him a spot in the cast. The show, which debuted to 2.1 million viewers in its opening week, became Sky’s most-watched comedy launch in five years.

“I genuinely thought I’d be doing corporate gigs until I was 40,” he told The Guardian. “Then suddenly I’m in a dressing room putting prosthetic ears on.”

The Burnham moustache moment

One sketch in particular went viral almost instantly. Young’s impression of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham — complete with a thick fake moustache that Burnham has never actually worn — racked up 4.7 million views on social media within 48 hours. The joke was absurdist: a reimagined version of Burnham announcing the moustache as a mayoral policy initiative.

“Someone in the writers’ room just said, ‘Andy Burnham can grow a moustache,’ and the whole room lost it,” Young recalled. “Sometimes the funniest thing is the most arbitrary thing.”

Burnham himself apparently texted a mutual contact to say he found it funny. Young won’t confirm whether he’s spoken to him directly. Still, the sketch put him on the map in a way that three previous Edinburgh Festival runs hadn’t quite managed.

Impersonating Starmer — the hardest job in comedy

Playing Keir Starmer, Young says, is genuinely difficult. Not because of the voice — which he’s nailed, all flat vowels and cautious pauses — but because of the man’s studied blandness. “He’s not giving you much to work with. That’s almost the joke in itself.” The writers leaned into it, building sketches around Starmer’s robotic attempts to appear relatable, and those bits have become some of the show’s sharpest material.

A spokesperson for Sky Max described the show as “a genuine cultural moment for British comedy,” noting that a second series has already been commissioned and is expected to film later this year.

What comes next

Young is careful not to get too comfortable. He’s writing new stand-up material, has a development deal for a sitcom pilot, and is acutely aware that political satire lives and dies on the news cycle. If Starmer’s replaced, his best impression might become instantly redundant.

But that’s showbusiness. And Paddy Young, at least, seems ready for it.