The phrase ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’ has been used for as long as you can remember, but recently it has felt a bit too much like all cry and no laughing.

Everything’s more expensive, everything’s slightly worse, the future is not bright - we are living in scary times. Cue Christopher Macarthur-Boyd.

The 31-year-old Glaswegian stand-up has been steadily rising through the British comedy circuit for the last 10 years, but now he is taking things up a notch with his new headline tour ‘Scary Times’ which got under way in September.

After getting things off to a flying start with headline shows in the north of Scotland, and his first solo show in Dublin, CMB is about to headline his largest venue to date in the iconic Glasgow Pavilion Theatre on Friday, November 8.

He says: “I’m really excited about this show. I think the biggest venues I’ve played in Glasgow with myself as the headline were between 150 and 200 capacity.

“So, to go from a 200-seater to a 1500-seater is quite the big jump, but I just wanted to bet on myself and see how it goes. With the podcast doing great too, I’m really looking forward to it.

“This show focuses more so on what’s next after living through the pandemic. I wanted a horror theme. So, I tried to think about what makes my comedy a little different from a lot of other Scottish comedians, and it is definitely a bit sadder and a bit darker. Not darker like ‘dead baby jokes’ but more like ‘it’s s***e being alive’. So, I wanted to make it sound a little scary.”

Longstanding fans will know Christopher from his Enjoy an Album podcast, but more recently, you may know him as one-third of the chart-topping comedy podcast Here Comes the Guillotine alongside Frankie Boyle and Susie McCabe.

(Image: Scary Times) Although Christopher has dabbled in TV work, originally trained as a journalist, and is now venturing into the digital media world with the new podcast, he still considers himself a stand-up comedian first.

However, the publicity of working on Here Comes the Guillotine is not without its benefits and it provides CMB and his fellow comedians a place to have a general chit-chat, with some outrageous conversations proving to be very entertaining.

“I’m really happy with the podcast, and I’m so glad it exists because so much of comedy now is just so anodyne, polite, friendly, and really just spineless, and it just gets encouraged by big companies because then it is easier to advertise.”

As honourable as it is sticking to their guns, and much to the entertainment of their fans, sponsorship is one thing the global podcast is having trouble picking up, but the reason why remains a mystery.

“It [Here Comes the Guillotine] is all just talking about paedos and genocide, so Mercedes isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to be associated with us”, he says.

It's a bit too brutal a round-up from Chris. Surely, he must have forgotten to mention the weekly chats on Bible John, Lord of the Rings, and the trauma caused by a devout catholic upbringing in the west of Scotland from Frankie and Susie.

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But the brutality of the world, and the bleakness of the time we live in leaves people with a desire to vent, according to Christopher.

He says: “People are kind of hungry for something that is dark, but not cruel. That’s what the podcast and my tour are all about. It’s about not letting the a*******s have full ownership of having a laugh about the dark stuff because then everybody gets drawn into this nightmarish way of seeing things.

“Whereas if you can just have a kind heart and open mind about how scary everything is, then that’s a good approach.

“So, it’s great to see the podcast is doing well in the UK charts, especially because it is three Glaswegian comedians.”

(Image: Andrew Jackson) During our conversation we touched upon neurodiversity and seeing as Chris, Frankie, and Susie question if they’re all autistic or have ADHD every week, it was bound to come up.

Christopher believes that people with attention problems are always drawn to adrenaline-fueled experiences, which is why he enjoys it so much. But he still gets nervous heading out in front of crowds even after ten years of performing and more than a thousand shows under his belt.  

“It’s like eccies. The first one I did, I thought I’d seen god, but then after your tenth, you think ‘Oh, this is really quite nice’, so my tolerance is definitely a bit better. But I do still get a wee bit nervous, especially with a show like the Pavilion.”

The Pavilion show will be the first of Christopher’s November dates and is also set be filmed for a YouTube special. Fans out with Scotland will be able to enjoy his observational comedy as he plays cities across the rest of the UK including Belfast, Cardiff, Southampton, and Bristol.