“I can tell the audience wants me taken down a peg”: Comedian Alistair Ogden is on the rise

Vancouver-born, Toronto-based Alistair Ogden has been climbing the comedy ranks since 2022, winning over audiences with his unique blend of self-deprecation and undeniable rizz. His wry brand of humour skewering toxic masculinity has proved particularly resonant online, where his earnest jokes about the benefits of being a straight white guy have earned him a sizable following. In January, he released the special Boyfriend Material, solidifying his place as one to watch on the comedy circuit. (His canny assessment of how men prefer to spend hours fighting for their lives in the bathroom rather than admit they have dietary restrictions went viral not once but twice, earning him a total of 50,000 followers on Instagram and 37,000 on TikTok.) Ahead of his sold-out show at Comedy Bar on April 11, we spoke with Ogden about the bleak heterosexual dating scene, comedy as an antidote to the manosphere and why he’s happy to play the villain.

Did you always dream of being a comedian? When I was a kid, I wanted to be a sports journalist who wrote novels on the side. It turned out that I just liked watching and playing sports, not actually writing about them. My dad is English, so I grew up on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers. I was a big fan of this sketch comedy group on Youtube, the Bath Boys. But I didn’t think of comedy as a viable career until I had already been doing it for a few years. I went to the University of Victoria for creative writing, where I wrote a play about a mortician who wanted to do stand-up comedy. Through writing for that character, I realized I loved writing jokes. My professor at the time, David James Brock, encouraged me to actually try doing stand-up comedy. I did an improv showcase, and I was hooked.

What did you find so appealing about it? My first time onstage, I did a British accent for the entire set until the last joke, when I revealed that I was Canadian. I was doing a sort-of Ricky Gervais impression, with a lot of edgy jokes that weren’t really true. The audience was confused. It didn’t get many laughs. But the few laughs I did get gave me such a rush. I know some people bomb at stand-up and think, I don’t want to do that again. But, any time I’ve bombed, I just think, I’ve got to do better the next time.

What do your parents do? Are they supportive of your career? My dad works in IT as a networking consultant, and my mom is a freelance science journalist. She has also been doing improv for years and just did a stand-up course herself. I think she’s trying to figure out what it is that I enjoy about comedy. Both my parents are very supportive in their own way. I remember when I was maybe six months into doing comedy, my mom said, “Why don’t you see if The Debaters has auditions?” I was like, “Mom, you have to be doing this for a half decade before anyone will take you seriously.”

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A lot of your comedy is about what it’s like to be a straight white guy. What’s so funny about that? Being a straight white guy and looking the way I do, I can tell the audience wants me taken down a peg. Any time I’m onstage with another comedian—especially if they’re not a straight white guy, but even if they are—I always tell them to just make fun of me and it’ll go over well. I’ve done a couple of tapings with Roast Battle Canada, and both times I’ve played the heel. I’m comfortable enough with myself that I’m happy to oblige. There’s a lot more diversity in comedy now, so people of other ethnicities, genders and sexualities  can comment on themselves—they don’t need me to do that. My favourite comedians, people like Pete Holmes and John Mulaney, are very confessional. I see the value in observational comedy, but it feels like it was most popular with Seinfeld, like 30 years ago.

Your special is called “Boyfriend Material,” and you dedicated it to your mom, your dad and your ex. What kind of influence does the heterosexual dating landscape have on your work? As a straight guy who is dating women, there aren’t that many horror stories. Dating is not super hard for me. Long-term dating is difficult because I’m travelling all the time. I think I even put on my Hinge profile, “Logistically difficult to date,” because I’ll just leave for months at a time. But I’ve heard the stories of straight white guys acting insane.

“I don’t have trouble dating” is not something you hear often. When you’re going on a first or a second date, you’re kind of giving a performance of yourself. That’s my job, so I’m pretty good at it. Usually I have fun on the first couple of dates. Then, when you have to dig deep and be vulnerable, that’s harder for sure.

A fair portion of your comedy involves deconstructing toxic masculinity. Why is that important for you to do? The alpha male stereotype is so silly and delicate that deconstructing it is inherently funny because those guys are so fragile. I watched Inside the Manosphere, the new Louis Theroux documentary on Netflix, and you can see right through these guys. Louis is grounded and calm, and he asks a couple of questions, and you just see them crumble. All it takes is a little bit of emotional intelligence and maturity and you realize these guys are acting like children. That’s what the alpha male mentality is: a child’s version of what a man is supposed to be. I think it’s really appealing to a lot of guys now because people have a lot less money and spending power, so they feel disenfranchised. When you feel disenfranchised, you kind of want to feel like a kid again. These alpha males want to feel like kids again so they can be mean and rude and say slurs. Just like a 12-year-old boy.

People have said you look like Handsome Squidward, Princess Diana, a Star Wars villain. How does that play into your act? Almost every time I do a show or post something online, I get a new lookalike. I’ve been getting Cillian Murphy a lot lately. I think the lookalike is in the eye of the beholder. I have a running list in my phone of all the people I supposedly look like: actor Christopher Eccleston, Finnish basketball player Lauri Markkanen, young Wayne Gretzky, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Raiders quarterback Kirk Cousins, the Red Ranger from Power Rangers Samurai, young Tom Brady, Aegon Targaryen.

What does a day in the life of a full-time stand-up comedian look like? It’s pretty exhausting. What many don’t realize is that a lot of people who present themselves as full-time comedians are subsisting on writing jobs, acting gigs, stuff like that. My friend Jackie Pirico hosts a radio show. There are a lot of alternative income streams. I do the odd writing job here and there and a little bit of sponsored content for social media, but I’ve pretty much been doing comedy full time since I moved to Toronto from Vancouver three years ago. It’s a lot of travelling and hoping that people will buy tickets so you actually make money. In the past few months, I’ve travelled to the Maritimes, Saskatchewan, Vancouver and New York. My first year of doing stand-up full time, I was just breaking even, eating into my savings and then trying to build it back up. I’ve had to make sure to take care of myself and take time off. I do vocal warm-ups so I don’t lose my voice.

Is there any material you’ve been wanting to explore but haven’t found a way to yet? I’m always trying to dig deeper. Most of my dating material is pretty surface level because I haven’t been in a serious relationship in three years. I’ve got to be more emotionally vulnerable in my regular life, and then I can be more emotionally vulnerable onstage. That’s what it comes down to. If I want my jokes to be stronger and more impactful, then I have to live my life in that way, which is annoying.

Any jokes you’d like to practise here? My grandpa passed away last summer. I tried talking about it onstage, but it was just a little bit too heavy. The thing about talking about grief onstage is that you may have come to terms with it, but the audience is just finding out, so you have to give them time. I was staying with my grandparents for a year, about a year before he passed, and I caught them having an argument about which one was going to die first. My grandpa said, “I want to snuff it first,” and my grandma was like, “No, it’s got to be me.” He said, “What if we did it together?” She said, “How would we do that?” He goes, “A car accident.” “But neither of us drive.” It’s funny, but feels like something I might have to write into a script as opposed to talking about it onstage.

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What does your dream career look like? Do you have plans to get an O-1 visa? I’m in the process of that right now. I have an O-2 visa currently, which I got to support my friend Hassan Phills on tour. Unfortunately, I’ve got to go down to the States for a bit. The ceiling for comedy in Canada is pretty low. I’m doing the most I can right now, and it’s just barely enough.

New York or LA? New York for sure. LA is a place where you cash in on your ideas, not a place you go to get really good. Everyone doing shows there is already famous. The people in New York are funny but not necessarily well-known, while people in LA are very well-known and not necessarily that funny. I don’t know why I’m throwing shots right now.

What’s next for Alistair Ogden? I’m about to go on tour around Ontario with the Just for Laughs road show, which will be fun. After that I’ll go to London, England, to visit family there, and Stockholm, where my brother lives, and I’ll do shows there. We’ll see how those go. Hopefully I have a little bit of draw in both places. Then I’m going to Chicago; Washington, DC; Dallas and LA to see my friends, do some shows and take some meetings. You never know if anything will come from them, but it’s cool to say you’re going to LA to take meetings.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.