Being his brother’s best man helped launch his comedy career

“I have been doing this full time for just over three years when I haven't had other part-time jobs. But I've been doing stand-up for eight years now and really for me it was always there – and I talk about that during the show. But I had that very Scottish thing of thinking who do I think I am for wanting to do this! I'm very glad that I got over that!

“But I had not really told anybody that that I was what I was wanting to do. But then I did a best man’s speech at my brother's wedding. I wrote some jokes and people laughed… and it was almost like a gig! Now he's going to be best man at my wedding next year. Maybe it will be a new career for him as well!”

As for the show, Gallus is Connor’s look at the Scottish personality – how Scots balance confidence with self-deprecation. The show weaves together stories from his own life with jokes about ambition, pride and the instinct to keep yourself grounded the moment you start to get ahead. It’s ultimately about what it means to be “gallus”: bold, funny, a bit reckless, and always ready to laugh at yourself.

“Scots have a failsafe way of making sure their kin don’t get too full of themselves – they cut them down to size at every opportunity. But if an outsider was to attack you they’d defend you to the death. As a Scottish comedian I dance on that razor of wanting to blow up the room, but always checking over my shoulder to see if I might just be getting too cocky. Gallus!”

But actually as the tour has gone on Connor has realised increasingly that what he says about the Scottish personality is maybe not quite so uniquely Scottish after all and that it extends to the British in general: “I think naturally we all lean towards pessimism. And I think actually it gets described as being British when you tend to find a flaw with something, when you naturally assume that things are not great. I don't know why we're like that. I think it's maybe an island mentality or maybe the climate has something to do with it.

“But I think that's a big difference between British comedians and comedians in the States. The American comic is quite often the cool guy in the room, the clever one whereas with the British comedian’s on-stage persona is always self-deprecation. I think if you're talking about a group of other people and your perception of them, the joke is always on you and that it is you that has maybe misunderstood the group rather than anything to do with the group.

“I think that’s just the way we are. I'm very working class and I've got a very working-class audience and they can sniff out in a second if they think that you are preaching to them or if you're trying to take the moral high ground. I think the most effective comedy for me really is always to say this is how I perceive an issue to be and this is why I'm an idiot!”