IN 2020, Eleanor Morton climbed a hill. Like many Scots, doing anything other than re-watching Still Game or washing your hands seemed like a major feat during lockdown.
Her new show, Eleanor Morton Has Peaked will tackle the dichotomy of living through a once-in-a-lifetime event while being relentlessly bored the entire time.
The Scottish writer promises it won’t strictly be a show about Covid though, with no sanitiser or face mask jokes in earshot.
“It’s about me feeling like a failure even though we were in a global pandemic,” she told The National.
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“It explores how weird it is to live through something that traumatic while also having quite a mundane time.
“I climbed Schiehallion in 2020 and that felt like an achievement in a year where nothing really happened.”
Despite being a Fringe favourite for years, the Edinburgh comedian has attracted a wave of new fans recently thanks to her incredibly viral sketches on Twitter and TikTok.
Known for her deadpan delivery, the videos follow a series of tour guides named Craig who have just about given up on the job as they reveal a slightly less rosy-eyed view of Scotland.
Morton told said while she’d put the odd video online here and there her skits never quite reached the Twitter stratosphere until the pandemic.
“I started doing [videos] as a way of staying creative,” she said.
“In the past I think I’ve been nervous about doing my kind of comedy I find funny that can often be a bit like niche or kind of odd and so I was a bit nervous about doing it.
“But I think with the pandemic came this idea that there’s a bit more freedom because we were all just messing around and doing whatever we wanted.
“I started putting more stuff out there that I thought was really funny as opposed to second guessing what might do well. A problem a lot of us have is this fear of putting something out there and it just dying and being there forever.”
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Perhaps her most known video is of Craig the whisky tour guide who’s at the end of his tether, which currently stands at 2.3 million views on Twitter and another 2.2m on TikTok.
As a Scot, Morton is excited to take a slightly different view on the romantic kilts and castles view many tourists have of Scotland.
Scottish distillery tour guide doesn't give a fuck pic.twitter.com/WpxiuaywBz
— Eleanor Morton (@EleanorMorton) July 6, 2021
She explains how she came up with the viral series: “As a family we did a lot of Historic Scotland stuff on the weekend.
“I’m very interested in history and tourism and the way Scotland is portrayed, the romance that tourists might envisage versus being actually Scottish and I just thought it was a funny contrast between the guide and the environment.
“All the tour videos have been of places I’ve actually been. I haven’t done any for anywhere I haven’t been to because I want it to feel authentic.
“I think the whisky one was a couple of Craigs in and as someone who doesn’t really like whiskey, I always think it’s kind of funny how much people are into it.
“I think I just wanted to take the piss a bit. I quite enjoy the contrast between what VisitScotland want you to think and what it’s really like.”
But the viral success isn’t without its downsides, as being a woman online often sadly comes with a barrage of abuse.
It’s easy to be consumed by the negative comments so Morton does her best not to interact with them.
She said: “I try not to get involved because I think once you do, you’re wasting your time.”
Morton said creators such as Len Pennie, a popular TikToker known for her “Scots word of the day” videos, and Iona Fyfe, a pro-indy Scots signer, often have it tougher because their videos are caught up in the culture wars.
“I don’t know how Lenny and Iona do it because I think their job is much harder than mine. I’m very impressed that they can deal with that stuff because I can’t.
“But just having an opinion as a woman online can upset people. But then you just got to keep doing it because that will be a solid reason to stop.”
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She continued: “I think the hatred someone like Len gets is really caught up in the cultural stuff.
“People really hate, first of all for a woman doing stuff online, and secondly, for a woman, for anyone, suggesting the Scots language might be as legitimate as any other language.
“People have a real visceral anger about that kind of stuff, which is just nuts to me.”
Morton will be performing at the Monkey Barrel Comedy club from today until August 28 everyday bar Tuesdays. Tickets can be found at tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/eleanor-morton-has-peaked
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