In character: Rosie Holt MP

“I WAS relieved that I was happy. I thought: ‘Oh, good, I’m not a total sociopath’.”
Rosie Holt is recalling the night Labour won the 2024 general election. For a comedian who rose to fame making Tory politicians look ridiculous, the result presented something of a professional dilemma.

“Of course, on the one hand was the feeling that this was going to be a lot harder for me, satire-wise.”

Quite the problem, when your fictional MP shares your name.

“I used to put up sketches on my own social media and caption them as ‘MP has done this or that’, and then I’d get people commenting ‘Rosie Holt must resign!’ And that was that – we were inseparable.”

Those sketches racked up tens of millions of views, with Holt gaining national attention in 2022 for videos parodying the government’s defence of lockdown parties at No 10.

“Two sitting MPs at the time called for my resignation.”

They got what they wanted, in the end. In July 2024, Rosie’s parliamentary alter-ego was retired. “I was hopeful, and I didn’t want to just jump on Labour straight away.”

And yet – two years later, there’s another new PM in town, MP Holt has crossed the floor, and the real Rosie didn’t get to sleep last night.

She’s calling from her flat in south London, packing bags for a flight later today. “I stayed out and got the 5.30am train from Edinburgh,” she says.

For the past month, she’s been performing at the Edinburgh Fringe in two shows – Churchill’s Urinal and The Illegal Aliens Have Landed!, following premieres in Islington. The latter sees Rosie appear in a number of roles, including her now-Labour MP, as well as political pundit Harriet Langley-Swindon – more on her later.

Where did it all go right?

“By the end of the Conservatives, everyone seemed quite galvanised and angry. With Labour, there’s just been a creeping feeling of absolute disappointment.

“In the end, with Starmer, there was a lot to work with. It just felt like the whole party didn’t really know what they were defending or arguing for because they didn’t understand what he believed.”

If Rosie Holt MP holds a mirror to the brain drain of the left (“she’s glad that summer recess is over because she needs Burnham to tell her what she thinks”), then Harriet Langley-Swindon represents the single-minded doggedness of the far right.

Harriet, another of Rosie’s characters, is “a Julia Hartley-Brewer type” who goes to war with woke. She is the host of NonCensored, the GB News-inspired podcast Holt is bringing to the London Podcast Festival at Kings Place for what will be its final live show. Launched in 2022 by Rosie, Brendan Murphy and Eshaan Akbar, NonCensored has covered everything from Liz Truss’s mini budget to the Clacton by-election.

“We absolutely loved doing it, but it’s a lot of work. We get in guests every week playing characters from the news, but we’re all self-employed performers, so our schedules are all over the place – it’s such a scramble.”

Is Rosie sure that Harriet hasn’t been cancelled? “No, she’s staying with me. She pops up in Illegal Aliens, and we’re taking that on tour. She’s a Reform councillor in that”.

I hear Rosie zip up her suitcase and lug it across the room. With such a busy schedule, will Rosie ever do a Count Binface and stand in a real election?

“Definitely not! What if I won?”

Still, if her MP were to run for Mayor of London, what would she campaign for?

“She’d probably run on a promise to have a proper word with the water companies about sewage in the Thames. A real, serious talking to.”

Harriet, on the other hand, would want to scale down last weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival.

“She’d pretend to like Carnival, but she’d absolutely hate it. She’d say; ‘Oh yeah, obviously, yes. It’s wonderful. All these cultures coming together, yes, that’s great. I support cultures… as long as they’re here legally!’”

Rosie’s excited for NonCensored’s big send off.

“We’ve recorded at the Podcast Festival before, and it’s a great crowd; there’s a Q&A and some of the audience will play along and pretend to be super right-wing.”

I wondered whether Rosie Holt MP would have dismissed this scene as textbook north London wokerati in her Tory days. Does the real Rosie worry about having enough bite in 2026?

“Sometimes, but I do also think it’s nice for satire to be cathartic. Yes, it should challenge, and make people see things differently… But I also think that my sketches took off over the pandemic because everyone was frustrated and angry at the government, and I could be an outlet for that.

“We could laugh at what was right in front of us.”

• London Podcast Festival runs from September 3-13 at Kings Place. NonCensored: final recording is on Sunday September 13 at 4.30pm
www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/london-podcast-festival/
• The Illegal Aliens Have Landed! is at Leicester Square Theatre on October 21