A comedian who won the Edinburgh Comedy Award but is still unable to perform a proper downward dog is truly refreshing. Amy Gledhill, a hilariously self-aware Hull native who is currently one of the most talked-about names in British comedy, has been remarkably open about her relationship with fitness. Not in the polished, sponsored-post manner. In the manner of “I loudly grunted ‘f′* you we are’ at my instructor”.
For years, Gledhill, 38, felt completely at ease in her own skin and on her own couch. She once wrote that Pepsi Max Cherry and Peep Show reruns felt like enough. The enthusiastic types who talked about “endolphins” and “mental clarity” with the kind of evangelical conviction that makes you want to lie down even more were the ones who suggested that exercise could improve your mood. Even tho she didn’t buy it, she eventually started going to the gym.
Before and after statistics are not what add interest to the Amy Gledhill weight loss discussion. It’s the way it feels. She enrolled in a foundation-level yoga pre-beginner course, which is essentially remedial. She entered the classroom with a quiet sense of confidence, only to be instantly humbled by a room full of elderly people who were thriving while she struggled thru what she calls a “horrible, difficult, downward-ish mutt”. She claimed that a letter of complaint was about to be written on her wrists. Compared to the majority of wellness content you’ll see this year, it’s difficult to find anything more humorous and truthful.
A sanitized version of this story, complete with clean timestamps and transformation images, is transformed into an inspirational arc. That’s not what Gledhill’s version does. She’s clear during exercise, but she’s still awful. It was dizzying, breathless sometimes involved her breasts acting as a suffocating pillow from The Godfather. She was taken aback by what happened after. The buzzing, slightly arrogant feeling that comes after finishing a class. The energy that you have earned thru energy expenditure. It irritated her. She continued to return.
Perhaps the most underreported aspect of any true fitness journey is the pattern of beginning, detesting persevering. Gledhill has been candid about being “a strong starter and a strong quitter” in her own words. In addition, she once used her student loan to purchase a cello that she never learned to play. Thus, it says something that she continued to attend those foundational classes week after week. Perhaps she simply needed something low-key enough to avoid feeling like a show.
Her humor has always drawn from the particular and the physical, from the way her body doesn’t function as it should, from the discrepancy between our perceptions of ourselves and our true selves when we look in the mirror at seven in the morning. The title of her 2024 Edinburgh Award-winning production was literally “Make Me Look Fit On The Poster”. The title does a lot of work on its own. It has a self-deprecating quality, but it also acknowledges that the perception of fitness and its actual state are often very different.
Gledhill hasn’t made a brand out of her weight loss journey. She hasn’t partnered with an app or published a fitness program. She has written about it openly and in a tone that is exactly like her stand-up: precise, a little crazy more honest than cozy. It feels more like something a friend texted you at 10 p.m. after making it thru their first spin class than it does like a celebrity health story. This is most likely the reason it lands.
In addition, she has been named patron of Hull and East Yorkshire Mind, bringing what she refers to as “approachable humor” to discussions about mental health. In fact, there is a connection between all of this. The podcast about contemporary dating, the yoga sessions, the homage to her father the messy comedy.
Amy Gledhill appears more interested in being open about what it truly takes to persevere than in appearing to have everything together. That can occasionally mean being the worst person in the room when you attend a foundation class. Whether it’s endorphins or not, she continues to appear.