Charley Marlowe on I Kissed A Girl, British Camp, and Her Dream Brunch Programming

Words: Lauren O’Neill | Photography: Lewis Vorn | Makeup: Georgia Hope | Hair: Nina Brown | Styling: Marta Jimeno | Makeup Assist: Lara Nasamu

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My phone is full of people trying to make me laugh. I open Instagram Reels or TikTok and there they all are, telling jokes and performing skits and doing impressions. I could probably watch these people incessantly for the next year, however, without finding a single one of them as charming, as clever, or as downright fucking funny as Charley Marlowe.

The 24-year-old from Liverpool – now a bonafide red carpet interviewer, and narrator of BBC reality shows (proudly gay, she’s the voice of I Kissed a Girl) – started making TikToks while she was studying at uni and working long hours in TV production. The slog ultimately got too much, but as she was deciding to take a step away from life behind the cameras, a new role in front of them started to take shape. She was offered presenting gigs off the back of her uproariously good videos, where she’d spoof daytime TV or just tell stories about her life; hilarious not really because of what she said, but because it was her saying it. 

Her sensibility falls in the tradition of comics like Caroline Aherne and Peter Kay – people who understand that British banality is funny, and who offset their observations about ordinary life with real fondness. A video sending up crap British travel programmes, for example, might be satirical, but it’s also clearly full of love for the shitness of the format, and that warmth is what makes Marlowe special. 

You feel it when you meet her in person – she’s so young, but she already has a presenting veteran’s way of inviting you in, making you comfortable and riffing on what you’re saying to her to make you feel like you’re just as funny as she is. It’s totally infectious, and if she’s not heading up a chat show within the next half a decade, something has gone very wrong. 

To talk about what that chat show might look like – as well as but not limited to: Denise Welch wearing a swimsuit and cowboy boots, Girls Aloud, Scouse prins, Kevin and Sally from Corrie and of course, I Kissed a Girl – I recently caught up with Marlowe at the Polyester studio, the day after she hosted the red carpet at the Sky Arts Awards. Here’s what the UK’s best young presenter had to say.

You've come off the back of a really big gig – hosting the red carpet at the Sky Arts Awards. A job like that requires a lot of thinking on your feet and improvisation. Do you enjoy it? What are the challenges and what are the best bits? 

I love the spontaneity of it, and that you don’t know what’s coming. That’s the most nerve-wracking part of my job. But when I did the BAFTAs, that was really cool. It’s nerve-wracking when you don’t know who someone is. There was one person who I’m not going to say, you know when you know who it is? And I just couldn’t think of their name. It was on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t just go, “What have you been in?” So that keeps you on your toes. I love it, but it makes me very nervous.

When we did the BAFTAs that was the live stream. It was very like, “Anything you say could be…”

Given in evidence?

Yes. “Do not swear.” 

To rewind a bit, could I ask about you – where did you grow up?

I grew up all around the towns! Mostly in Liverpool, people will strongly refuse that I am Scouse. I was born in north Yorkshire but other than that I’ve never stepped foot in there. I don’t know the place. All my family are from Liverpool. I’m a Scouse girlie. Northern glamour, Scouse prinny. That’s the most glamorous thing you could ever be. 

Have you always wanted to make people laugh? Do you remember any especially early influences on your sense of humour?

We’d move around a lot – we lived abroad a bit and it was too expensive to have Sky. And only certain people would have it. I’d be like eight years old going like, “You jammy fuck.” It was weird because they were like two weeks ahead of Corrie. We’d be like, “What’s happening with Kevin and Sally?” So we only had DVDs. Have you ever heard of those? They were massive. We had three channels, I sound like I was born in the 70s. I was like eight years old watching The A Team on a Saturday morning. We had a Peter Kay DVD, we had some of Friends on a boxset, and Vicar of Dibley  and Dinnerladies. I used to love the soaps. I was so obsessed with Corrie. 

Did you perform as a kid?

I used to go to drama Saturday mornings when I was about 11. We did a few shows – The Lion King. I was Pumba. Fatphobic. [Laughs very very loudly.
I was always in the school musical, but I always just wanted to be around my mum’s mates. A gaggle of middle aged women. I’d be like “What’s up with you Linda? What’s going on with the marriage and the kids?” I wanted to perform for my mum and her mates. 

How did you get started on TikTok? Was there a moment when you knew it was blowing up a bit, or a specific video that went really viral? How did it feel? 

I’d had a couple [of videos] that had done 100,000 or a couple of hundred thousand [views], and this was when I was still working in telly. I went to Marks’ on my lunch break and I made a video where I was like, “Call me a Tory and put my knob in a pig’s mouth” or something like that. And that blew up a bit. I think by the end of working in telly I hated it. I was between production and Covid, my old uni lecturer got me in, and at uni you’re just gasping for a job. I just used to say I wanted to work in telly, I didn’t have a specific job in mind. People don’t realise it’s a long slog, it’s a lot. The crew have so many challenges. 

I started TikTok at uni, doing it sporadically, but it was when I was in my last telly job that I thought, “Hold on a minute, I could do this.” I’d planned to take the rest of the year off anyway – honestly, I was drinking about three full fat Monsters a day, my body was in rack and ruin. I came off that job and had nine fillings. I thought, “Christ, you need seeing by a doctor, a dentist and a mental health analyst.”

By that point, I did a few shoots on my own with Specsavers and things like that, and I think I just kept shouting at everyone going “I wanna be a presenter!!!” And then people started to give me a few jobs, and I changed management, and they wanted me to do it full time. It’s hard making the transition though.

You're in a position where you have managed to transition from social media to mainstream media. How did it feel to move between those two worlds?  

It’s weird, especially because I’d also worked in TV. Definitely going to uni and working on TV and film gives you a good starting point to know how to behave. Sometimes you work with people and their basic manners aren’t there. It gives you good skills, knowing everyone’s job role. But a lot of people, talent-wise, you see them on TV or social media and everyone’s like, “Ah they’re so so nice,” but when you’re working with them it’s a different story. 

There’s obviously parts of the job that people don’t see, but fuck me, it’s not like doing 12 hour shifts in the NHS. I say I’ve had a hard day, but get in a hospital or do a shift at ASDA. That’s hard.

How important is it to you to work on a show like I Kissed a Girl? What does that show in particular mean to you as an LGBTQ person? 

It was so incredible. I remember getting the call to say I’d got it and I was just so excited. I went into it not really knowing or anticipating the impact it would have but the reception was so well-received. The girls on the show as well, they just loved it. It’s amazing. 

I love the videos where you send up daytime TV or travel shows or things like that. What is it about British TV specifically that feels funny to you? It’s this weird unshowy campness.

It’s so subtly camp and it’s naff but good naff. It’s so hard to explain.

I think it’s a shared language. Everyone here innately understands why it’s funny that Denise Welch is talking about Gabbriette yet again on Loose Women, or like, Denise Welch wearing cowboy boots and a swimsuit.

If I ever want to write something stupid or trivial on my story, like “Just had a massive shit” or like, “Just had a wee and some old woman’s walked in on me in the cubicle”, I love just using a picture of Denise or Coleen Nolan or Carol Vorderman pulling stupid faces. But now they’ve all followed me so I can’t do it anymore!

What are your favourite British TV moments? 

I love Richard Hammond talking about ice creams. Or if me and my two mates ever get together, we always stay up watching Girls Aloud music videos.

And also Girls Aloud on TV at like 6 in the morning. 

I used to love that, when This Morning had the performances.

And The Saturdays would be on at 6:30AM doing “All Fired Up”.

So good. When they had that little nook on the set and they’d get the West Enders in. I loved it. You’d pan to Phil and Holly just nodding. 

If you could present any show, what would you choose?

[Before I have finished the question] Sunday Brunch. Get it in there. I want to be on it. 

What would you bring to Sunday Brunch? If you did a version of that what would it look like?

First of all it would be called Sunday Bitches. It wouldn’t be Sunday Brunch but it would be the exact same time slot. It would be filmed in the old This Morning studios in Liverpool – BBC Nations and Regions. It would be a big couch like what Drew Barrymore has, and I’d take my shoes off. There’d be gay people on it. 

Only gay people? Or mostly gay people?

Mostly gay people. I’d allow two straights. 

Mostly gay people and Denise Welch.

We would have a hangover meal. And cocktails. I kind of want to get that girl who makes every country’s version of a full English in. Or Poppy O’Toole, so she can make loads of hash browns. 

Musical guests?

Yes. Like the musicals who are touring. Or who else? I want to get Raye in. I want good guests. And maybe a fashion element. Get Gok Wan in. It would be like the runway on This Morning. And then maybe we’d have the advice section as well, so I could sip on a little Champagne, and give advice. We could bring someone like Vanessa Feltz in too. 

Perfect. What's next for you, and what are your big dreams for the future? 

I’d love to do more presenting, a bit of acting – I think Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French toe that line really well. A bit of everything really. I’d love my own show. I’d love more women on TV. I know the landscape is changing and it’s loads more on socials, but if you do still look, as much as I adore Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton, it’s still really male. I remember Ruth Jones had one – I used to love that. I’d want a 10PM show, as a woman, hosting it. Paul O’Grady vibes – I used to love The Paul O’Grady Show, and Chatty Man. See? The gays make it better.