She is one of the fastest-rising names in comedy. Kyla Cobbler, the 34-year-old Cork-born, Barcelona-based comic, who first gained attention through her viral Instagram reels is standing in front of us here, at the InterContinental Hotel in Dublin, for what is her first-ever magazine photoshoot. Kyla is nervous because this is totally out of her comfort zone. We’re nervous because we’re starstruck!
Kyla may have stepped on stage for her first open mic in May 2021, but her rise since then has been meteoric. So far this year she stole the show on The Tommy Tiernan Show, has sold out two nights at Dublin’s 3Olympia, two nights at Cork Opera House, packed out Leicester Square in London, and launched her first European headline dates, which, at the time of going to print, were selling out left, right and centre with extra dates being added within days of the tour announcement. 2025 has been quite the year.
Hilariously honest, fearless too, Kyla, with her raw storytelling and razor-sharp crowd work, is compelling company. Home for a whistle-stop tour, we’ve got an audience with her for an afternoon, an afternoon during which the whips come quick. As sharp as a tack and with opinions to match, we love her.
She tells us about how her biggest fan, her mum, signed her up for a stand-up course when she was 15 and how Kyla told her she was mad! We talk about her 34 tattoos, the magic of magic mushrooms, finding love, finding sobriety and finding herself.
So, Kyla, your first magazine photoshoot, how was it?
I was so nervous before doing it! And then you do it and are like, ‘Oh, that was such a laugh!’
Good to hear! Well, we’d be totally out of our comfort zone doing stand-up, but you look so at home on stage. Have you always been a storyteller?
I’ve always been a storyteller for sure, but being on stage I found the hardest part of stand-up. For some people it’s the material, it’s the writing jokes, but for me, at the beginning of my career it was getting up on stage. My legs would shake, I wasn’t overly nervous but my body would react to my emotions…I just took time to settle. But, as for the storytelling, yes, but not mad on the spotlight. I love being in a group, but I like taking a step back and letting everyone else talk while I come in and out with a joke here and there. I don’t love being the centre of attention at all.
When you talk about writing material, when and where does that happen?
I don’t write material, don’t have a joke book or anything like that. I think about something and go, ‘That’s funny’ and then I’ll go on stage and talk about it. I’ll start with five minutes on stage and go, ‘Oh, that worked, people laughed a lot’, I’ll try to get seven minutes with the same idea and I’ll think about a different angle with it. Because in stand-up you don’t want to do ten minutes and then have a really big punch line and get a laugh, you want a laugh per minute. You want people to come in and bam, first ten seconds get a laugh, first minute get a laugh.
How do you know what will make people laugh? How do you now if something is going to be funny?
You don’t until you’re on stage, sometimes you think, ‘Oh, this is gonna be so funny, this is a gift’, and then you get on stage and it’s terrible! [laughing]
And how do you come back from that if nobody laughs?
When I did Soho House in Italy I bombed! I’ve bombed before doing open mics when I was doing five and ten-minute spots, but this was my own show. I was on for an hour and they were having none of me! For the whole hour they were just looking at me, staring at me as if I couldn’t see them, leaning over and talking, it was so cringe. But the most important thing is that you do your time that’s been assigned otherwise you ruin the show for everybody else.
Did you not want to run off stage and hide?!
Yeah, I had the biggest cry after that one! [laughing] But you learn more from that than you do from crushing it! You get a thick skin, you learn how to manage a crowd when they’re not your crowd. And nowadays with TikTok and Instagram, trying to keep someone’s attention for longer than five minutes is difficult anyway. But you do learn a lot more from being kind of shit than you do from being on stage and blowing the roof off!
Well, you’re blowing the roof off everywhere at the moment, your career is skyrocketing – you announced 16 dates on 21st May and within days you’d added another 8 shows – can you believe it?
No! Well, yes, I can actually!
Is that an affirmation you’ve just done there?!
Yes! I believe it, I deserve it, no fear, no doubt, just sell out!
So, do you tell yourself that? If a negative thought comes into your head, do you replace it with a positive one?
100 per cent. Rumi [Persian poet and mystic] has a beautiful quote, he says, ‘The words we speak are the house we live in’. And I believe that to such a degree that my whole routine, my whole daily life, from the minute I wake up until I go to bed, is dedicated to my art and that means sacrificing the parties, and the late nights. But I know when I’m on stage, when I feel good and rested and restored, that I can bring something really special to the table. Everything I do is dedicated to my art, and that includes the words I speak! Because I want the house I live in to be beautiful!
Where do you get such wisdom from?
I don’t know! [thinking] I have been called wise before, but then I go to the post office every Sunday thinking it will be open! I can tell you what phase the moon is in at any moment, but if you asked me what day it is I’d have no idea [laughing] genuinely, my manager is at her wit’s end!
Mad to think that your whole career started, in a way, on social media…
In a huge way! The whole thing began there.
And now your followers are massive! We were looking at an article you did last year in The Telegraph and at that point, you had 180,000 followers on Instagram and today you have 441,000!
Yesterday I did this reel about being feral and it was nothing that mental, and from that reel alone I got 26,759 followers!
What is it? Why are people connecting so much with your brand of comedy?
I don’t know…. it’s just me.
You’re just real and fresh and honest and brash…
And I’m not trying to look a certain way. I think I’m providing a space for women who don’t do all the stuff, don’t do all the makeup and hair and the this and the that. I definitely have a spiritual side and it’s like you can have that side and not have smelly armpits! But I’m a businesswoman too and I have a great business instinct. What I try to do is show people that you can be extremely ambitious and be successful but be soft. You don’t have to be like, ‘It’s a man’s world, I’m tough’… I’m so in my feminine energy, I’m soft, I’m loving, I’m tender, but I’ll kick the door down because I know what I’m good at and I know who I am! I can sit at any table because I know I work on myself and I know what I stand for and what I believe in, and there’s freedom in that. I hope that’s what people see, I hope other women who are trying to fit into different roles to succeed can see someone like me and go, ‘Oh, she’s just her bloody self’.
Knowing your worth and having that confidence, where did you find it because you struggled in school, left school feeling stupid, so there’s a decade there where you lost yourself and found yourself.
Exactly. I think I found my confidence when I stopped wearing makeup every day, that was a big thing. I was a fake tan, straight hair, makeup girl for a long time and I consciously stopped because I was living in Spain, in a hot country. And I know it sounds really superficial, but it was hard to stop. I was 28 years old at the time, then the pandemic hit, Instagram started growing and I started drinking really heavily. Then I stopped drinking for 420 days and I completely re-evaluated my relationship with substances. From that I learnt that when I respect my own boundaries, when I say, ‘I’m going to do yoga on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I’m going to get into the ocean Tuesday and Thursday, and I’m going to run 30k a week’, when I stuck to that and respected that, it gave me confidence. It’s like I was achieving something in my daily rituals.
Since finding sobriety your life has really turned around, certainly in terms of your career anyway. You’re also now engaged to a gorgeous South African!
Can you believe that after years of being single? And yes, he is gorgeous inside and out! And the crazy thing about it is, I met him in the comedy club doing what I love, I met him when I was on stage doing something that fills my soul up. It’s crazy, we go out of our way looking for love, especially at my age, it’s so hard, we do all these things to put ourselves out there, but just do you. It will come, you will attract it, birds of a feather flock together. Just. Do. You.
It can be hard to do you.
Maybe you need to hit rock bottom before you find you. I don’t even think it’s rock bottom…like society isn’t built for us to succeed…and look at the multibillion cosmetic industry which is telling us we’re not good enough from the day we are born, so it would be weird if it wasn’t hard to be yourself. Because you’re not meant to be yourself, you’re not taught to be yourself, you’re taught to be kind and quiet and beautiful.
Well, what is very beautiful are your tattoos, which we know your mum doesn’t like!
Ah, she doesn’t mind them too much anymore! She didn’t like them for a while…
How many do you have?
[she counts] 34, I think!
What’s the one you have on the inside of your lip?
LSD! [laughing]
Hilarious! Do you want to talk about hallucinogenics, magic mushrooms and microdosing?
Yeah sure…but let me say at the outset magic mushrooms are not for everyone because not everyone wants that feeling, or needs that feeling, but magic mushrooms are definitely a beautiful natural way to connect with something spiritual. But now, aged 34, I have to be really conscious of what I put into my body, I’m really sensitive to everything.
Do you miss drinking?
No. I have the odd glass of champagne on an occasion… but drinking for me I find just so predictable and boring now. Maybe I miss it being a good icebreaker, if you’re in a situation with people you don’t know very well…
Yes, you spoke on The Laura Dowling Experience podcast bout how alcohol used to help you socially…
Yeah, before I leant on it [alcohol] so heavily for everything. That Laura Dowling Experience podcast was what, two years ago now? Even then to now how I feel about myself has changed so much… time is crazy…
Talk to us about touring because you are on the road a lot, what’s that like? Do you like being on the go?
Yeah, I like touring, I’ve restless blood! I love moving around.
And how does that work with relationships, especially now that you’re engaged?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder! It’s not like I’m going off on my corporate job to sit in an office in Belgium, I’m doing what I love, and that makes me show up in my relationship as a really good version of myself. Of course, there are nights I really miss Simon and I love him a lot, but I get to come back to him and that in itself is a gift. I don’t focus on the fact that I miss him, I focus on the fact that I have him.
Have you plans to get married?
I’d love something tiny, just me and him, but he would love everyone! I’m a very solitary person, like I’m social for three hours and then I have nothing left! But Simon is the opposite! We’ll see how the wedding works out…but I think he’ll definitely win!
What’s the plan from here on in Kyla?
Keep creating, keep living as an artist, keep being happy. I’m really happy now and when I stop being happy, I’ll figure it out.