Alistair Ogden has Found the Sweet Spot

The rising comedian's journey from Vancouver to Toronto has given him the perfect lens to poke fun at Canadian culture.

by Sean Orr

Published on February 12, 2025

It’s fair to say that comedian Alistair Ogden is between worlds. Moving from Vancouver to Toronto has given him a unique, and hilarious, perspective about the people from the two cities. Growing up, Ogden and many other Vancouverites were instilled with an almost automatic and subconscious hatred of Toronto. They decide elections while we’re still at the polls, they hold all the financial and political power, their sports teams dominate the national narrative, and their bands get all the grants.

On the flip side, Vancouverites tend to be smug about the mild climate and beautiful scenery, something that Ogden has narrowed in on for his routines. One reel on his Instagram sums it up perfectly: “The thing is, in Vancouver, people there have the nature, the mountains, the ocean. And in Toronto, instead of those things, everyone here has… a personality.” As expected, Vancouverites in the comments were not impressed.

It’s that same attitude, though, that makes comics from Vancouver so good. “I think people in Toronto are just used to going to more live events,” Ogden says. “People move to Vancouver specifically to ski and hike and mountain bike and all these things that are pretty individualistic, so arts and culture is secondary. You have a lot of people who are a little bit anxious, so the audiences kind of reflect that, especially if they don’t know the comedians on the line up. So not only do you have to tell a good solid joke, you have to win over those anxious audiences, whereas in other cities around the world those audiences are on your side. It’s a really good training ground, but it can also be demoralizing”.

In a sense, he’s also caught between two countries. “Growing up in Canada I was always the British kid, even though I never had an accent, but my Dad did,” he says. “Then I go back to England and it’s like I don’t belong here at all.” Still, it features prominently in his bits. He has a long running bit where a heckler told him “Princess Diana is being mean” and he did his first ever stand-up set in a British accent, only to reveal at the end he was actually Canadian. “I did a whole Jimmy Carr/Ricky Gervais thing with edgy British-style jokes. And I guess my accent is pretty good, so when I told everyone at the end they were just confused. No laughs.”

He seems to have found the ‘goldilocks zone’ in his material, seamlessly mixing pop culture, politics, and personal anecdotes. One such reel goes like this: “People were happy that Justin Trudeau resigned because they hate his policies or whatever. I’m not, because it’s insane that we had a man going through a break-up running the country for 18 months. People were saying ‘Oh, he’s not solving inflation’ and I’m like yeah, he’s figuring out his attachment style! I had a 5 year relationship end and I was working from home, and every 90 minutes I had to take a break to cry into a pillow… and I was just a social media manager!”

When asked how he seems to write political material so effortlessly, he says “That’s been the stuff that has blown up for me. Anytime you have a hot take it’s good for the internet. But I don’t usually go out of my way to write that kind of material. Usually it starts as a personal anecdote and then I see if there’s a personal angle. With the Trudeau one I was just trying to write about being a single guy.”

It’s not the typical low-hanging fruit. There’s empathy here. It’s why he’s so good at crowd work and why you feel like you’re in on the joke with him. He attributes part of this to comedian Pete Holmes. “He’s so playful and positive and loving,” he says. “And that’s the type of comedy I wanna do too.” Maybe that’s more where the Diana comparison comes in. He’s the people’s princess of comedy.

Legendary comedian Darryl Lenox once asked Ogden what his big goal was. After rattling off a few goals like headlining a show, and playing in a theatre, Lenox pressed him. “No, big, impossible goal.” While it was really difficult to say because of that ever-so-Canadian mix of humility and low self-esteem, he answered “I want to be a Jerry Seinfeld type. Have my own show, tour these massive venues.”

With the right mix of self-deprecating humour, poking fun at the difference between Vancouver and Toronto, thoughtful political insights, and razor sharp crowd work, it’s not that impossible. It’s easy to see why Alistair Ogden is a rising star in Canada’s comedy scene and now sharing a bill with Seinfeld. He’s really found that sweet spot.