Glenn Wool on credit cards, jacuzzis and God

For all his laid-back Canuck stoner schtick, Glenn Wool is a very busy man. Speaking through a hungover haze, the veteran stand up of 20 years breaks down his past week: “I had to shoot a commercial on Tuesday, doing the Sex Pistols credit card – I’m the spokesperson for that, ha – and then I shot The John Bishop Show on Wednesday, presented Kerrang! Awards on Thursday and then went to Ireland for three days.” This whistlestop weekend tour had taken a toll on his liver, but clearly not dampened his diligence; he was out on stage that very night previewing his forthcoming Fringe show, Creator, I Am but a Pawn.

The show takes on a spiritual theme: “It’s about whether or not there’s an unseen hand in any of my travels. A ghostly passenger who’s watching, because some of the things, I’m like, ‘Am I making God laugh?’ Some of the situations I get into I’m like ‘Come on, somebody had to have set that up.’” It’s a departure from last year’s Wool’s Gold, which was more of a ‘greatest hits’ show. “It’s kind of new this year. This one’s interesting because it’s actually sticking to the theme that I named it – because you name them so far in advance, ‘What’s the theme? Err… I don’t know.’”

For a lot of acts, the early summer months are spent frantically chiselling gags into shape in time for their August debut, but Creator had a little longer to gestate: “I only do a new show every two years now. I used to write one every year and there’s benefits to that – sometimes you can really push yourself and come up with something – but I think just as you get a little older, you wanna write a good show that’s gonna consume you. It’s going to consume your life!” The long game pays well, as it allows material to bleed into his club work. “I think there’s nothing better – for a joke you’re going to tell in a theatre – if you can make that click in a club, that’s absolutely going to bombard a theatre crowd. Depending on how you’re doing it though, you keep the swears out and it’s a good joke, you know? Sometimes we’ve got jokes we tell in clubs that we’d never even tell in a locker room.”

Religion is, of course, one of those things that’s hard to make work in live comedy; too thorny for the theatre and too weighty for a Friday night – though a viewing of Wool’s essential hour No Land’s Man on Netflix will show you he’s more than capable of making faith funny. He sidesteps the controversy in the new show by looking at God as the original prankster, taking the religion out of God. “I’m not opposed to religion. Any time people start shouting about ‘Oh, it’s the root of all evil’ – I really don’t think it is,” he muses. “When I was very little, I was very scared about it, which is probably why I’m not that religious now.”

Wool shook off his Christian upbringing early on, bunking off Sunday School (“they don’t know YOU, they don’t take attendance"). He remembers, "So while all the kids were walking I would just branch off and just go run around the church for a while. When they were coming back, I would rejoin them,” he laughs. “But then I started asking questions and churches never like questions, especially from kids that they can’t, you know, threaten with Hell.”

The show’s name and its theme comes from one New Year's Eve, when Wool was taking a particularly soul-searching sauna. “My friend calls and he’s like, ‘Okay, the party’s down in Vancouver and it’s gonna be here and see you in an hour,’ and I was like ‘Yeah, yeah okay’ and then I just took a breath and thought, I don’t want to go all the way, I don’t want to take a train for an hour right now and then I don’t know anybody at that party and I just in my head said ‘Let it go kid, just let it go – don’t go chasing, you’re having fun here.’” No sooner had he ditched his evening plans and slid an introspective hot tub than “The door flew open: five young women in bikinis and one dude with a tray of jello shots lolloping along behind them came in and they’re like, ‘Oh, is it okay if we get in the hot tub with ya?’ and I was like ‘Yeah, it is.’"

Now the jacuzzi philosopher is fronting an advertising campaign for a Virgin Money credit card – an odd fate for one of the original rock ‘n’ roll comedians, even when the plastic carries its own punk credentials. His opinion on all this? “Well – ha – I know what it would have been had I not been connected to it. But, er, the way I looked at it, Richard Branson is actually responsible for that album [Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols] being finished, you know? Virgin Records did that, so there is a connection. My feeling is, the Sex Pistols didn’t make a whole ton of money, so any way they can monetise that, that’s their own business. And I like the Sex Pistols, and I have three credit cards. It would be hypocritical of me not to do it.” He’s more than a little proud of his contribution to the history of punk. “I listened to the song Anarchy in the UK and I was just like ‘Oh, you know what, in my own little way I’m now connected to that and that’s such a fantastic song and a fantastic sentiment. Put my picture up. I don’t mind.’”

His love of music is written through everything he does, from his material to his very image. Talking about his appearance on BBC One’s variety tentpole The John Bishop Show, one of his main sources of anticipation was choosing his own entrance music: “When John said, ‘Please welcome to the stage, Glenn Wool’ to the strains of The Tragically Hip’s New Orleans is Sinking – which I think is one of the most fantastic songs; it’s like the unofficial Canadian national anthem. And it’s my favourite band. So just to take the stage in one of the finest moments of my life – just to have them provide the background music for that too, it was just unbelievable.”

The truly faithful read religious meaning into everything, and there’s more than a little of that in Wool – that sense of wonder. To him, God isn’t the fire-and-brimstone patriarch who stamps out childish curiosity: he’s an omnipotent 'bro' who magics you a hot tub just when you’re at your most stoic. “I think it’s philosophy, and philosophy is a good thing, you know?” Plus, who knows, maybe God’s also a fan of Ontarian rock.

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Glenn Wool plays about a million shows in the Northwest this July, as well as the Edinburgh Fringe. For all dates, see glennwool.com