Star of iconic Channel 4 show bringing live conspiracy theory tour to Scotland

Scottish Sun

02-05-2025

THE funnyman, 60, enjoyed a seriously strange sightseeing trip as he learned about the likes of flat-earthers and UFO hunters.
DOM Joly hopes Scots can help him tackle tin foil hatters on his bonkers book tour – after travelling the world to learn all sorts of conspiracies.
The comedian, best known for Trigger Happy TV, set out on a global journey to pen a unique guide into some of the most weird and wonderful theories.
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Dom Joly travelled the world learning about conspiracies.
Credit: PA
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Some believe that Finland isn't a real country.
Credit: Getty
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He's coming to Scotland for Boswell Book Festival.
Credit: Supplied
By meeting the folk behind the unusual beliefs, the funnyman, 60, enjoyed a seriously strange sightseeing trip as he learned about the likes of flat-earthers and UFO hunters.
And he's heading for Boswell Book Festival next month and looks forward to meeting believers and non-believers alike when he talks about The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World.
Dom said: 'I'm very happy to talk to people. But it's kind of one of the problems with conspiracy theories.
'If someone comes along they're always focused on a single issue. So they're obsessed with chemtrails and they have literally spent 15 years just studying this thing.
'You can't possibly argue and when you get the real single-issue conspiracy theorists, they're like religious zealots. I can say 'I don't agree with you, but I can't argue with you' and that's not very good for either side.
'There's also a geographical element to it. People in Scotland still talk to each other. Whereas a lot of conspiracists in America live almost entirely remote existences online so no one tells you you're talking s**e.'
Amongst Dom's favourite conspiracy theories is the belief that Finland isn't a real country. A Reddit user once shared a joke about the small nation and it was quickly picked up by some impressionable people.
He said: 'The conspiracy started off as a joke on Reddit and everyone knew it was a joke. But 20 per cent of people took it seriously and the conspiracy is that in 1917 Russia and Japan invented a country called Finland and that it's actually just sea so that they could have the fishing rights.
'So they claim when I fly to Finland I'm landing in a remote part of either Sweden or Russia and that all four million inhabitants of Finland are crisis actors like a massive Truman Show.
'I found the bloke who started it and he said he was told that Finland didn't exist because Russia and Japan conspired to invent the country so that they could have all the fish, which was then transported to Japan for sushi.
Dom Joly creates hilarious comedy skit to highlight small business struggles
'Clearly that's BS ecause I just flew there, right? I couldn't 100 per cent prove to you now that Finland exists. I could probably prove 99 per cent that it does and it's that one per cent where all conspiracy theories live.'
He's also heard how Paul McCartney was cloned in 1966; how Avril Lavigne stopped performing 10 years ago and was replaced by a woman called Melissa; and that Prince Philip killed Diana by going to the tunnel in Paris and putting in an industrial laser to blind the car driver.
But Dom reckons conspiracy theories can best be broken down into three big causes — the assassination of JFK, 9/11 and Coronavirus. He also thinks the advent of YouTube and social media has emboldened dangerous characters who are profiting from things they don't even believe in.
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Dom Joly in the iconic Trigger Happy TV hidden camera and prank show
Credit: CHANNEL 4
The comic said: 'I can pinpoint the exact moment when they went from being harmless and fun to more dangerous and it was when Kellyanne Conway, who was Donald Trump's spokeswoman in 2016, used the term 'alternative facts'.
'And the moment you have alternative facts, frankly we're f***ed. During lockdown I was stuck in my room and spending too much time online and I noticed the rise in conspiracies.
'Conspiracies tend to happen a lot when everything's in turmoil and the economy's bad and people get troubled, and I started to talk to these people a lot or argue with them
'And I just couldn't work out whether they were genuinely believing this stuff or were just doing it for clicks. I don't think many were harming anyone, except for that erosion of truth. But it's the grifters that I really have a problem with.
'The people like Alex Jones who literally are making money by claiming the kids killed in school shootings are actors, then the parents get hassled online and they have to move house and stuff.
BOSWELL BOOK FESTIVAL
Main festival events will be live at Dumfries House. Tickets range from £5 to £15.
Events in the main three venues will also be live-streamed.
Online tickets are £5 per event or £40 for a Rover Pass giving access to all online events.
You will receive the links needed to access online events via the e-ticket that will be emailed to you.
Tickets also available over the phone by calling 0333 0035 077.
Lines are open Mon - Sat, 09:00 - 18:00 until Friday 9 May.
However, there are some conspiracy theories that even Dom was swayed by.
He explained: 'I'm not sure UFOs are a conspiracy. I just think we'd so be arrogant to think that in all the universe we're the only people.
'And there have been more and more verified sightings of weird things in the sky. But UFO means unidentified flying object and it doesn't necessarily mean aliens.
'So I'm in two minds about that. I think there is some sort of phenomenon that maybe we're not aware of, but it seems very odd because all they seem to do — if they do exist — is land in Alabama and probe toothless rednecks. Why not just go to the White House?'
He added: 'Weirdly, as much as I had a massive problem with the anti-vax people because I think they did a lot of damage to vulnerable people by frightening them, I have questions about the idea that Covid started as a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, when weirdly the largest coronavirus research facility in China is like half a mile from that market.
'It seems quite a coincidence and I think it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it was a lab leak, and that the Chinese government might try and shut that down.
'But that's an accident. Then it gets turned into this massive conspiracy that it's being used as a bio-weapon and that it's not affecting Jewish people or Chinese people, which was one of the conspiracies, and that vaccines are being used by Bill Gates to put a microchip in your brain. So all these things maybe start with a kernel of something and then turn into insane theories.'
And for anyone coming to see Dom at the book festival, he urges folk to show some common sense.
He joked: 'In the old days you'd have some guy raving in the village square about how the world's ending or whatever. Now they can all meet up and that gives them power.'
Dom Joly is appearing at Boswell Book Festival on May 10, tickets can be booked boswellbookfestival.co.uk.