When Hayley Morris joins our Zoom call, she’s camera-ready, as though stepping into one of her social media sketches. I notice her visibly relax as I confirm with her PR that we’re just chatting today, not filming video content. We meet after she’s just come off a podcast recording.
“It was really fun,” she grins. “It was My Mate Bought a Toaster, where you go through your purchase history list of, like, really wonderful things you bought over the years.”
The weirdest thing on her list? “So many props from sketches I’ve done on Instagram and TikTok. Like a hula hoop to make a menstrual cup, air suits to dress as a fart… really casual everyday things.”
Her costume cupboard is big enough to kit out an entire fancy dress party. This kind of silliness is exactly what’s made Morris one of the most successful young comedians online. Her sketch series Hotel Vaginapersonifies body parts as chaotic hotel guests, while Me vs Brain tackles intrusive thoughts head-on. Between them, they’ve clocked up tens of millions of views.
Since starting her sketch videos during lockdown, Morris has built an audience of nine million, won TikToker of the Year, Funny Women’s creator of the tear, and turned Me vs Brain into a Sunday Times bestselling book. This year, she’s stepped into filmmaking with shorts like Love & Loss and Hangry, a zombie rom-com.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
What begins as a formal interview in her downstairs living area is soon relocated upstairs to what looks like her recording space, after her whippet Donatello keeps interrupting our conversation (though not noticeably on my end).
“He’s a year-and-a-half,” she apologises, as she walks upstairs. “Proper teenager at the moment.”
“My first viral video happened at the end of lockdown,” Morris recounts. “I remember feeling like… ‘Someone’s buying this for me, I’m in a dream.’ It all felt very magical and very out of the ordinary.”
That growth was rapid. “Hitting that million happened very fast when it all started… that first year, 2021, my life changed in a really brilliant way and a really awful way at the same time.”
I ask her what she means. While her social media numbers were skyrocketing, in April 2021, Hayley Morris’ father died after a long decline with Pick’s disease, a specific type of dementia.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
“My dad passed away very shortly after everything happened. He’s, like, the reason I got into comedy. So it was… hard because the one person I would love to have celebrated with was gone.
“It was like… the worst thing in the world happened. But also, everything I’ve ever dreamed of was coming true.”
Hayley Morris’ sketch series Me vs Brain led to a Sunday Times bestselling book. Image: David Reiss Photography
Her father remains her biggest influence. “He was just such a funny, genuine person, and he was so full of joy,” she says with a fond, far-off look.
“When I was doing my GCSEs, my dad never told me what he got in his O levels, because he said: ‘I don’t want to put you off or have anything in your head.’ Then, when I got my GCSEs, he said: ‘I failed everything.’ But you would never, ever know. He was proof that it didn’t matter what your grades were. You’ve still got all this creativity inside you. I always found that really inspiring.”
Even now, Morris feels like she is carrying on what he couldn’t. “He really wanted to write a TV show, and there was so much he wanted to do. He wanted to get a book published. And I’m like, ‘OK, my duty now is to kind of do what you didn’t finish and didn’t have time to do.’”
Comedy was the background noise of Hayley Morris’ childhood. “Smack the Pony was always on,” she says. “My parents just loved sketch comedy… it was all the rage. Everyone loved sketch.”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
The family also watched Friends every Friday night, Extras, The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. “There are so many things now that I look back on and watch as comfort.”
It’s easy to trace the line from those shows to her own work. “The internet is the place where sketch has been brought back,” she says confidently. “It just thrives online because it’s such easy, bite-sized content.”
Lockdown may have catapulted her to fame, but Morris had been uploading to YouTube for years. “I started my YouTube channel in 2009. Still on the Isle of Wight [where she grew up]. I was way too scared to tell anyone, because I just thought… you can’t go to Tesco without everyone being like, ‘I saw that.’”
For a decade, she posted with comparatively little response. “There are so many times I could have been like, ‘I don’t want to do this. Nothing’s happening.’ But I just loved it. Even if no one was watching, I would do it every week. I just can’t imagine a world where I completely stopped making videos.”
That persistence, she believes, was the key. “A lot of people say to me, like, ‘How do you do it?’ ‘Or what’s the secret?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s just loving it.’”
Now Hayley Morris is tackling longer-form content and short films on YouTube, a move more and more creators are making.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
“For those first 10 years on YouTube, I was doing it all wrong,” she admits. “I was doing the content that belonged on Instagram and TikTok, and it wasn’t performing. So it is actually such a challenge now… going into long form feels really alien to me. It feels like I’m a complete newbie again.”
The draw of YouTube is clear for many content creators. The social media platform has stronger monetisation (through AdSense and brand deals) and supports longer videos where audiences can connect more deeply. It’s also a safer bet: TikTok remains under regulatory scrutiny in the US and EU, while YouTube has proved itself across two decades.
But for Morris, the shift is also about ambition. “[Moving to YouTube] was a really good challenge to my imposter syndrome, because it was like, ‘No, you can do this and you don’t have to feel like you’re not allowed to’. It’s proof to myself that I can do it, and that the voice in my head is like, you’re not good enough… but it’s like… you can!”
The investment is personal as well as financial. “To be completely honest, I’ve not made the money back I’ve spent on these short films,” she divulges. “I’m not sad about it… but it feels like I’m doing something that I really want to do, and that feels right for me and my career.”
She hopes that these short films will serve as calling cards for something bigger. “Going forward, that’s how I’m treating these short films, like mini concepts… something I can take to a commissioner. It feels more exciting doing it that way, because it’s there. I know exactly who these characters are. It feels like I’ve got some control over that.”
Building a career online means living inside the internet’s ecosystem, with all of its rewards and hostility. For Morris, navigating that space has shaped not just her work, but her worldview.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
When I ask her what her ‘big issue’ is, she doesn’t hesitate. “The way people speak to each other online,” she says. “Even when I don’t see it on my own posts, I’ll scroll other people’s and think: why are we so angry? Why is everyone looking for a problem? It’s really sad when you see someone putting themselves out there, and then all the comments are just really mean. That could have taken someone so much to put out there. If it’s not for you, just scroll past it.”
Even with nine million followers and a bestselling book, Hayley Morris admits the self-doubt is never far away. “The not ‘good enough’ voice will always be there,” she says. “But you can either listen to it or prove it wrong. And for me… It’s nice to prove it wrong.”
