★★★★★ “Insanely original.” (Broadway Baby)
Amy doesn’t get angry and she’s starting to feel left out, so she’s on a quest to feel fury; from what she can discern from the world around her, it appears to be all the rage…literally.
Blending stand-up with lyrical storytelling, Definitions of Toast explores having an emotional processing lag, feminine rage, addiction, neurodiversity, family dynamics and the messy joy of self-discovery in your thirties. Alongside all this soul-searching, Amy Matthews is also attempting to understand why her mum has started storing milk in the boot of her car, whether a potion she made in 2002 cursed the entire world, and how a pavement stand-off with a bird became an existential wake-up call.
Everyone else seems furious all the time, but Amy’s emotions arrive late — “by carrier pigeon,” as she puts it — if they arrive at all. The result is a life spent people-pleasing, caregiving and accidentally casting herself as Best Supporting Actor in her own story. In Definitions of Toast, Amy embarks on a quest to finally experience anger, whilst unpicking her pattern of falling in love with alcoholics and navigating the joy and vulnerability of queerness in her thirties.
Amy Matthews is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor originally from Essex and now based in Edinburgh. Her previous critically acclaimed shows include I Feel Like I’m Made of Spiders (now an ITVX special) and Commute With The Foxes (released as a vinyl record through Monkey Barrel Records). She has appeared on Comedy Central Live (2024, 2025), BBC Radio 4’s Comedy Club, Off Menu podcast and is a regular lead writer and panellist on BBC Radio Scotland’s Breaking the News.
Amy played Annie in the BAFTA award-winning Scot Squad for three series, appeared as Cassandra in the BBC comedy Gifted, and most recently as DI Rita in Eastenders. She is also the host of the official English Heritage podcast and previously hosted the BBC snooker podcast Snookered.
Her writing credits include Have I Got News For You, Scot Squad, Horrible Histories writers’ rooms and projects in development with Pirate Productions, Little Wander and BBC Studios. She is the co-creator, alongside comedian Ben Pope, and host of the quarterly Comedians Do Poems night at Review Bookshop in Peckham.
A sought-after tour support, Amy regularly opens for Ed Byrne, as well as Tom Allen, Sarah
Keyworth, Suzi Ruffell, Tom Davis and Jessica Fostekew, amongst others. The List has also
named her among their “Hot 100” cultural contributors on three occasions.
