This Road Has Tolls

Glenn Wool operates like a stand-up pirate, a Canadian who built his career in the UK and spent years drifting from airport to airport with no permanent address. Released as an audio album by Stand Up! Records in 2017, this hour captures Wool’s road-weary, boisterous perspective on what happens when a life of constant travel starts pushing back. The material has its roots in his 2013 Edinburgh Fringe run, recorded live to capture the booming, theatrical delivery that balances a stoner drawl with sudden, loud bursts of camp righteousness.\n\nThe centerpiece of the set is a grueling long-haul flight where Wool had to endure a slipped disc while sitting next to a Buddhist monk, a scenario that forced him to contemplate whether the physical agony was karmic payback for a lifetime of minor sins. He spent the era nursing a bit of professional exhaustion after an expensive, unsuccessful attempt to break into the Los Angeles scene—a failure he turns into self-deprecating fuel.\n\nWool does not mind wading into murky waters, targeting the British royal family, the horsemeat scandal, and his own aging body with equal irreverence. His most personal and sharpest bit centers on his grandfather, a Second World War veteran with Alzheimer’s who was accused of “abuse” by a care home worker for snapping a mild insult. It is a classic Wool setup: loud, slightly chaotic, and deeply unsympathetic to modern oversensitivity, yet delivered with a warmth that keeps the room on his side.