A car breaking down when you’re hours away from an important Edinburgh fringe warm-up gig might sound like the start of an entertaining bit for most comedians, but for the Glaswegian comic Susie McCabe it was the start of a story that led to her being whisked to an intensive care unit (ICU).
McCabe, 44, who has become one of Scotland’s most prominent comedians since taking up the profession at 30, was having her car fixed after a gig in the market town of Chipping Sodbury, just outside Bristol, when she started to have chest pains.
Her brother was with her and asked if it was a panic attack before he started to Google where the nearest A&E department was. “I turned to him and said: ‘You need to call an ambulance,’” McCabe recalled.
Within three minutes an ambulance was on the scene and soon McCabe was in the ICU at Bristol Royal Infirmary being informed she had had a heart attack and would need angioplasty immediately. A consultant told her that if she continued smoking, her heart would stop.
It was a sobering moment for the comic, known for her appearances on Live At the Apollo and her own special on BBC Scotland, who married her partner Nicola Copeland last year and was gearing up for another appearance at the Edinburgh fringe.
“Obviously your habits have to change but you just contemplate everything,” she said. “I lay in a single room in that intensive care unit for between 24 and 36 hours, and you just do a lot of thinking. I said to myself: ‘you are 44, this is a shot across the bows.’”
Although she admitted she will miss crisps, McCabe said the other changes to her lifestyle have been relatively smooth. “A switch has been flicked which said: ‘You can’t do that any more. You’ve used up all your cigarette tokens, McCabe. You’ve had a good time but that’s over.’”
During her recovery, McCabe tweeted about her new diet: “Farewell fags, poppers and Red Bull … we were good pals but you’re a bad influence on me. Hello hummus, yoghurt and sadness.”
After her operation and recovery, McCabe had to decide whether to go ahead with her Edinburgh solo show: . She had sold 3,500 tickets in the buildup, but the fringe can be gruelling work for comics, and certainly isn’t ideal for someone getting over major heart surgery.
Hannah Gadsby said during her first experience at the fringe in 2006 she “lost an obscene amount of money and cried thrice in public”. It can make careers, but also break the spirit if it goes awry.
Doctors agreed to McCabe playing at Edinburgh but with strict conditions: she had to get a taxi to and from the venue, and cancel all her other shows to solely focus on the Edinburgh fringe.
“I have never been so relaxed going into Edinburgh,” she said. “That’s partly because I’ve sold 50% of my tickets, and the other part is me saying: ‘Who cares what a reviewer thinks about your show?’
“As long as those 350 people have left that auditorium smiling, that’s the most important thing. It actually doesn’t matter, because life is short and you are so fortunate to do a job that helps people get away from their problems.”
The heart attack won’t feature in Merchant of Menace, which is a meditation on getting older, new responsibilities and McCabe’s need to be mischievous, but it might be explored in next year’s show.
“I don’t think it’ll be the full show but it’ll be part of the show,” she said, before reflecting on her new approach to life. “Act One is done, we’re currently in the interval and Act Two will start in the autumn. That’s the way I’ve got to look at it.”
