Is it true you first performed standup as a drunken dare?
Yes! I went to visit a friend who’d been diagnosed with stage four cancer. A couple of weeks later, I was talking with another friend about how life is all right and you don’t know how lucky you are. I’d just turned 30 at the time and I thought we’d grown up in a really turbulent time. If only I’d known. They said: “We should do something to scare ourselves.” I thought: “Well, I can’t jump out of a plane.” He suggested a comedy course with a gig at the end of it. The rest is history.
Can you recall a gig so bad, it’s now funny?
There was this Christmas gig in a pub on the outskirts of Glasgow. It was Black Friday and all the 18 to 22-year-olds who worked at the local call centre had decided they were finishing at five and going out to this comedy night. But the comedy was an inconvenience to their evening. The gig started at 9pm, they’d been there for four hours. It was so bad that the comics just did the gig to each other. It was the only thing we could do, but we had to do the gig to get paid. If you’re booked, you always do your time.
Do you have any pre-show rituals?
I tend to listen to music and shower. I know showering sounds daft but it’s a reset as that’s me going to work. If I’ve got up and had a shower that morning, I’ll still have one before my gig. For me it’s quite important to always listen to the same playlist of about 100 songs.
What’s your current show, Femme Fatality, about?
There’s been a lot of chat about womanhood recently so I decided to look at how my gender and identity have been something that has taken me until now to understand – and that I’m a gay woman. Even though I’ve been living as a gay woman since I was 17. I talk about the time, the society and the country I grew up in, and the careers I’d chosen before I became a standup, and all of that comes together and we have a lot of fun.
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Enjoy the moment and appreciate your success.
And the worst?
“Don’t be too gay in your material, men don’t like that.” Heaven forbid they get a woman who’s gay on stage – this will throw men! And stuff like, “You need to change how you look and you need to change who you are to be accepted on a stage.” I never did change and I’ve always been accepted on stage. Ironically, the people who have given me this advice no longer do comedy.
Any bugbears from the world of comedy?
The frustration for me – I’m in my 40s, working-class, Scottish – is there’s not many of our voices on the TV. I certainly didn’t grow up with voices like mine on the TV. It’s getting better with regards to the industry moving out of London, looking further afield and trying to be more representative of minority communities. I think class is more important now that ever.
My other bugbear is people looking down their nose at club comics. Club comics do an awful lot of heavy lifting at the weekend because you and your art don’t always make people laugh. You have to be able to do both. Go out and present your art as an artist at festivals and fringes, and you still have to be able to go into a club, anywhere in the UK, and make people laugh.
What are you currently excited about?
Everything! I’m getting married in September – it’s going to be a great wedding. I’m really excited about Brendan Rodgers being back at Celtic and more trophies coming Celtic’s way. I’m excited about the fringe. You just kind of dread it creeping up on you but once it starts it’s fine. There’s lots going on – and lots to be grateful for.
Susie McCabe: Femme Fatality is at Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh, 2-27 August
