Fred MacAulay: Twenty Fifteen

Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, New Road, Wednesday, October 21

AFTER 18 years behind the mic at BBC Scotland, veteran stand-up Fred MacAulay is hitting the road again – and bringing the best of his last three Edinburgh Fringe shows to Brighton.

“I toured in 2012 and did a lot of gigs in England and Wales,” he says.

“Any of the people who came along back then won’t hear any of the same old shtick again.”

He is first to confess the last few years have been important for Scotland both in terms of politics and sport.

“It was just phenomenal,” he says. “We had the Commonwealth Games, then the referendum, then the Ryder Cup. We’re good at putting on events, but not winning them. So many of our teams grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.

“When I first started doing stand-up I did a routine about Scottish football supporters – you know them not from their tartan scarves, but their calculators: ‘mathematically we might still qualify if Ireland don’t pick up any points from...’

“We gifted Gibraltar their first ever international goal in a competitive match during the European qualifiers [in March]. Wayne Rooney has scored more goals for England than the Scottish team scored in the last decade!”

He thinks it plays into the Scottish sense of humour.

“Generally a lot of Scottish humour is self-deprecating,” he says. “There’s a wee bit of that in my stuff.

“When I first came down to the Comedy Store in London my whole act was about what we do in Scotland, and how different it is from what you people do.

“Kim Kinnie [former Comedy Store artistic director] took me aside and said I had to do material that isn’t Scotland does this, England does that if I wanted to be accepted as a UK comic.”

But he still believes a comic’s perspective is affected by the life they have led.

“I have got a lot of life experience behind me,” he says. “I’ve got kids that are older than some of the bouncy young comedians – and I think that is reflected in the people that come along to my shows. I always ask how many students we have in, and there’s never more than two or three.”

Although he spent his mornings on BBC Radio Scotland for the last 18 years – so he could be close to his young family and spend most of the week in his own bed – he still managed to find time for gigs.

“Some years I wouldn’t do many, other years I was doing more than 100,” he says. “They are different disciplines – I did take a lot of the radio audience into the stand-up world, but they assumed they were going to see Fred, the nice man on the radio.”

He did enjoy his time on the airwaves, which stopped in March, although he admits he sometimes faced some interesting juxtapositions of guests.

“When the film Filth came out both James McAvoy and Irvine Welsh were doing press tour,” he says.

“We got them in the studio for 25 minutes, face-to-face with James who is a big star and was very funny and engaging, while Irvine would come in a bit from leftfield. They left the studio and five minutes later I was talking to a podiatrist about footcare. I was hoping James and Irvine were out of the building – not hearing about how to dry between your toes.”

A major shift for his country was the political awakening which came with the Scottish referendum, and the following general election which saw a landslide victory for the Scottish National Party.

“I’m going to talk about the referendum and give pointers to people in England,” he says.

“There is an EU referendum coming our way in the not too distant future.

“Everyone’s waiting for the referendum question – we went through that process in Scotland.

"The Scottish government proposed the question ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent nation?’ but they had to drop the ‘Do you agree?’ part.

“The Scottish people and Tartan Army are a very agreeable bunch – they like agreeing to things: ‘aye, of course I do’.

“When you analyse it you see how powerful those words can be.

“They had a Yes campaign up here, and instead of a No campaign it was Better Together. Those were two very positive words making a negative. I remember an English language lecturer who said you couldn’t do that.”

Starts 7.30pm, tickets £15/£13. Call 01273 709709.