MUSICAL COMEDY

Last year, one woman set out on an incredible journey. There were tears. There was laughter. There were good times, there were bad, and there were midnight YouTube sessions in front of her cat, as Eilidh MacAskill attempted a performance on a tiny guitar for every day of 2007. Five months after the final Eilidh’s Daily Ukulele Ceilidh, MacAskill is back, exploiting the inherent comic potential of George Formby’s instrument of choice with a new stand-up direction.

‘The public response to the Ukulele Ceilidh has been amazing,’ she says. ‘I have to say I’m quite enjoying being a minor Glasgow celebrity. I’m not quite at the level of a River City actor, but I’m getting there. Quite a few people recognise me from the Christmas ceilidhs [televised on the BBC] and a lady in a shop in Inverness said she’d heard me on the radio.’

Feeling a bit of a void in her existence once she realised that the daily performances were ‘bringing much-needed meaning to my life’, MacAskill decided to push the ukulele performance genre. She describes her upcoming slots as ‘stand-up with a uke. I did the ceilidh as a theatre show in London and the marketing manager said, “Oh, I didn’t know it was stand-up. We could have got more people if we’d known that”. So I thought I’d give it a go. I made a new song using the titles of spam messages I’ve been sent in a bid to do “edgy” comedy. That’s quite funny.’

The Stand, Glasgow, Thu 8–Sat 10 May.