She has been a familiar Scottish voice on our comedy stages and screens for almost a decade, but it was a recent appearance on Channel 4’s Taskmaster that turned Fern Brady into a bona fide household name. Her witty rewrite of Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’ (birthing the viral line ‘it is me Fern Brady, me Fern Brady’), where she effortlessly used the words ‘obsequious’, ‘sycophant’ and ‘serendipitous’ to diss her fellow contestants, could be seen as a hilarious foreshadowing of her latest creative endeavour: penning a memoir. 

^{Fern Brady on Taskmaster / Picture: Andy Devonshire}

Brady’s first book Strong Female Character looks back upon formative moments through the lens of her recent autism diagnosis. But fans of her stand-up or Wheel Of Misfortune podcast (which she co-hosted with Alison Spittle and wishes ‘could be taken down’ now that she’s entering her ‘Radio Four era’) know that this Bathgate girl has more jaw-dropping tales to share than your average comedian-cum-author could hope to harvest in a lifetime. 

‘There was a lot of chaos early on but thankfully the last decade has been very boring,’ she says from her London flat on a rare day off. The chaos she refers to includes being unknowingly groomed by a local shopkeeper, escaping a police officer and their husband after a threesome, being admitted to a dysfunctional mental-health unit, and stripping to pay her way through university. Rest assured, laugh-out-loud moments arise often, but an uncompromising darkness sits underneath each arresting chapter.

 ^{Picture: Raphael Neal}

‘I didn’t write it to advance my comedy career,’ she attests. ‘So much of what’s in the book is really embarrassing. All the late-diagnosed autistic women books I read made me think “why have they all had really calm lives!?” So I was trying to make the thing that I wished existed when I was growing up because I just couldn’t find information anywhere. I know my version of it is more common than you might think.’ 

After extracts of the book were published, Brady instantly received an influx of messages from readers. ‘There were people being like, “I’m autistic and I’ve never read anyone describe this before”. It’s not like I’m the first to mention being autistic in the public eye, it’s just I’ve been talking about meltdowns: the uncomfortable bit that no one wants to mention. A lot of autistic people who are speaking about it tend to come from the same middle-class backgrounds; probably because it takes a lot of money, time and resources to get diagnosed. I think that affects the kind of portrayals we see.’

^{BBC New Comedy Awards 2022 / Picture: Ellis O'Brien}

As well as being soul-bearing and entertaining, Strong Female Character is heavily researched. Medical studies and journals are referenced to substantiate the often-political jabs Brady takes at the healthcare systems that failed her, as well as the inherent misogyny which intersected them (autistic women often present differently to men and are less likely to get diagnosed earlier in life). ‘I was always getting told the way I was behaving was really wrong by people in my family, and at school, when really the way I was acting was autistic.’

Brady grapples with the process of reconciliation throughout the book, but ‘awkwardly’ had to get her parents to agree in writing not to sue her for the way they’re depicted. Their reaction, she says, was characteristically unenthusiastic: ‘did you know Paco Rabanne was a real person? Because he died today,’ was her dad’s response to the book getting a five-star review, while her mother was proud but ‘didn’t mention literally any detail about it. I don’t know if this is a Catholic thing but they gloss over everything. Literally someone could die in front of you and they would say they’re looking well today. That’s just how it is.’

When she was kicked out of the family home, an offer for Edinburgh University was Fern’s one-way ticket out of the provincial life she so despised. ‘In a way, I’m glad that I was autistic growing up in Bathgate because I think it helped me overlook all the norms that were laid out for us. If I’d followed them, I don’t think I would have ended up leaving or finding stand-up.’

After entering the open-mic circuit in her final year, Brady made the final of So You Think You’re Funny? at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe (she came joint third) and has gone on to present numerous solo hours and appear regularly on mainstream TV. She’s currently touring her latest stand-up show Autistic Bikini Queen but, unlike the title suggests, it doesn’t focus on her recent diagnosis. ‘Most of Autistic Bikini Queen is about marriage and death,’ she deadpans. ‘I’m a canny businesswoman so I know not everyone wants to hear about autism.’

^{Picture: Raphael Neal}

In the show, she touches on a ‘near death’ experience that took place while writing the book. ‘My doctor sent me for an MRI scan and they found this growth, so he basically made out that I had a brain tumour. I thought “that’s it, I’m gonna die” . . . It was a pituitary cyst that does nothing. But I did have one night of thinking, “if you could write the book as if you’re about to die, how would you write it?” It gave me a good rush of don’t-give-a-fuckness.’ 

Perhaps more of us ought to grapple with our own mortality if it births something as bold as Strong Female Character. ‘Everyone should have the opportunity to feel it. But the doctor should tell you the next day that they’re a shit-stirring bitch of a drama queen.’ 

Fern Brady: Autistic Bikini Queen, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Sunday 26 March (sold out), as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival; Strong Female Character is out now published by Brazen.