Tell us a little bit about your new show, Best Behaviour I had a heart attack last year, so the show is about having a heart attack when you’re 44, getting healthy and the expectation that you’ll change your life. And how everyone has an opinion on your heart attack, and how to live your life, which they’ll tell you while they’re taking a line of cocaine, while I’m like ‘I don’t even know you, you’re a total fucking stranger to me.’ It’s wild.

You’re also doing a Scottish Comedy Legends slot at The Stand Oh, yes, I am. I’m getting interviewed, right? I’m a legend [she cracks up]. I can’t believe I’m that old now.

I know you’ve done a good bit of telly and podcasting, as well as being an actual legend, but would you still say you’re a club comic? Yeah. I’m a club comic. But that’s sometimes sneered at, especially in Edinburgh. They’ll say ‘they’re a great club comic’ and we all know what that means… but you can never underestimate the positives of being able to play a club. That’s what keeps you fit. That’s the job. The Fringe is not the job. The Fringe is the work trip, the presentation. Some people get that the wrong way around: no, no, no. It’s the other 49 weeks of the year that matter. 

What’s your favourite place to perform? The Stand, Glasgow, every day of the week, twice on a Sunday. The greatest room in the United Kingdom to be a stand-up. When I started out, people would say ‘you’ll never learn playing The Stand’ and they were right, because it’s so perfect. It’s like playing football on a bowling green. You need to do the asphalt parks and the bumpy pitches to appreciate that getting to play that stage is your reward. So many people don’t acknowledge that. I hear them in podcasts going ‘I need to play that Hydro.’ That’s like me saying I need to play the Hollywood Bowl. Fuck off and have a word to yourself. Don’t be mental. Not everybody’s The Beatles. If the King’s is good enough for Connolly, it’s good enough for your groundbreaking five minutes.

That’s a great opening to talk about you winning the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit Of Glasgow Award in 2024. I’ve rarely seen anyone so delighted to win a prize Billy gets to see the videos, so when he said I’ve got this wonderful Glasgow way of lecturing my audience, I’m like ‘yes. Yes, I do. You’re quite right Billy, and it’s your fault I do that, because you’re my guy.’ And when he says ‘keep doing it for women and keep doing it for lesbians,’ forbye the sentiment, that tells me the man is still that old socialist hippy. He’s never, ever punched down. Go back and dig out any Billy Connolly album, watch any video; you will be hard-tasked to find something that’s not appropriate in today’s world.

Is it still important to have female and lesbian role models? In Femme Fatality [her 2023 show], I talked about lesbians on TV. There was Sue Perkins, Sandi Toksvig: very intelligent, looked a certain way, had a certain type of persona. And that’s great, because that was visibility. But I never really found any lesbians like me. Nobody spoke about me. But we’ve got a terrible affliction in this country towards the working class. We laugh at poverty, whether it’s Only Fools And Horses or Still Game. I’ve never known a nation so obsessed with class. Our grandparents rebuilt the country after the war, and between 1945 and 1979 the inequality gap in Britain narrowed. And then 1979 happened, inequality got bigger, and we became a self-centred nation. Then you’ve the heroin epidemic and ‘oh, they’re all dole-scroungers’; that came from de-industrialisation. So when commissioners or editors or directors make a sitcom or sit in a writers’ room, they have a perception of a feckless working class, even though they don’t know people like that. That goes on our television and perpetuates the myth. I’m all for having more visibility for my own community and for women, but let’s get the working class going too. But they don’t want to show that, because then we would become united.

You’re not mellowing, then? I’m getting worse. Honest to god, I’m probably about 18 months away from a bandana and moving to Cuba with a guerrilla army. Auld Che Guevara McCabe.

Finally, is there anything else you’d like to cover? I’ve told you enough, Jo. I’ve told you enough. Tell my agent that’s the best interview you’ve ever done. Tell her to get me in with everybody. Tell her Susie’s fucking on it...

Susie McCabe: Best Behaviour, Assembly George Square, Wednesday 30 July–Sunday 24 August, 8.35pm; Scottish Comedy Legends: Susie McCabe, The Stand 3, Thursday 21 August, 12.15pm.