Comedian Susie McCabe on health, stand-up and honeymoons

Last month, Susie McCabe finally managed to find a space in the diary to jet off on her long-awaited honeymoon.

Lounging in the tropical sunshine, the Scots comedian was afforded the chance to celebrate her first anniversary with wife Nicola and reflect on a year that was, by anyone’s standards, fairly hectic.

And that’s without factoring in a scramble to secure tickets for her beloved Oasis on day one of the holiday.

As well as tying the knot, she’d entertained thousands at her stand-up shows, sold out her Edinburgh Fringe run, launched a hit podcast and been name-checked by Sir Billy Connolly.

But one moment on the road in July, specifically in the market town of Chipping Sodbury just outside Bristol, threatened to put the brakes on everything.

‘They saved my life’

Susie, 44, had started to have bad chest pains, which she initially put down to indigestion or heartburn.

Things worsened though and it turned out to be a much more serious issue – a heart attack that required an urgent trip to hospital and an urgent operation.

“I think when you’re Scottish, you kind of know you’re going to have one don’t you?” Susie tells P.S.

“You make the 999 call and then three minutes later the blues and twos are coming down the street. Just an absolute riot, an absolute nonsense.

“You arrive at the hospital and there’s a full crash team and before you know it, you can see your heart on a screen and there’s a clot in it… it’s wild.

“Thankfully the Bristol Heart Institute looked after me incredibly well and they have saved my life.”

Within two hours of phoning the ambulance, Susie was in a cardiology ward. She spent two days in an intensive care unit hooked up to various machines and having tests run at all hours.

After three days in hospital, she was allowed to travel back home to continue her recovery, and she’s full of praise for the treatment and support she was given – especially as she was hundreds of miles away from home and her family.

“From the person who asked what you were wanting to eat to the consultant, everybody in between, they were just unbelievable,” she said.

“They were lovely and had total sympathy because you’re obviously not from there. I was so well cared for.”

Making changes

While as a comedian she’s naturally able to have a laugh about what happened, it’s clear that Susie is taking the scare very seriously.

She’s quickly adopted a number of lifestyle changes, like giving up smoking and swapping Sunday brunches and day drinking for sessions at the gym.

It’s also given her fresh perspective on life.

“You have to think about the effect that this has now had on other people,” she admits.

“I’m just married a year. You’ve stood in front of all your friends and family and made a lifelong commitment… and then had a heart attack 10 months later, essentially because of your own reckless lifestyle.

“It has changed stuff like that and then also my attitude to things. I went into the Edinburgh Fringe this year the most relaxed person in the world because I was still getting to do my show and I had a really lovely time.

“I was really fortunate. It was a good laugh. In the grand scheme of life, yeah, it’s important, but it’s not life or death.

“I was at traffic lights the other day and I was looking at a guy and he was losing it with another driver, and he had two teenagers in the car. I just thought, why are you so angry man? Relax!

“It does change you. You get a different bit of perspective on the world, I think. You just kind of look at things differently, and you’re like, och, I don’t care.”

The Merchant of Menace

Remarkably, given that she was in surgery at the end of July, Susie still made her Edinburgh Fringe run in August with her show Merchant of Menace.

It came on strict agreement from her doctors that she wasn’t to exert herself too much.

“I asked them and they said ‘how nervous do you get?’ The show was bottomed out and done, so it wasn’t like I was trying to launch a new show.

“I couldn’t drive so I thought I’d get public transport, but the doctor said no because from the venue to the station was too far, too hilly. My wife pretty much drove me in and out and some friends did some stuff for me as well.

“I think it was probably the best thing for me to do to give me a focus, to get me out the house. I still get a bit breathless and sometimes I can just feel tired, but that’s very common for the first year.

“In next year’s show I think I’ll talk about it and how things change, but how I was kind of reluctant to. But you don’t have a choice and you need to do something.”

Before that comes a tour of her current show which she takes all round Scotland in the coming weeks. She takes in dates in Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth, as well as Dumfries and Portree on the Isle of Skye.

“I really enjoy touring,” she said. “It’s a great feeling when you do this job and get the opportunity to play different places and it’s your audience coming. They’ve seen you on TV or social media or been recommended it.

“That’s ultimately where you want to get to; to rock up to a room and people have spent money to come and see me because they feel I’m a safe bet.

“Let’s not beat around the bush, there’s a lot of people who will only have one night out a month, or every three months.

“They’ve chosen you, and they’re planning the rest of their day around that show. I don’t think there’s any bigger compliment than people spending their money to come and see you.”

Big Yin’s backing

Susie has recently returned to duties on her comedy podcast Here Comes The Guillotine, where she is tasked with reigning in co-hosts Frankie Boyle and Christopher Macarthur-Boyd.

Her tour also comes off the back of playing the King’s Theatre back in March, which is becoming an annual booking as part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

She returns there in March 2025 as the latest recipient of the Sir Billy Connolly Sprit of Glasgow Award, for which the man himself sent a video message announcing her as the winner.

A word from our winner 🏆#gicf24 #sirbillyconnollyaward pic.twitter.com/k52pXetrEE

— Glasgow Comedy Festival (@GlasgowComedy) April 2, 2024

“He said I made him laugh and that I was funny. He’s just the man that you’d hope he would be,” Susie beams, rolling up her sleeve to reveal the Big Yin resplendent in ink on her arm.

“That’s where we’re at,” she laughs, sitting at a desk under a framed picture of him. “I actually sit under a print and it’s every different type of Billy, the dungarees and the guitar, the banana boots, Celtic Billy, Billy with the banjo…

“He’s a wonderful human being and a very culturally significant man for people of Scotland and Glasgow, a real ambassador.

“Every now and again I’ll go back and watch the video. It’s mental he knows my name. He said my name. Out of his face. That’s wild.”

‘Migrants prop up our NHS’

The pictures of riots in the streets of parts of England and Northern Ireland over the summer, as well as continuing political rhetoric around immigration, really angered Susie after the care she received in hospital from a predominantly migrant workforce.

“I think maybe three ‘British-born’ people were maybe dealing with me and everybody else had been a migrant to Britain at some stage,” she said. “Those people prop up our health service.

“The way that we have behaved recently in the past few years as a country towards migrants is really appalling.

“I sometimes wish I could say to those people who were behaving appallingly; if you were dying in hospital and a migrant worker came in are you going to refuse it?

“Those people are there working 12 hours a day under very stressful conditions, saving people’s lives and making sure they’re comfortable and they’re happy and they’re as healthy as they can possibly be.

“The NHS is a wonderful institution, but it needs that migrant support and we need to be better.

“They’re keeping people you love happy and healthy. People that you care about because you don’t have the qualifications cause you’ve chosen not to do that for a living. You made a choice not to do that for a living, so someone’s got to do it.”

Susie McCabe plays Perth, Aberdeen, Dundee and more on her tour throughout November and December. Visit susiemccabe.com/live