Rhona Cameron on revisiting the traumas of her life in new book

Rhona Cameron is writing a book about her life traumas.

Rhona Cameron pulls the laptop camera closer and swivels in her chair as she points to a diagram pinned on the wall behind her.

It shows a pyramid structure of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, named after the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who believed good mental health could be achieved by fulfilling innate human needs in priority, from step one through to step five.

“I’m always languishing down here,” the comedian, writer and actor says with a laugh, pointing to the bottom section of the chart. “It’s basically just food and water, sleep, shelter, clothes, breathing. Sometimes I go up to security and health, but beyond that – love, belonging, esteem… no, I won’t have time for that in my lifetime.”

Rhona is speaking from her childhood home in Musselburgh, East Lothian. She returned to the house a few years ago to nurse her ill mum and was with her until she passed away. The ties that bind her to that brick-and-mortar structure have been surprisingly tough to disentangle.

“Once the probate came through, I thought I would leave, but it’s hard letting go. The house is in a boring housing estate, but this room is where I did my homework, and that room up there,” she says, pointing, “is where my mother died two years ago. I was with her when she died – that was life-changing.

“I decided I wanted to write a book about the whole journey, from 1965 to now – all the traumas – and that I wouldn’t leave here until I finished. It will be really terrifying for me to let go, but I have to do it this year.”

Life traumas

Some of the traumas Rhona speaks of include being born in a single-mum-and-baby home in Dundee, being adopted, suffering bullying at school due to her sexuality, discovering her Newcastle birth parents, moving to Edinburgh when she was 18 and for the next five years living a life she describes as It’s A Sin but with a female slant, before eventually moving to London and becoming a successful stand-up comedian – and all the associated traumas that too brought with it.

She was a big name in the scene from the mid-’90s and her success transferred to TV, where she did everything from hosting Top Of The Pops to participating in the first series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. She even had her own BBC sitcom, the eponymously titled Rhona.

Using her creativity has always been an outlet.

“I was going to go to art school when I was young but traumas from childhood meant I was often without a home and I had problems with alcohol, like many gay people from my time. Back in the ’80s, it was very normal for every single institution – including our families – to not only reject us but treat us really badly. Young people would leave home with very flimsy foundations and went out into a very persecutory world.

“Coming out of that, especially from a working-class background, and ending up as a successful comedian is quite a trajectory.”

So too did she have a hard time from the press at the peak of her celebrity, and she admits this is her first interview in “yonks”.

Return to TV

The reason she’s chatting is to promote a new BBC Scotland comedy series starting this week, The Chief, in which she stars alongside Jack Docherty.

The four-part series is a spin-off from Docherty’s chief of police character Cameron Miekelson in mockumentary series Scot Squad, as the bumbling cop attempts to keep on the right side of political correctness in a quickly changing society.

“When you do an acting job, you’re occupying a character and delivering lines someone else has written, which is a strange adjustment coming from a stand-up background where you’re self-expressing and in charge of all the words,” Rhona explains.

“It can be frustrating if you don’t like the lines, but Jack has been across all the arts for a long time, like myself, and he’s a really good writer, so there was no discomfort in doing the lines.

“In fact, they were a pleasure to do.

“Most of my scenes were with him and it was really comfortable. Jack’s easy to get along with – he’s warm, patient, intelligent and easy to banter with. Some of the lines were difficult to deliver simply because I was wanting to laugh.”

The Chief role

Rhona plays Una Struan, the Scottish Government’s justice minister who is often found verbally sparring with Miekelson.

“The guidelines for the character were to think of a tough, self-assured, articulate, Mhairi Black type, but I interpreted that as what a straight man would say if he’s writing a female politician character who’s going to be almost genderless,” Rhona says with a smile.

“We have scenes where we’re playing golf together and there’s quite a blokey relationship in the way we deal with our power and our symbiotic need for each other. We’re two figures on the chess board playing opposite each other and it was kind of genderless, which bled out of what I am and also of the character’s brief.

“They need each other. They’re both as stupid as each other at times. She’ll slap him down occasionally and he doesn’t know how to deal with her, which makes for funny viewing.”

Rhona Cameron as justice minister Una Struan alongside Jack Docherty (far left) in The Chief.

While the laughs will be ringing out on The Chief, Rhona doesn’t see her delivering laughter from a stage anytime soon.

“I would never say never, but I kind of stopped doing stand-up. One never knows what might happen – I might have a new desire or driving mission, or be gifted with an abundance of material. But I’d been doing it since I was 27 and found it harder as I got older. It was tougher to look after myself and keep doing it. I had to look after my mental health.”

Turning 60

Looking back at that period in her life feels like another lifetime for Rhona, who has been sober for years, especially as she prepares to turn 60 this year.

“Bloody hell, 60, yeah. It’s terrifying, actually. The vanity stuff I can live with – things happen to your face, hair, body. So what? That’s not important. It’s disappointing, because one would like to stay beautiful forever, but that’s not how life works. The trade-off is the deepening of the connection with your soul and the cutting away of all the superfluous crap.

“When we’re young we have flat stomachs and look fantastic and can drink 12 pints and stay out all night, but we don’t know so much as when we’re older. Sometimes knowledge is a comfort, because we know our limits.

“It’s a difficult balance at this age, because you wonder how much time you have left and don’t want to spend it not being authentic, you know?

“So that’s it really, that’s the big story,” she says, as we wrap up the interview. “It’s a reflective age, and as I’m taking stock of what I have, what I’ve done, who I am, it all becomes about self-authentication.”

Looking over Rhona’s shoulder again to that chart of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I notice on the top of the pyramid is “self-actualisation”, explained as achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities.

Rhona Cameron has come much further than she realises.

‘90s gigs made me tougher’

Beginning her stand- up career in the early ’90s when she was 27 meant Rhona had to develop an even tougher skin to deal with situations that would simply not be acceptable these days.

“When I started out, there was me and one other woman who were lesbians, and I was the only one out talking about it,” she recalls.

“That was when it was acceptable for people to shout, ‘Get off, lesbian’. All that the Scottish press wanted to talk to me about was being a lesbian.

“It was normal to play a gig and have a bottle thrown at you. Our era was the real post-punk club scene. You had to go round all the pubs and clubs, then go to Ireland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand.

“A lot of my younger life was spent living the rock and roll stereotype – they were extremely hedonistic times. I wouldn’t change that retrospectively, because it made us a more interesting bunch, and it goes along with the trade-off of saying whatever you want, which is so important.

“There are comedians now who can’t say what they want, but you have to. In those days it was OK to say what you want as 99.9% of comedians were empathetic, compassionate, pretty cool, and left-wing.

“The idea you can be a right-leaning comedian is something I find disappointing. It’s not OK.”

The Chief, BBC Scotland, Thursday, 10pm, BBC One Scotland, Friday, 11.25pm, and all episodes on the iPlayer from Thursday.