‘If people are spending money to see you, that’s a tremendous feeling’: Life according to… comedian Susie McCabe

Ahead of her show at the Glasgow International Comedy festival in March, we caught up with comedian Susie McCabe on festivals, live shows and enjoying her stand-up success.

How much do you enjoy being a part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival?

It’s been so kind to me since my first show in 2013. It’s a real festival for burgeoning talent and giving talent a step up.

It let me accumulate and build an audience year on year to get into the Kings and then to try and maintain that that’s the room that you get to play in Glasgow if you’ve got a solo show.

What an absolute honour to walk into the same room that Billy Connolly did. If your name’s on the door and people are spending money to see you, that’s a tremendous feeling.

The festival nearly went during Covid. The person they’ve got in charge now, Krista MacDonald, loves comedy. She’s a west coast of Scotland girl, and has such a broad palate of comedy, which is what you need for running a festival. Somebody who’s all about progressing people.

Everyone’s got to start somewhere. If I can go from a 60-seater in Dram to two nights at the King’s in 10 years, anybody can if they apply themselves.

Do you approach a show at the King’s differently?

I think you play it differently because it’s such a big room. You’ve got to have your foot on the pedal at different points.

There’s bits where you have to ramp it up and batter them for 10 minutes and then let them breathe, build into a story and get a nice big laugh at the end. Nobody can sit for an hour and a half just laughing.

You’re the conductor of an orchestra and it’s just using the stage and pacing to elevate yourself to be as big as that room, from the last person at the back of the gallery to the front row.

It’s never about me, it’s got to be about the audience because it’s their show. The most important thing is that you’re the cheapest part of that night, even at £20-£25 a ticket, because they’ve gone for dinner, they’ve got a babysitter, drinks and all that stuff.

You recently appeared on Live At The Apollo. How was that experience?

I very much took the approach of “I’m just going to have a really lovely time”. I’d been down and got the press shots taken by the lights and the big Apollo sign on this wonderful stage that The Beatles have stood on.

I was sitting in the dressing room with my then new wife, we’d only been married 10 days, and she said: “You’ve done two King’s and 12 nights at the Hydro with Kevin Bridges, so there’s no issue with you knowing how to play that size of room and there’s no issue with your material. So you’re just going to enjoy it.”

Maisie Adam was the host. She had done it before and said it had taken her five minutes on stage to get over the fact it was Live at the Apollo. I thought, right, I’m not going to do that because I’ve only got 20 minutes, so just enjoy it from the off.

The sign lifts and the smoke goes and you walk out… it doesn’t get much more showbiz, coming in like Bono!

Could you have imagined when you first set out that you’d have ended up here?

Absolutely not. Working with Frankie Boyle, working with Kevin Bridges, guys whose DVDs, people bought you for Christmas, who you now consider friends and have a WhatsApp chat with. It’s a wonderful life and I’m incredibly lucky.

Live At The Apollo’s been on for years but very few people in the context of how many comedians there are actually get to do it. I had a great experience of doing something that I love in one of the nicest rooms in the country and it just happened to be made for television. What a really lucky, privileged position to be in.

Your previous job was in construction. What transferable skills were there to the world of comedy?

Just surviving. If you can survive day after day on a building site, you can survive a heckler or people in the media not being particularly nice to you. You’re just like, listen, I’ve pulled down the pants of bigger men than you, away you go!

I think people kind of respect me for being heart on my sleeve, straight down the line and honest. I definitely think that comes from a working-class background and environments that keep your feet on the ground.

Susie McCabe: The Merchant of Menace, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, March 15 and 16. Visit glasgowcomedyfestival.com