Brian Beacom

FERN Brady is dryer than the inside of a sand lizard’s top lip and more blunt than the new Mary Poppins.

But that’s not the only admirable qualities in the stand-up comedian from Bathgate.

How can you not be fascinated by a woman who paid her way through university by becoming a night club stripper?

How can you not be intrigued by a former journalist who hated the work?

And there’s her material. Brady, set to be the comedy face of the new BBC Scotland channel, talks about her dad and his wife in her act, as if they’re dysfunctionals.

As for the men in her home town of Bathgate, she could well be describing characters in Animal Farm.

Does she every feel she’s a little too honest at times?

“It’s just the way I am,” she says in serious-ish voice. “It’s not contrived. In fact, the idea of me having Asperger’s has been coming up more and more. I’m looking into being assessed.”

The likes of BBC Scotland’s new digital channel and Comedy Central have signed her Fern up.

However, the road to comedy success was not pre-ordained by any means.

West Lothian life was far from glittery showbiz; Brady’s dad works for a truck company and her mum worked in Tesco.

Growing up in a Catholic household, the teenage Fern was the shy girl, keen to grab attention.

“It sounds clichéd but I was really ugly as a girl. I had big thick glasses and a moustache and everyone called me a hippy.

“It’s my mum’s fault. She used to let me pick my own clothes and I’d wear an orange track suit to school.”

She adds, grinning; “I once wore a sari to my school disco. I looked so sad. Everyone said ‘You’ve clearly got to leave this school’.”

Did she connect with boys?

“No, people thought I was gay because I didn’t go out with any boys at our school.” Why? Surely some could see past the moustache? “No, it was because they were sea monsters to me,” she says, grinning.

“They all looked like they were heading to prison so I certainly didn’t want to go out with them. They were minging.”

If she felt like a fish out of water in the little pond that was Bathgate, was there a compelling urge to leave?

“Aye!” she declares as if I’d asked the daftest question imaginable. Did she see a way out? “Yes! But that’s more a testimony to how narcissistic I am.”

Brady’s exit strategy came via Edinburgh University, which she paid her way through by working as a stripper.

“I kept it quiet until I was established, obviously because if you say you were a stripper to a stranger they just shut down.

“But once, a few years ago, I mentioned it at a Glasgow gig and my mum heard about it and she stopped speaking to me for six months.” She laughs: “Can you believe the cheek of her? As if she had to grind that pole for tips!”

Within the Brady bunch, the stripping never happened.

“As for my dad, I had a big argument with him about it, for a different reason. He had told his wife he paid my rent though my time at uni. I nearly choked on my dinner. I said: ‘Are you joking me? I was a stripper!’” She dry laughs again. “He said: ‘No you were not!’ It’s this Irish-Catholic thing. Deny. Deny. Deny.”

The stripping period has proved to be win-win. “I’m doing a TV pilot about it right now. It’s a dramedy and I hope it gets made, although it could end up as Showgirls 2, which is my worst nightmare.”

During university, Brady found journalism and became editor of the student paper.

She trained in Sheffield and was two months away from finishing the course she left. Why? During her journalism course she’d gone to a comedy club to try her hand at stand-up for an experiential piece.

“I’d secretly wanted to try my hand at stand-up for a long time. This opportunity pushed me into it because I was really shy and otherwise I wouldn’t have had the confidence to get up there.”

Brady admits journalism wasn’t what she’d hoped it would be.

“I didn’t want to do death knocks and stuff (knocking on the door of a relative of a recently departed, usually tragically). I didn’t want to go to the local council meetings and be bored to death writing about trams.”

Comedy offered Brady the chance to write. To free-flow (often unfiltered) thoughts.

Initially, she found the stand-up circuit tough. “I’ve walked out of a lot of gigs. I’ve been chased out of gigs. You try and blank it out of your head.”

She was once paid in cake. And sexism was rife. Worse than in the strip clubs, which were “more honest”. “Sometimes the MC would announce you and say ‘She’s so good’. And I’d think ‘Don’t say She. You’ve given the men the directions to the toilet’.”

Yet, other female comediennes would make her life a misery. The idea of a comedy sisterhood, she says, is nonsense.

Brady doesn’t dress down on stage now. Indeed, she looks on the cusp of glamorous. Does that cause problems?

Does she dress down in certain venues? “No, I don’t think about it anymore, although I don’t wear dresses.”

She thinks for a moment and grins. “Once I was at a gig with ‘The Godfather of Scottish comedy’. He said to me: ‘When you go on stage, reference the fact you’re a good-looking woman.’ And I said: ‘Naw. Maybe I’m good looking in Bathgate, but that’s it’.”

Brady says it’s easier for women in comedy now. “There’s never been a better time to be a woman.”

And her personal life is working out fine. “He knows I’m a psychopath,” she says of her partner. “You know, having had no time off for ages I went mental with tiredness, so I bought a piano and I got this vaporiser thing, so I’ve just been smoking weed and playing piano.”

She plays piano? “Aye!” she says, dramatically countering my mild curiosity. “Did you no’ know I was Bathgate Rotary Club’s Young Musician of the Year in 2001? I’m Grade 8, man.”

I didn’t. So Bathgate can produce special talent? “It’s true. Just because we’re working class doesn’t mean we’re bad, or anything like that.”

She pauses, smiles and adds: “And we’ve got a really big Tesco.”

* Fern Brady stars in the new series of Live from the BBC, now on iPlayer.