Jay Lafferty says she talks too much – something that would normally be an advantage for a stand-up comedian.

But with her new show ‘Wheesht!’ she explains that in a world full of opinions, sometimes we all need to shut up – apart from about the things that matter.

“We previously had options but we didn’t share them for the whole world on social media.” says Jay, when I spoke to her just round the corner from Glasgow’s Stand Comedy Club.

“People in my generation and the decade after have such an obsessive need to tell everyone, that isn’t really what you’re doing but to have it be this life you portray.

“The show is how I got myself into lots of trouble, particularly as a child, just never knowing when to hold my tongue or when to not speak.

“A lot of what I talk about people will really be able to identify such as being a Scottish childhood.

“We were bored in the 80s. Most of the 80s was me being bored – nobody tried to stop me from being bored, you made your own fun.

“So, I talk about the school system now where you’ve got ‘reluctant learners’ and ‘challenging behaviour’ – it’s all very PC.

“I read out some of my old report cards and they would be a lot different now.

“I’d have like 14 and 15-year-olds in it would blow their minds learning what their school report actually means

“I had a cousin who’s school report said: ‘we don’t know if he’s deaf or stupid’ and you just couldn’t get away with that now.”

Being gobby much may have got Jay into trouble as a child, but as a comedian, that skill is really her bread and butter:

“Making people laugh is the most important part of my job, but if you can do some good within that as well, say things and get people to think about things in a different way and present them with a different viewpoint or reinforce their viewpoint – that’s good.

“If people come and see you talk for an hour then you’ve got a responsibility to say something worth listening to.

“With the MeToo and TimesUp movement, as a prominent female stand up, I’ve been asked to comment loads on it.

“I felt I didn’t want to until I’d really thought about it until I’d thought about what I wanted to say.

For Jay, there’s a lot you can do with a comedy set, but it’s not a complaint or an excuse to moan – it’s more of a conversation.

“It’s so easy to say the wrong thing and be interpreted incorrectly. I’m 37 so there’s a lot of, because of the way I grew up, there’s a lot of things you grow up with which you just accept.” Jay says.

“You don’t really thing of them as being wrong or ‘I was held back by this’ – I’m not the kind of person to blame ‘this’ on why I may have not got a particular gig, or the lack of women standups and the struggle we have – I don’t really focus on that.

“With female comedians coming up now, I want to see how I can make sure they have an easier time. Not because I had a particularly hard time, but bit by bit we’ll pick away at this ball of patriarchy.

“There’s definitely a new dawn and a shift in people’s perception. There’s very early interviews I’ve done when I talk about the perception of coming on stage and men being like ‘eugh’ and also women not liking you because you’re a woman onstage.

“Now when I go onstage I very rarely feel that people are thinking ‘oh god, a woman’.

“The show is not about bringing the patriarchy down, it’s not about #MeeToo and it’s not about

TimesUp, but it is about me trying to make sure when I do talk now, I’m saying something that’s worthwhile.

“There is a big reveal in the show and as a result at the Fringe, I did have a lot of people hanging back to talk to me about it, and people getting in touch via social media about what it meant to them.

“It’s nice to say something that people relate to and that we can talk about it.”

Now that Jay has a platform as one of Scotland’s best known female comedians, there seems to come a bit of responsibility with it.

Jay’s explains her show is not just about herself, but also how the world is for younger women – such as her niece:

“My niece would tell me: Aunty Jay, the TV show Friends is so ‘problematic’ and she’s not wrong, it is but it’s of its time.

“We at the time thought friends was quite progressive because all three women on it didn’t have children in so called ‘normal’ ways – there’s a surrogacy with Phoebe, single mum with Rachel and adoption with Monica.

“But now when you look back, the LBGTQ stuff is pretty brutal and of course it’s very white.”

The change in how the world is for different generations is the heart of Jay’s comedy – and for Jay things are improving, for her and her niece: “I started when I was 21 when I was this little blonde ball of energy and I was in situations that, now I think back on them, I wouldn’t want my niece in.” Jay says.

“You would get sleazy people but was something I didn’t think that much about.

“You just dealt with it – you’d talk about it with other women, and they’d be like ‘that’s just such and such’.” says Jay.

“So we did accept these things, and now they’re not acceptable. Now women, quite rightly, are not accepting it.

“You can’t erase the past you can only learn from it.

“The things I find acceptable are different to the things my niece finds acceptable and that’s a good thing. Even if you look at Little Britain, that wasn’t even that long ago. If you look at the way they dealt with things like disability, you wouldn’t get away with that now.

“When you look at reality TV – as a society, we want to hold ourselves up and say ‘look how good we are’ but we’re not.

“But we’re not past wanting to watch people having breakdowns – that’s why reality TV continues to be so popular.

“This is going to make me sound pure old but there’s a thing of youth where you want to try and change the whole world, and there’s an acceptance that comes with knowing you can’t change everybody so you might as well focus on the things you have influence on.”

Jay Lafferty will be performing Wheesht! at Blackfriars Basement on Friday 22 March as part of Whyte & Mackay Glasgow International Comedy Festival.