'It's OK to be grumpy': A chat with Susie McCabe

“I was at the Doctor's,” says Susie McCabe, “and I told him I was trying to lose weight. I have a health condition – polycystic ovaries – and I can't really eat refined carbohydrates. I said I was struggling and that I was trying to give up the cigarettes. Now, only a doctor in the East End of Glasgow would say, 'stay on the cigarettes and concentrate on the food'. OK, fine, I'll go on the fag and coffee diet then.”

McCabe's new show Let's Get Physical opens at Glasgow Comedy Festival. When deriding spurious health claims, McCabe makes fags and coffee sound a paradigm of robust health.

On well-known meal replacement shakes she gives a blunt assessment. “Yes, you'll lose a tonne – because you are not putting any food into your body.” And, for the infamous and gaseous 'cabbage diet' she may have patented an honest slogan: “Nobody is coming round your house.”

Dodgy diets provide plenty of comedy fodder, but McCabe offers a wider context. Even a 'chicken supper' can't exist without marketing: “We no longer call chicken 'chicken' or steak 'steak', we say 'protein.'”

Scepticism of this kind is a thread woven through McCabe's work. In The Drugs Don't Work she spoke of how treatment for depression does not replace deeper needs. “It is loved ones and family that get you through it, getting out and walking the dog.” In There's More to Life than Happiness she centred on the fuzzy logic of buying stuff for fulfilment. “Sometimes you're not a happy person,” she says, “and it's actually OK to be grumpy.”

Let's Get Physical didn't start in happy circumstances. She separated from her partner of 16 years and her grandmother passed away. This left McCabe without the two people who'd always been there. “My Nana was like a mother and best friend,” she says. This relationship made it natural for McCabe to make her Nana a promise, but it's one now proving a bittersweet experience.

“I promised I'd look after my health. She hated that I didn't. I said I'd get off the cigarettes and I'll lose weight. Now, I'm... argh! As if life isn't hard enough without her being here, I'm now stuck with a fitness regime! And I think, 'you're not even here to see this.'” She adds: “I'm raging.”

McCabe is happy in a new relationship, but this has also been a two-edged sword when it comes to the healthy regime. "My new girlfriend is into hillwalking and stuff like that," McCabe says. "I like to walk to the shop for sausages and rolls."

Yet, McCabe has plenty of perseverance to help her. It is through constant gigging that she's built a following on the local scene. In a Stand programme packed with well-known names, McCabe's show sold out first. An extra date was soon added. The Stand have every confidence in her, putting McCabe forward for Chortle's 2017 Comedians to Watch list. “It's nice to get recognition,” she says.

She has many kind words about the ethos of The Stand. She also mentions her early champion Janey Godley and others who have given her advice. “It is supportive,” she says of the local scene. But, McCabe seems to appreciate a tough-love approach. Where a comedian can watch another's set and say, “that line there needs work. Or, that bit doesn't work – drop it.”

“Support comes,” she says, “when you show you have a keenness and a willingness to work.”