Caroline Rhea: "Doing stand-up comedy is like doing therapy"

While some comedians see live stand-up as ‘paying their dues’ before hooking a TV contract, Caroline Rhea is in no rush to leave the circuit behind. And that’s not just the drugs talking.

“Sorry, I have a terrible cough and I’m so fully medicated right now I feel like I’m outside my body watching someone else give an interview. So – is it scary going back to live performance after being in a TV studio? No, it’s quite the opposite actually. It’s much less scary to me to be on stage than to be in front of a camera. Doing stand-up comedy is like doing therapy. It’s a great way to deal with everything. It’s like having your own talk show where there are no cameras, so you don’t really have to worry. You can say whatever you want on stage.”

While she may still be best known to some from TV show Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Rhea brought her stand-up to last year’s Edinburgh Festival, garnering a five star review from The Scotsman. But some fans found Aunt Hilda hard to let go of...

“I think the boy who came up to me and said: 'You were in my wank bank when I was 15.' would have to be a favourite. I really didn’t know what he meant at first or why Costaki [Economopoulos, Rhea’s fiancé and fellow stand-up] was laughing so much beside me. Then I was horrified, then flattered, in that order. Then there was the girl who put me in a headlock to take me over to see her friends cos I was on Sabrina."

Rhea also tells me that if there were one time she regretted that she couldn’t become an alcoholic, it was probably in Scotland. It's this revelation which may have helped translating her stand-up to audiences in our fair nation.

“I did trim a lot of the fat as I went and just left the stuff Scottish people could relate to. Basically anything pertaining to sex and alcohol, we were all on the same page with those two. By the time I was done I had completely transformed my act. It was a great learning experience – what references people get, what they don’t get, what’s universal, what’s not”

However, it’s unlikely Rhea will make it back to the Fringe this year due to a pretty full schedule across the pond. So get tickets to her Glasgow Comedy Festival show quick, as this is a definite sell-out.

And for all you Sabrina fans out there... “If I could do the one magic trick? Painless plastic surgery. That would be good.”