Live Entertaintment
Exclusive inteview with Falkirk Comedy Club Founder Alec McNair
Interview with Alec McNair
- Comedian
- Falkirk Comedy Club Founder
Alec McNair talks comedy, chaos, worst gigs, rubber props, and what’s coming up at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
- 🎙 Interviewer: Jimi L.
- 📍 Location: Scotland
- 🕒 Read Time: 8-10 mins
Hi Alec, thanks for coming along today. So, who are you and what did you do prior to picking up the mic?
I’m Alec McNair. I’m a comedian who lives over in Bonnybridge with the aliens. Moved there about 15 years ago originally from Kirkintilloch. I’ve been a Forensic nurse most of my days. Worked in a medium secure unit for Glasgow area in the south of Scotland.
Ok, and how did you come to be doing Stand up?
Once you've done comedy and it goes well, you get a taste for it - and then you're hooked
My son went to uni to do acting at uni and had left it, then ended up being a manager with Starbucks. The day that he got the job in Starbucks as a manager was the day before he was supposed to go in the comedy course that I had booked at Edinburgh Festival for him. They sent him down to Newcastle to do a wee course in management and there was nobody else to do it and the buggers wouldn’t give me my money back. So it was 200 quid and I thought, “you know what, I’m not wasting it. I’ll just go and do it for a laugh. I’ll do it once, I’ll never do it again.”
I’m probably a bit like yourself, Jimi, once you’ve done it and it’s went well: You get a taste for it. Then, you get hooked on it. So here we are four and a half years later. I’m still doing it and still thoroughly enjoying it. Almost all the time.
Nice, so that would be the Laughing Horse course, In Bar 50?
It was in Bar 50, yes. It was quite nerve-wracking because we’d done a Tuesday and a Wednesday and it was advertised online as then we would come back on a Sunday. So, we thought we’d have time. But when we got on to the course they said, “Oh no, the gig’s on Wednesday night.”
So I had a day to write a full five minutes, which doesn’t sound hard but it is incredibly hard. It’s very hard because you don’t realize until you need to do it. You soon find out how hard it is to fill five minutes. Considering I had never even been on a stage holding a microphone before that day and suddenly you’re appearing on a show through in Edinburgh, or part of a show through in Edinburgh. But yeah, it ticked a lot of boxes, it was a wonderful success and it went really, really well. Got loads of laughs.
Then you went on to do other courses and and then actually started gigging. Now you've got the Falkirk Comedy Club.
Yes, Falkirk Comedy Club’s probably my biggest success. Started that probably three years ago, if I’m honest, in the Wine Library in Falkirk.
I remember I was at that first gig.
Yeah, and the first gig was a rolling success. It was full and the second gig was reasonably full and they were likely the last two in the Wine Library that were full, but it probably wasn’t the place for comedy. It wasn’t the greatest venue in the world for comedy and the clientele were maybe not who you would target for comedy. We gave it a good go and then a year later we moved to the Orchard Hotel. We had a lot of full nights but it was intermittent. However, this year, start of 2025, first time back, we had a full room. It’s been full rooms almost the whole year since then. It’s an absolutely fantastic wee venue.
A very eclectic room. We have a six-foot shark hanging over the stage and lots of other memorabilia and stuff pinned to walls and that. It’s a strange wee room but it works for comedy.
I love the room. I've had the privilege of hosting the show a good few times now and it's a great room. So, what do you think has been your best gig?
My best gig? The gig I enjoyed the most… There was one in Dublin. I can’t even remember the name of the place, to be honest with you. It’ll be the Whisky Isle. I’ve had a few that night, certainly. And it was a weird gig. There had been something like 26 performers that night, all doing five minutes. Then I went on and I came off the rapturous applause and… Oh, the amount of people. It was the first time I’d had loads and loads of people come up to me and slap me on the back saying, “you were amazing, you were brilliant, that was fantastic.” “We want to see more of you”, all that kind of stuff. It was just a fabulous, fabulous night. We’d been in Belfast the night before and it had been a kind of strange gig to do in the middle of an election kind of period.
Myself and another guy, Mark Haddon, had done that gig. And it had been an odd one because everybody came on and had done a joke about the election, which identified which side they were on in the election. That meant half the room were going to laugh at them. I think that had went really well as well, for me and Mark, because we didn’t do any political jokes and we didn’t know enough about it.
And we didn’t want to do that. And I was on with my knitted woolen gimp mask and a prosthetic as a prop vagina, called Eileen after the song, so there was no politics in my set.
I think it's hard because the world's so political now, and part of the point of comedy is escapism, so I don't know. We definitely need satire and comedy to hold Truth to Power but Political jokes are much better off in the hands of the highly skilled.
I think they’re a niche thing. They’ve had so many problems over there with the political system and the votes, then their parliament being shut for so long. Everybody felt the need to make some kind of joke about it to lighten up the situation.
All right, so what was your worst gig?
Oh the gig in the centre of Glasgow for one of the football teams, it was for a foundation thing that they were running. Again, it was a charity thing and somebody who had drunk far far too much had came in. My worst two gigs are the same thing. Some people don’t react too well to Eileen. Most people see it for what it is and it’s funny. It’s just a laugh but this person had far too much to drink and ended up getting himself barred from the pub. He hadn’t paid to come into the charity thing. He knew somebody who was in there and he came in very drunk. I believe he supported the “other” team from the team that was having the foundation thing. So that hadn’t helped either.
I have to say I admire how deftly you're straddling the old firm thing there, mate. No names on either side.
I don’t want to be slagging off anyway. Listen fans on both sides can be as bad as each other.
The other one was a gig down in Paisley and it was a similar thing where one woman actually started screaming and shouting and just kept shouting and shouting every time I said anything. It was near the start of my career and near the start of your career you don’t deal with it quite as well as you do after you get on a bit and have a bit of experience. I started to forget lines because she was shouting. The horrible thing was she came up to me at the end of it and it turned out she was a singer on one of the cruise ships. She said “I’m really sorry about that I shouldn’t have been shouting at you, I sing on the cruise ships and if somebody was shouting at me like that I would have ruined my night.” To be fair, at the start of your career, you’d have been like “well I mean right enough I do have a rubber fanny sitting there”
Now, I know I pressured you not to name one of my gigs but I know if I hadn't done that you probably would have named one of my gigs as your worst!
See, again from audiences not listening to you just glasses spontaneously supernaturally smashing. That night in Knightswood, October 2023 when a glass just flew off a table abd smashed on the floor.
See, you have had some of your worst gigs at my gigs!
That was probably…I don’t know if that was a high or a low in my career being heckled by a ghost and having a glass thrown at me by somebody because a ghost didn’t like the fact that I was doing Jesus stories.
If I’d have known that place was so full of ghosts I could have kept doing gigs there. I could have called them audience.
I think there was certainly….at least one that was listening but he was an angry bible thumper.
Can you tell us what you have got upcoming, Alec?
Upcoming is again the Falkirk Comedy Club I’ll be starting back at the start of February which is my baby as you know. I’m on the February gig in Panopticon.
As am I, so see you and hopefully some readers there. Tickets available through Panopticon Comedy Club
I’m going up to Inverness to do some shows up there but I’ve not got the dates for them yet. I have the two shows at Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
You do indeed, you've got the Roast Battles and a Solo Show. Tell us about those.
The roast battle is called The Burn Supremacy and is a challenge where the Scotland team is going to take on the rest of the world for two of the gigs and the third one is going to be Scotland vs England.
That's the big one. The Auld Enemies face each other on the stage.
We done this two years ago and it was a great day so get your tickets and come into that one. It should be great fun. Then, I have my solo show, Half Wool, Half Truth. Basically it’s a two-part show where I come on as my alter ego “the Flamboyant Gimp” with my pink mask on and the aforementioned rubber fanny. That section will be a slightly ruder 15 to 20 minutes then the wonderful Aimeè Hinds is going to come in and do 10 minutes for me while I get changed back into normal clothes. After thst, I’ll come back out and do my 25-30 minutes as myself where I’ll be talking about vasectomies, children, not wanting to leave your house and probably my grandfather. maybe a couple other short things, too.
Sounds great and that's in Calabash African Bar & Restaurant at Union St on Saturday the 21st of March at 7pm?
Yes, at 7pm and will followed up by Sally Porter afterwards at 8.30pm so get your whole fest of perversions in. Her show is called “Mistress of Mayhem”. Sally’s a great friend and it’s brilliant to watch both gigs.
Ok, Alec, thank you so much for your time and words of wisdom today. See you at the next gig!
The Burn Supremacy
Thursday, 12th, 19th and 26th of March
- The Calabash African Bar Restaurant
Half Man, Half Wool
Saturday 21st March, 8:30pm
- The Calabash African Bar Restaurant
Sally Porter
Mistress of Mayhem
Saturday, 21st of March, 7pm
- The Calabash African Bar Restaurant
An Interview with
COLETTE BOYD
Comedian from Rutherglen
We sat down with Colette Boyd, a rising comic from Rutherglen, to discuss hr comedy origin, best and worst gigs and her upcoming shows at Glassgow international Comedy Festival.
Hello, Colette.
Thanks for coming in today.
So, who are you?
I am Colette, my name is Colette Boyd, I’m a comedian from Glasgow. Yep,I live in Rutherglen, which is actually South Lanarkshire.
Right. I thought you lived in Burnside. Are you originally from Burnside or something?
No, born and bred in Rutherglen. I lived in Crosshill Drive in Rutherglen, which is close to Burnside, but still Rutherglen. So people on Crosshill Drive that think they’re posh say they live in Burnside.
People in Crosshill Drive that know they’re not posh say they live in Rutherglen. I live in the main street in the next council house, I know who I am.
Excellent, excellent, no Hyacinth Bucket nonsense for you. Cool, Cool. And so what do you do Colette?
I am not currently employed. I don’t say I don’t work but I’m not currently employed. I used to work in the travel industry, but haven’t done that for a long time.
I mostly do comedy now and look after my mother.
All right, and how did you get into comedy?
I have been doing comedy all my life probably, because many years ago I had a funny incident involving a donkey happen to me. And for every time I went to a family party, gathering of any kind after that, it was always, Colette, come here and tell these people the donkey story.
So I’ve been performing comedy for years, but officially I started by doing one of Viv Gee’s courses, which was June 2022 was my first gig. And that was to raise money for a cancer charity because people in my family were going through treatment at the time.
So obviously you've done a lot of gigs and you're the most recent winner of the Gong Show at Blackfriars.
I was. Yeah, yeah. I got a cash prize for that and a 10 minute spot at this month’s Gong Show, as well. 10 minutes at the Just One More Gong in Blackfriars. Both episodes available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.
I do remember hearing somebody go, “Oh, Jesus”, while I was doing my comedy, and that’s never a good sign..
So, do you think that may have been your best gig, or was it another gig that you think was your best gig?
That quite possibly was my best gig. I didn’t actually think about this. I thought about my worst gig, but I’ve not thought about my best gig. So we’ll go with yeah, that was probably my best gig. I did really enjoy that.
So apart from winning and being the clear winner, even though you confessed to me that had you been carded, you wouldn't have seen it. You'd have just stood up there for the full five minutes anyway?
No peripheral vision really. I just go into a wee bubble when I’m on stage. So when people are flashing me saying your time’s up, I still keep going because I don’t see any lights. That’s what happened.
You probably did get carded and they just thought, “The balls on her. I like this kid's style!”
I was wearing a red dress. The cards just blended in.
No, you won it fair and square. It was so good to hear you'd won, mate. You're always great. I always enjoy your sets.
So what was your worst gig?
Worst gig was a gig where most of the audience had turned up expecting bingo. Never a good thing. Ladies of a certain age, who I have nothing against being a lady of a certain age myself, but they turned up for the bingo.
There was no bingo, so they just got drunk instead. Just before I was due to go on, somebody actually stole the microphone and decided to give us all a wee song. Right, right.
I was actually at that gig as well. I came quite late. It was in Motherwell, right?
It was, yes.
And I came from a Glasgow Comedy Festival gig without a fucking clue about what I was walking into.
And you thought, maybe I’ll just walk back out again?
No, I stayed till the end.
You did? We all did, to be fair.
I actually got a lift off the owner that night. The woman that runs the bar got me a lift. And I felt I was owed it, to be fair.
I think you were.
I didn't tell you or anybody else, because I suffered more than anybody else at that gig. I remember it was quite a hectic atmosphere.
It's unfortunate sometimes when it's these kind of social clubs, and they're used to a certain thing, but they try other things, but then they don't know how to separate or merge those things. Yeah. And it turns into an anecdote for us.
If they’d been given a bit of warning, I’m sure the ladies would have been quite happy with comedy. But just, there was no bingo.
I think there was a lot of acts as well, was there not? There was like 10 acts.
There was a lot, yes. And not very many with crowd work. Although there was a lot of back and forth, as I recall, people arguing with us.
Yes. I was one of them.
Yes, there was a lot of that.
I was like, right, we're up here to do a thing, so you shut the fuck up. And they're like, “well make us laugh then”. And I'm like,” I've got nothing, sorry.” But gigs like that, it's hard to set up anything.
I think it was that gig I looked out, and saw somebody sitting with their head in their hand with their eyes covered, right at the front, I thought, “This is not going well.”
It's funny because there's gigs that are unsalvageable at all, but every comedian outwardly fears it and secretly hopes that they're going to be the one to change the night then get carried out by the rest of the acts on their shoulders like they've just won the Scottish Cup. Of course, it never happens.
No, it didn’t happen that night either.
Then we're talking about it in the car share, and saying, “well, I mean there was that one guy that laughed at everything I said.” Someone else says,”yeah, but he was looking out the window at a dog pissing on a lamppost”
I do remember hearing somebody go, “Oh, Jesus”, while I was doing my comedy, and that’s never a good sign.
Oh man, these experiences are…..character building, though. I mean, I don't know exactly what character they're building, but you need them. That's your training, that's your boot camp. We survive and earn our stripes.
So, yeah, I think you've also maybe possibly had a lot of your worst gigs at my gigs as well.
You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment. No, man, no, no.
Go on
Okay, you’ve convinced me.
It was the Garden Festival thing. It was in a tower block.
Oh, the Harvest Festival in Scotstoun, September 2024?
Yes. I don’t swear, I don’t say bad things, but seven-year-old children are not my ideal audience. Two wee boys sitting in the front row. If they’d been at the back of the room, it might not have been that bad, but two of them with their wee innocent faces in the front row.
No, I did say ahead of time it was a family event. Just left out the bit about it being a family off Burnistoun or something.
You did? Yeah, yeah. But I thought there was going to be children in the general area, not, hello, hello, staring at me. And then I gave them Haribo, and I think possibly they might have been Muslim, and Haribo are not halal.
Okay, glad you haven't mentioned where you produced said Haribo from. So, what have you got upcoming?
Quite a lot, actually. First one is, I’m doing 10 minutes at the next Gong Show as the previous shows Winner and they can’t card me off, so it’s fine.
That’s the 14th of January in Blackfriars. Then we’ve got the Diversity Quota, next month, 5th of February, in the Griffin. I’m doing the Falkirk Comedy Club in February as well, but I’m not sure what date that is yet.
It’ll be either 4th of February, or it’ll be the 18th of February, which I’m actually hosting.
Well, hopefully it’s the 4th then. Ah, sorry, can you help me? Yeah, that’ll be good. Then it’s on to March, the Comedy Festival, so at the moment I’ve got four gigs during the Comedy Festival, but things always change.
Comedy versus Canada, that’s a completely different show I’ve just made up.
Comedy versus Canada? That's a South Park song, is it not?
Sorry, Comedy versus Cancer at the Committee Rooms on the 12th of March, in aid of a cancer charity. And then I’ve got the Four Wrong Blondes shows. There’s 4 Wrong Blondes, I’m one of the four. In fact, I am the matriarch of the four Wrong Blondes. Those shows are on 14th and 28th of March at Calabash on Union Street, and on 27th of March I’m on Transformers, again at the Committee Rooms, That’s a collection of disabled comedians. Excellent, excellent. So I'll probably get you on a couple of my shows as well, so we'll have a fun Glasgow International Comedy Festival full of the best and worst gigs again.
You’re really selling it to me.
I know, but its true. Thanks again for coming on, Colette.
Thank you for having me.
Listen to Colette on Funeral Pyre Playlist, Sponsored by Thefileonline.com on Sunny G's Mixcloud stream:
Upcoming Shows
4 Wrong Blondes
GICF
14th & 28th March
Comedy Vs Cancer
GICF
12th March
