Jay Lafferty recalls her most memorable gigs

Most unusual location

Someone somewhere in Glasgow City Council hit upon the novel idea of having a comedy gig on Glasgow’s famous circular underground system nicknamed ‘the clockwork orange’ apparently due to the carriage colour and not any random acts of violence it might witness on a weegie weekend.

The underground does 15 stops in 24 minutes and the premises for the gig was that between myself and three other acts we would take it turns to do a full round of the orange before swapping over.

As soon as we started it became apparent while the underground was in motion the unbelievable noise left us inaudible to passengers. Long story short the four of us stuck together randomly yelling at passengers In Between stops until word spread and people stopped getting on our carriage. The after-effect of four hours going in a circle at high speed turns out to be a bit like being six gins down.

Gig that taught me the biggest lesson

The lesson I learned from a gig early in my career is ‘pack a spare’.

In my first year of stand up I had written a character based around a Christmas Fairy who was pissed off with the working conditions in Santa’s grotto.

The character included a pink tutu and wings. I went straight to the gig from the gym in costume. When I arrived, I realised that there was a lot of children at the gig rendering the character totally inappropriate.

All I had to wear was the costume or a sweaty gym kit - cut to me doing my standard ten-minute comedy set in a pink tutu and wings and due to my newness to the circuit I decided it was best to never reference that I was dressed as a fairy!

Worst gig

Christmas 2017 a gig for 300 chartered surveyors. I knew it was going to be bad when the booed the act before me - a local primary schoolchildren's choir!

Weirdest gig as a punter

I went to a gig in my hometown to support some friends. The headliner had to pull his appearance at the last minute and a lady in her late 70s was very unimpressed to miss her favourite comedian The Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III.

She didn’t seem like the Rev’s usual target demographic. But after the first break she decided she had enough, shouted at the MC to ‘bring on the Reverend’, then removed her T-shirt and bra and rushed the stage.

Strangest audience member

Once at The Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh the whole line up performed a gig to a man who sat at the front of the gig facing away from the stage towards the back wall of the club.

He refused to turn around or engage with the MC about his reasons for facing the wrong way. Cue an evening of comics playing off the fact that the rest of the audience were really unnerved by the man who spent the night watching them laugh.

• Jay Lafferty plays Jane in Madame George, a play about a psychic in a slump also starring fellow comics JoJo Sutherland and Paul Sneddon. It is on at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose at 1pm. Her solo show, Jammy, is on at Gilded Balloon Teviot at 18:30

Published: 9 Aug 2019