Stand-up comedian, compere and regular BBC Scotland Breaking the News panellist Jay Lafferty to hold her Edinburgh Fringe show Wheesht at Eden Court, Inverness as part of her first solo tour across Scotland
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JAY Lafferty has a lot of strings to her bow – stand-up, compere, theatre producer, broadcaster and regular guest on BBC Scotland’s Breaking the News.
And now she’s decided to add yet another – as she brings solo show Wheesht on tour across the country.
“Things are a bit hectic at the moment,” she laughs. “In between doing this tour from last year’s Fringe show, while writing and previewing next Fringe’s new show, everything is a bit chaos at the moment!”
After standing out on the stand-up circuit over the last decade and a half, performing sets and compere slots at comedy clubs across the country, Wheesht marks the first full solo tour for Jay.
“It’s like a new experience,” Jay explained. “Obviously I’ve been a comedian for a long time, I think I was doing it for 14 years before I actually took a Fringe show to the Fringe.
"I’d had little one off things and I’d been involved in the Fringe for years, but Besom, my show before, that was my first full run I’d done at the Fringe, and I just absolutely loved it – I loved getting that opportunity to kind of stretch my legs over the hour and how it evolved. That was really exciting.
“So when I was writing Wheesht after the experience of the year before, there was small things I did in it that I’d learned from doing the first full run that I kind of put into practice, which was a nice insight.”
While Jay was able to draw upon the past decade’s back catalogue of material she knew would work for her first hour-long Fringe show Besom, Wheesht was created from scratch.
“Besom is quite loud and brash, and with Wheesht I wanted to show the opposite side – the quieter or more reflective side of me! So it is very much structured as a friendly funny chat between friends in a pub.
“It’s a mix of my reflections on what I’m seeing and the way the world is changing. I’m 37 years old, I was 36 when I wrote it, but I feel like I was in a very in between stage of my life of having been brought up and particularly becoming a comedian in a time that was, you know, maybe a bit more challenging for females.
“And then now the way obviously we’ve got Time’s Up movement and lots of patriarchy falling and that sort of stuff, and how that’s – how I was feeling about that, because I don’t think I really belonged in either one of those worlds.
“And yeah, so it’s quite reflective about where I am as a 37 year old...person!” she adds with a laugh.
Jay Lafferty brings Wheesht to Eden Court on Tuesday night. The show begins at 8pm and tickets cost £12 (£9.50 concession). Twitter: @jayjaylaffs
