Fern Brady: 9 of our favourite moments

Brady began her working life as a journalist, with her first taste of stand-up coming in 2009 whilst writing a piece for Fest Magazine about a comedy critic trying their hand at stand-up at the Edinburgh Festival. The experience gave Brady the impetus to become a stand-up herself with her first professional gig coming the following year, and by 2011 she was back at the festival, performing in the finals of ‘So You Think You’re Funny’.

From there Brady has gone on to establish herself as a popular fixture on the stand-up circuit in the UK and Australia, and as well as the aforementioned television programmes she has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, hosted the Dave television series British as Folk, and written for The Guardian.

On 15 February Brady comes to the Southbank Centre to launch her new memoir Strong Female Character in conversation with Katy Wix. As well as her career the book also looks at sexism, neurodiversity, her Catholic upbringing and her 2021 diagnosis of autism. Ahead of that appearance in our Queen Elizabeth Hall, we took a moment to celebrate her with some of our own Fern Brady highlights. 

And though it probably goes without saying for those of you who are familiar with her work, please be aware that some of the clips below contain language that some may find offensive. 

Not letting the intrusive thoughts win

Since we’ve led with Brady’s stand-up career it would be rude not to start this list with anything other than a clip of her in action. Here she starts with how the class distinction in Scotland can be made on a first-name basis – ‘If you’re a boy in my town you have one of three names’ – before wandering onto the topics of intrusive thoughts and tiny spouses.

Her reaction to her autism diagnosis

In 2021, in her mid-30s, Brady was diagnosed with autism. The diagnosis helped Brady understand her own mind, as she told The Guardian in an interview last year, ‘I realised every standup show I had done beforehand might as well have been called, ‘Hey Fern, do you know you’re autistic?’’. And since then she’s also become something of a champion for autistic people, simply by being very up front in how she talks about it, on her own social media channels, in interviews – such as that one with The Guardian – and on the television show British as Folk.

Repping Bathgate

If you were tasked with booking the hip-hop based ITV panel show Don’t Hate the Playaz, it’s probably not unfair to suggest that Brady wouldn’t be top of your list. But ditch those preconceptions, because girl’s got range. In series three of the show Brady took the opportunity to spit some bars on her hometown of Bathgate and she didn’t disappoint. As she tweeted after this appearance, ‘I still think about the time someone tweeted I was an embarrassment to Bathgate. I SHOWED HER’.

Her relationship is goals

Not in a staged Instagram ‘hey, look at how amazing our life is’ way, but in a ‘this is the reality of what a loving 21st century relationship is’ way. Brady talks about her relationship with her boyfriend in a way that most of us can relate to but also aspire to, as seen in her appearance on The Russell Howard Hour.

Being a champion for Scottish Twitter

Forget Nichola Sturgeon, move over Sean Connery, in 2021, Brady was named as Scotland’s most influential Twitter user. That’s not an accolade to be sniffed at, especially given how Scottish Twitter remains undefeated when it comes to bringing the obscure and the often unconsidered to the mainstream. But there’s no denying Brady is a fitting ambassador.

Picking apart viral culture

In 2020 Brady recorded a short series for BBC Scotland, Fern Brady Goes Viral, in which she examined, and poked fun at, viral online trends. Among the highlights were Brady becoming an online Agony Aunt, documenting her morning routine for the ‘gram (warning, contains a lot of coffee-induced ‘pooping’), getting into a flame war with a five-year-old cupcake influencer, and recording her own make-up tutorial to help you look like a princess.

Inadvertently terrifying her builder

We mentioned Brady’s impressive Twitter account before, so we ought to pick out a highlight from her feed. As such, nothing quite beats the time she inadvertently made a builder think she was either infatuated with him, or an unashamed kleptomaniac.

Her relationship with her cats

If you follow Fern Brady on social media, you’ll already know that her cats are very important to her, although on occasions such as below it may feel like they’ve taken over her home. During lockdown Brady tweeted that she’d contemplated dressing one of the cats in a little shirt and tie so that she and her boyfriend could enhance the pretence they were having a home-working office affair by looking guilty when this four-legged co-worker walked in. Sadly pictorial evidence of this does not exist.

Oh no!

In 2022 Brady delighted her fans, and reached a brand new audience as part of the 14th series of the television show Taskmaster. Infectious, entertaining, often incredibly tired, Brady had a number of highlights on the show, including her classical diss track, and ‘snort, raspberry, whistle’ (Google it, we couldn’t find a clip of it in isolation, but it’s worth your time), but eventually finished joint-last with John Kearns. Not that there wasn’t entertainment to be found when things didn’t quite go right for her.