MBC Chats To: Cally Beaton

Cally Beaton is a quick-witted stand-up, writer and storyteller. Known for her sharp observations and engaging stage presence, you might recognise her from hilarious TV appearances on Live at the Apollo and QI. Before stepping into comedy, Cally had a successful career in the corporate world - making her journey into stand-up a story of radical reinvention.

She’s bringing her latest show, Namaste Motherf*ckers, to Saint Luke’s in Glasgow on Tuesday April 7th and Monkey Barrel Comedy in Edinburgh on Wednesday April 8th, so we sat down with her for a chat.

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Hey Cally, how's your day going?

I'm just back from a dog walk in the first sunshine we've seen in weeks, so not too bad at all, thank you!

You're bringing your latest tour, Namaste Motherf*ckers, to Glasgow and Edinburgh. For anyone who hasn't seen your stand-up before, what can they expect from the show?

This show is the best of everything I've been working on since my last tour five years ago! It's a two-part, one-woman show with at comedy at its heart, also featuring some readings from the book in the second half. It's uplifting, kind-hearted, thought-provoking but above all, funny! Oh, and there's a surprise that is neither comedy nor book towards the end of the show. Can I give you a clue? I couldn't possibly. You'll just have to come along and find out.

We love the title. It feels like it captures a tension between calm acceptance and speaking your mind. Is that a balance you're consciously exploring in the show?

I'm glad you love it - I love it too! It started out in podcast form over five years ago when I launched Namaste Motherf*ckers - the first podcast where work, comedy and wellbeing collide, a celebrity interview podcast with a twist! We've had everyone from Paloma Faith to Miriam Margolyes to Sir Grayson Perry on the show and it fast became a must-listen for a lot of people around the world. Based on it success, I wrote a book with the same name that was published last summer and became an instant best seller (and is about to come out in paperback!) and then decided I needed a show to complete the hat trick. You find out a fair bit more about why the title means to much to me in the show - it is indeed about that tension between people-pleasing and speaking-out that so many women feel. And you get to shout motherf*cker in a safe space, but I won't spoil it by saying more than that - apart from to say it gets mentioned as a cathartic highlight by many people after they've been to the show.

This show draws on your own story of radical reinvention "from boardrooms to stand-up stages". Looking back now, what feels like the biggest shift between those two versions of yourself?

Probably the biggest shift is finally being able to speak out, and indeed stand out, in whatever what I choose to, without a corporate gatekeeper sticking their oar in. Not having a boss is fantastic (not having a guaranteed income less so, but hey - totally worth it still!). I have found my own, authentic voice - it only took me half a century - and now I'm free to use it how, when and where I like.

A chance conversation with the late Joan Rivers helped set you on the way to a career in stand-up. Can you tell us a bit about that meeting?

I was working on the business side of the TV and Film industry, and would get to meet some of our on-screen talent when we hosted industry events. I would be the person who would say a few words before the actual talent took to the stage. I met some pretty interesting people over the years, none more so than the late, great Joan Rivers. She and I hit it off from the first moment we met and worked together on a few occasions. We had dinner together, just the two of us, not long before she died, and she surprised me when she said I should try stand-up. I said it was too late for me - I was a 45-year-old single parent of two kids at the time, with a massive day job. She just looked at me and said she was 81, and that I would look back and realised I was in the thick of it. She died very unexpectedly two weeks after that conversation and two weeks after that... I did my first ever stand-up gig!

The show mixes stand-up with storytelling and material from your book of the same name. How different was it writing a tour show with 'source material' to reference, compared to other shows you've written?

This is my magnum opus (get me!). I've rolled together my best stand-up in the first half of the show, and it's in the second half of the show that the book comes in. At first I thought I would just read chunks from the book in the second half and then have a Q&A, but once I started working on the show I realised that the audience would want a bit more than that - and that's what they're getting! It's been the hardest, most fun and best show I've written. I'm proud of it and I'm LOVING my audiences on this tour.

You had a successful career in TV before becoming a professional comedian. Do you think having success in another field made getting up on stage easier?

It certainly helped me have the confidence to get up on a stage with a microphone, having spent so many years speaking on corporate stages prior to that. And having had a few more goes round the sun than lots of stand-ups when they start out didn't hurt in terms of depth and breadth of material either. With age comes power, and I'm very grateful for that.

We can't get through this interview without mentioning Jeff The Wonder Dog. If Namaste Motherf*ckers is your mantra, what's his?

'Stop using me to get Instagram followers', shortly followed by: 'Where's my dinner?'

What has been the most surprising or memorable audience reaction you've had on the tour so far?

I talk on stage about it never being too late to reinvent, particularly as a pushback against the narrative that women are supposed to fade away from midlife. I did a show a couple of weeks ago where there was a woman in the front row who I got talking to during the show. It turned out that she was 92 and her husband of over 70 years had died 10 years ago. They had always come to that venue every weekend since it opened and sat in the front row. She made a pact with herself to make sure her world didn't start to get smaller once he was gone and has not missed a comedy night in the front row since. WHAT A WOMAN!

And finally - Namaste Motherf*ckers is all about being "invisible no more." What's one small way people can channel a bit of that energy in their own lives?

Nobody knows what they're doing, and everybody thinks they're going to be found out. It takes a lot of effort to make anything look effortless - so don't get taken in by people's glossy exteriors. No need to wait for perfection - just do it, flaws, fuck-ups and all. After all, there is no success without failure so we may as well strap in for the ride. Today is the youngest you will every be and only having so many fucks left to give is hard-won - let's bloody use it!

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You can see Cally Beaton: Namaste Motherf*ckers at St Luke's in Glasgow on April 7th and at Monkey Barrel Comedy in Edinburgh on April 8th.

Get Glasgow tickets HERE.

Get Edinburgh tickets HERE.