Ex-MP Mhairi Black's stand-up journey shared in new BBC documentary
- Cameras followed former SNP deputy leader Mhairi Black as she made her Edinburgh Fringe comedy debut
- Airing next month, Mhairi Black: Being Me Again traces the former member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South's transition from politics to comedy
- Performing stand-up has "a lot of similarities" to speaking in Parliament, Black has suggested. You "have to pay attention to the peaks and troughs ... I need to keep them with me, and you can feel when you start to lose the room a wee bit."
Mhairi Black's transition from MP to stand-up comedian is traced in a documentary coming to the BBC next month, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
In Mhairi Black: Being Me Again, cameras followed the former SNP deputy leader and member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South as she made her Edinburgh Fringe debut last year, performing her show, Politics Isn't For Me, about her time in Westminster.
Available from 7th March on the iPlayer and airing on BBC Scotland two days later, the hour-long film, which goes behind the scenes in the House of Commons, includes Black speaking for the first time about being signed off sick from Parliament for three months in 2017 because of online abuse she received, and the subsequent ADHD diagnosis that changed her life.
The film also features interviews with her wife, Katie, and father, Alan, who accompanied Black in ardently campaigning for Scottish Independence in 2014, where she began making political speeches, leading to her being encouraged to stand in the General Election.
Black, who became the youngest person since the Reform Act of 1832 to take her seat when she was elected aged 20 in 2015, resigned from politics last year.
She begins a 21-date Scottish tour of Politics Isn't For Me at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival on 13th March, with a five-night run at London's Soho Theatre from 10th June, and is planning to return to the Fringe this year.
Speaking to stand-ups Marc Jennings, Stephen Buchanan and Stuart McPherson on their Some Laugh podcast, in an episode released today, Black said that when she was put in touch with the Gilded Balloon about performing a Fringe show, if felt like "an opportunity, and I thought, I'll try it.
"And then, of course, everybody seemed to enjoy it. So now it's gone on tour. And who am I to turn that down?"
Performing stand-up has "a lot of similarities" to speaking in Parliament, she suggested. You "have to pay attention to the peaks and troughs ... I need to keep them with me, and you can feel when you start to lose the room a wee bit.
"So all of those skills I used in Parliament, I'm using them now ... the difference [with comedy] is that people want to be there. They're enjoying listening. And, you know, I'm getting a good response."
Politics Isn't For Me attracted generally favourable reviews in Edinburgh, with the Guardian calling it "irreverent and self-unserious", the Telegraph praising its "constant gag-count" and The National hailing it as "a barnstorming comic debut".
Mhairi Black: Being Me Again is produced for BBC Scotland by Glasgow-based Indelible Telly, which previously made the documentary Scotland: Contains Strong Language, about Scots' relationship with swearing, presented by playwright Cora Bissett.