Comedy
Interview
Billy Connelly said two words to Fred MacAuley – he’s still haunted by them
Get to know the Scottish comic ahead of his World Cup live special with Ally McCoist
The late 90s was an important era for Scottish football. First, there was the 1998 World Cup, the last time the country competed in the tournament. But from 1997 to 1999, there was a TV chat show that also ran, featuring comedian and broadcaster Fred MacAulay and former Rangers striker and A Question of Sport team captain Ally McCoist.
Well, all of them are set to return. Together, sort of. And pretty imminently, too. This June, Scotland will fly to North America for their big return to football’s greatest stage. Before that, though, on Friday 15 May, McCoist & MacAulay are reuniting for a live show, at the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow. It’ll be a World Cup special. You’ll perhaps know what to expect: chat, laughter, football stories and World Cup predictions. The two and a half hour live show will also feature guests Gordon Strachan, Dougray Scott, Gregor Townsend, Greg Hemphill, John Gordon Sinclair, Clare Grogan and Nathan Evans, plus Dead Ringers impressionist Lewis MacLeod will be making a “special contribution.”
So how does MacAulay fancy his country’s chances on the other side of the pond? “I mean, we’ve never got to a quarterfinals. I used to have a gag in my stand-up routine, which was that the favourite chant of the Tartan Army was ‘mathematically, we might still qualify’”. MacAulay also remembers comedian Arthur Smith’s view on the team, that they are “brilliant on paper. Shit on grass”.
Thankfully, he’s far more optimistic that his reunion with McCoist will be a success. If it is, would he like to work together more? “What I really would love to come out of it is the chance, maybe next year, to do three or four ‘an evening with Fred and Ally’ nights. Because there were so many adventures. There was always something that happened at the shows that, you know, obviously never made it to screen”.
Sounds like they won’t exactly struggle to fill two and a half hours at the Armadillo, then. An action-packed summer awaits, but before all that, we’ve got some vitally important questions for MacAulay…
Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?
I guess the answer would be a lift engineer. But no, I would suggest McCoist himself. But only if the lift happened to be in Scotland, because Ally’s a national treasure and hugely popular. And the thing about Ally is that he’s really, really popular with opposite supporters as well. So I think if they knew Ally was in a lift, they’d come and rescue him, and I might get out as well.
We were once having a pint in a pub in Glasgow and a bunch of Celtic fans came in and they were all giving it “McCoist, you know, you were the scourge of our team. Do you remember the goals that you scored in such and such a game?” And Ally has… I don’t know if you would call it a photographic memory, but he could tell you the build-up to every goal he’s scored. And I was thinking “some of this glitter has got to fall on me”. Then one of the Celtic fans turned to me, and he went “and who told you you were funny, by the way?”
Arnold Brown also had a great line. He said he got stuck in the lift with seven strangers and he said “I took command. I started the screaming”.
You’ve taken an unusually strategic approach to who you’d most like to be stuck in a lift with.
Thank you. Yeah, I’m a practical man.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
I’ve done hundreds of corporate events over the years. And there are people that go to corporate events who either have no control over flatulence or choose to fart in a crowd, and I would be concerned that I would be in a lift with somebody who had that opinion of flatulence. They could just let go wherever they wanted. And I’ve walked away from conversations, in case somebody thinks it was me. I just have to. I’ve got to go. Then I realise, maybe 3 or 4 steps away, they’re going to think it was me.
Maybe anyone that didn’t have similar political views to me would be a nightmare. Because you might end up liking them. I know that Sean Walsh ended up – I think it was maybe just temporary – but when he did I’m a Celebrity he ended up being quite pally with Matt Hancock. Which had me screaming at the television “no, Sean, no”! But there is that kind of Stockholm Syndrome where you’re stuck together.
What’s the weirdest interaction you’ve ever had with a famous person?
Like everybody else in stand-up, and particularly in Scotland, Billy Connolly is an absolute hero above and beyond anybody else in the business. He changed comedy – the style of comedy that he had was rambling, it was stories, it was anecdotes, rather than gag merchants who had kind of been ten-a-penny up to Billy.
So in October 1997, I’d taken my family away for a holiday to Florida. We went to Walt Disney World. We went down the coast to a beach and tennis resort, and I put my kids in for tennis lessons, and I thought, “oh, I’ll have a tennis lesson as well”. And five minutes into my lesson, I went over on my ankle and had a fractured dislocation.
So I had a six hour operation in Florida. Put it in a plaster cast. So the whole of the first series of McCoist & MacAulay, I was hobbling about on crutches. I had to cancel a lot of gigs, and it was coming up to time for the Scottish BAFTAs, which were going to be televised, and the producer got in touch with me and said “I hear you’re not gigging so much, would you fancy writing the script for the BAFTAs?”. So, I wrote the script, and Billy was getting a lifetime achievement award. And they said, come along on the night.
So I went along, and we were in the green room fairly early on. I’m not moving about much, so people kept bringing me beers. And by the time Billy arrived I was a few sheets to the wind and he was standing chatting to somebody and I thought “I’m maybe never going to get a chance to chat to him”. So, I got up on my crutches – I was in a dinner suit for some reason – and I hobbled over to him, and he was chatting to somebody, and I was just kind of loitering, and he sort of turned to me, and I said, “Billy, I just want to say I’m Fred MacAuley and I’m a comedian as well”. And he said [adopts Connelly’s voice] “Are yer?”. Then he turned back to the person he was having the chat with. And I was just flushed with embarrassment and hobbled away. So that is the sum total. I was probably being rude trying to interrupt. I was maybe just a bit too pissed.
Are there any of the younger or up-and-coming Scottish comics you’re a particular fan of?
We have so many. I’ve been around a long time and saw all the Irish guys that came through in the 90s. You know, Dylan Moran, Tommy Tiernan, Jason Byrne… And I think we’re almost at that stage in Scotland.
We’ve Christopher Macarthur-Boyd, who you’ll maybe know from podcasts with Frankie [Boyle]. He’s terrific. Incredible. Kevin Bridges has almost outstripped Connolly in popularity. We’ve got Marc Jennings – this year at the Glasgow Comedy Festival, we had a number of the young comics filling the King’s Theatre, which I guess is 1800 people. Marc Jennings was one. Connor Burns – I think he sold out five shows there. Rosco McClelland won the Billy Connelly Award last year. Susie McCabe. We’re in a really purple patch in Scotland. Jay Lafferty. Des Clark. I love Des. I’m kind of doing a disservice to the ones I haven’t been able to list. Susan Riddell. Ray Bradshaw… Really strong comics, and I hope they all do well at the Fringe this year, those that are going.
Is there anything culturally that we wouldn’t expect you to be into?
The podcast I’m listening to most now is Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. His improvisation is brilliant.
We also went through a phase of watching Neighbours. I went out to do two months in Melbourne, and it coincided with the Neighbours 10th anniversary. We got invited along to the anniversary party. I think we sat at Harold Bishop’s table. And then two years later, Kylie was one of our guests on McCoist & MacAulay, in 1997 and – harking back to my earlier story – she signed my plaster cast, which is still up in the loft. That is an item of memorabilia with literally no value whatsoever.
I mean, I’ll give you a tenner for it, so I’d question your ‘no value’ claim.
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
It was probably that I could find a career for myself in accountancy. And I went down that route and there were ups and downs. In retrospect, I don’t really consider the years wasted. Because by the time I got into the stand-up circuit I’d had a bit of life experience behind me. Whereas now you’ll get kids starting to do stand-up while they’re at university and then it’s straight into the world of stand-up when they graduate. But that put me down the wrong route.
I once made the mistake of saying to somebody, who was a hugely successful accountant, that I realised I could make more money as a comedian than I could as an accountant, by which I meant me personally. This guy is worth hundreds of millions, and he’s like “you’re losing your mind, MacAuley.”
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I’ve just answered that! Yeah: the worst job was the year that I spent thinking that I could become a CA. Until I sat my Chartered Accountancy exams and failed. And then I got a really good job as an accountant, but with a ski area. And then I became the accountant for a retail group. I was going further down that road. But all the time, knowing that I wanted to do something different.
Then, instead, you started pursuing stand-up comedy, and perhaps there was a CA assessment for that as well? A… charisma assessment? And you passed that with flying colours?
[laughs] For that assessment, I would probably have had to do the same as I did with my chartered accountancy, and give it one more try in the resits. Can you resit a charisma test?
What’s the skill that no one else knows that you’re great at?
Right, very few people will be interested in this. I can identify the variety of a potato – when it’s growing – by the colour and shape of the leaves. And I can tell you if it’s diseased or not.
Would you say that’s the best job you’ve ever had?
Well, it was very lucrative. Way back in the day there was a thing called the student grant. There was a means test for your parents, and then you got the grant and then there was a bit called the ‘parental contribution’. My parents took the view that the parental contribution would not be supplied to my brother or I, and that we would have to find a way to earn enough to see us through the year. And roguing potatoes was sufficiently lucrative to cover those costs.
What’s your controversial food opinion?
As a Scot – people are going to hate me for this – but I don’t enjoy porridge. I eat it as a kind of a necessity, for health reasons. I used to have porridge five days a week. But at the weekends I would have something that I enjoyed the taste of.
What’s the last gig or live show you went to?
We went to Ronnie Scotts, to see Joe Stilgoe. Just incredible. And we met his dad. Old Richard Stilgoe was in that night. But I’ve known Joe over the years and I just think he’s immense. And the band that he puts together!
What did 12-year-old you imagine that you’d be doing now?
I lived in a place called Rattray in Perthshire, and there was a quiz for school pupils run by Grampian Television. I applied to get on it, but my parents couldn’t take time off to drive me to Aberdeen to be on this quiz show. Which is probably a blessing. I’m sure I would have just struggled with the answers. But that was at the age of 12, and I wanted to be in television.
If you had to have a song playing every time you walked into a room, what would it be?
This is an easy one. It’s ‘The Riverboat Song’ by Ocean Colour Scene. It would give me the feeling that I was going to be a guest on TFI Friday. Which I never was and probably never will be.
What’s your guiltiest pleasure?
Podiatry. Getting the hard skin off my feet. Love it.
How does it work, are you taking a knife to it?
Yeah, so it’s done by scalpel. I mean, I don’t do it myself. I go to the podiatrist to do it.
Fair enough. Most people just answer, like, Taylor Swift to this question.
I’ve been caught out. Foot fetishist Fred MacAuley.
Do you have any superstitions?
[Firmly] None at all. My late mother was superstitious. Never make plans on a Sunday. Cross knives meant there’d be an argument. Don’t put new shoes on furniture. Don’t walk under a ladder, which I think was really just practical advice.
Yeah, that’s health and safety advice.
That’s right. So, I don’t know at what point in my life I decided I am not going to go down that route at all.
That was you rebelling. And also, Sundays are fantastic days to create plans on.
For your McCoist & MacAuley Live show, is there anything you’ve got on your rider?
Not really. [Suddenly remembers story] Though, in 2014, we had the Commonwealth Games coming to Scotland. And so the BBC were throwing a bit of money at various projects, and they decided to have – on the eve of the Commonwealth Games – a massive event at Edinburgh Castle. I co-hosted it with Alex Jones and Ricky Wilson. Bill Bailey did a set, Boy George was there, Ronnie Corbett, there was a mass pipe band, all that kind of stuff, plus Jessie J and The Beautiful South.
There were no real dressing rooms. It was just curtains, like in a maternity ward. I was sitting, and [Beautiful South singer] Jacqui Abbott came in to say hello. And we had two bottles of water and a piece of fruit on our table. So she’s going “this is shit, isn’t it? Let’s have a look around here.” And Jessie J’s [dressing room area]? Oh man, there were flowers, a whole fruit bowl, and a tub of Heroes. Which Jacqui and I robbed. Jessie J didn’t get any confectionery that night, because Jacqui Abbott and I nicked them.
Jacqui was great fun. I wouldn’t have done that myself. I’m easily led.
