Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Fern Brady

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

This week Emily and Ray went for a walk in Catford with Fern Brady. They chatted about her childhood in Scotland, growing up with undiagnosed Autism and why comedy is the perfect career for her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I got diagnosed, the doctor gave me a thing to give to my agent that said, this is how Fern works and she will often say yes to jobs she doesn't want to do to avoid a confrontation. And the other day he had to go, but do you actually want to do this about three times? And then I said, no, I don't. But you still turned up today. No one said yes to this one straight away. This week on Walking the Dog, Raymond and I took a stroll with the brilliant comedian, and Taskmaster star, Fern Brady.

Fern is such a committed cat lover. Not only does she have two main coons, she even lives in Catford, in South East London, which is where we walked. Fern fortunately also adores dogs. And is one of the most refreshingly honest people I've ever met. It was a real joy to spend time with her. She told me all about her childhood in Scotland

and the challenges she faced growing up with undiagnosed autism and why comedy has turned out to be the ideal career for her in so many ways. Fern didn't just like Raymond. She basically wanted to adopt him. She even texted her boyfriend to ask if they could get a dog like him. I won't tell you his response, but let's just say he might need some convincing. Fern's just written a memoir called Strong Female Character, which I had a sneak preview of, and it's a fascinating, beautifully written account of navigating neurodiversity. It's out in February, but do yourself a favour and pre-order it from Amazon, as it's honestly brilliant. She's also extended her autistic bikini queen tour into next year So get your tickets from fern brady comedian.com

I'll stop talking now and hand over to the woman herself Here's fern and raymond And are we going to walk with fern So he doesn't need a leash Well he does but We can let him off when we go in the park Fern I might do you want to Take do you want to lead him

Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Come on, come on. Oh. I used to live on this street. I've been in Catford for like since before it had those types of coffee shops. I'm like a classic gentrifier because I moved here when I was skint and then when I made money I stayed here and got a house and now loads of there seems to be more and more comedy people moving here or whenever I film something there's always some producer or someone from the crew lives here oh Fern I'm sorry it's so early on is he doing a poo all right I just didn't even notice that's like the length of his body I think he really likes you Fern he's I wasn't sure if this breed of dog would be aloof or or what

but he just seems so amazing. He's smaller than my cats and I feel like I need to get a medium-sized dog to take on the cats. So I'm thinking a basset hound or a cocker spaniel. Oh, are you? Well, I really, I've always wanted a bass at hound, but I see a lot of them being put up for adoption

and they tend to have like all these issues and stuff but they're big personalities. I think you should get what you love and you all know. Well I love Spaniels as well. I want a dog that can go on long walks and go hiking and stuff and then basset hounds have such short little legs. I mean, fam? Yeah, yeah, you couldn't, because you go hiking with him.

I mean, I have to tell you, you'll probably, he's walking now, or probably get a good 10 to 15 minutes out of him. He might do a run on grass, but he only likes soft surfaces. At least with him he's like light enough that you can carry him if he gets tired. So I don't, as I say Fern, I don't do one of those posh formal introductions. But I will say who I'm with. I'm with the very fabulous Fern Brady. I'm so excited to chat to this woman.

I'm a huge fan. and I've just read your brilliant book, I've got a sneak preview. Cheers. I want to talk to you about it because I just found it personally. I was like, oh my God, why wasn't this book around when I was a young woman and how life-changing it would have been for me? That was, well, yeah, I was trying to follow the rule of write what you wish had been around when you were 21. Yeah.

And then especially coming from where I'm from in Scotland, there weren't really any coming of age Catholic. girls stories are still I grew up reading a lot of Irvin Welsh or James Kelman and so that was like the only Scottish books or there weren't any about um girls very much come on what's he doing at the moment so what he does turn is I call you a refusal and he just he just stands there in in the street and gives me evils. And what it often is, is something so random. Like, it's often a wheelie bin. Yeah.

There'll be someone with a beard. What I'm saying is he's one of us. He's neurodivergent. Oh, have you got something like that? Yeah, I got, that's why I found your book. I found it really emotional reading it. Because, oh. What are you, ADHD?

Sorry, I just shouted that. You knew that, I love it. Well, no, just there's a feel like there's about 10 times more ADHDers than the autistic women. But I think I was doing an autism podcast yesterday and the host, she would say we feel like ADHD is almost the cuter one and it's still kind of more taboo to get diagnosed autistic. People aren't really seeking out that as a diagnosis. But I hope that doesn't seem like it's undermining. I'm really ignorant about ADHD and I'd heard that Josie Long, the comedian Josie Long had kept saying to me,

oh there's all these similarities and I was like, I'll send you the book and you can let me know how many similarities there are because I was very like, no we're not, it's not the same, but it sounds like the sensory stuff is the same. And that's what, I felt like the sensory aspect that autism didn't get talked about. When I was getting diagnosed, the only, I always sort of suspected I had autism since I was 16,

but I always understood it from the point of view of how much it impacts other people rather than me, like being blunt or being seen as rude and stuff, or we get described, the way we get described is all deficit based, like we have rigid and flexible thinking, and that's because we've been described from neurotypical people's perspective for so long. Yeah. I think your dog's autistic.

I think he is actually. I think, well, you know what? It's so interesting how, I don't think he was like that when I first had him. Yeah. But if he keeps seeing me, every time there's a loud noise, I go, ah!

So he responds to that. And I have made him quite frightened of the world, to be honest. I don't deny that. But, you know, I suppose on the plus side, he'll, he's less likely to get eaten by a fox as a result. But, um, So though we're coming up to... Is this your local park, Pern?

Well, this area is quite good for having a lot of local parks, so this is one of them. I realised how much I like how calming it is being around animals. It is, isn't it? During the lockdown, because I did the cliche of getting a lockdown pit. Although I was meant to be getting him just before lockdown. just before lockdown hit anyway. But yeah, and I know a lot of autistic people

prefer being around animals because it's not even that we don't like socialise and it's more that with animals, there's no, you can just be with them and you don't have to worry about what you're saying or anything. Yeah. Because I always thought, there's something just off about people that work in animal shelters. And I do spot people who I think are not diagnosed,

it's autistics there. because they find it more comfort in to be around animals or easier to work and interact with animals. Yeah. It's not even just there, it's like all different, there's so many different places that you can spot autistic people. Really, that's interesting. Well even like actually in the book, like strip clubs or sex work you get more autistic women there and more neurodiverse women there. And that's something I don't see talked about much. Yeah, well I want to go back to Fern Jr. You grew up in Bathgate. Yes. It's the same town as Lewis Capaldi and Susan Boyle, so I was glad they sort of put it on the map.

And the Proclaimers sung about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to mention that in the book. And Frankie Boyle has a joke about how shit Bathgate is. And it sort of is it in between Edinburgh and Glasgow? Yeah, it'd be like 20 minutes. It's outside of Edinburgh on the train and maybe 40 from Glasgow. I lived in Edinburgh for about six years when I was at uni. How would you describe your household growing up?

I lived in a three-bed semi-detached house. My dad's always saying to me I stop telling people I'm working class because we lived where the Protestants lived, which is generally in Scotland, if you're Catholic, you're a poorer. I don't know if anyone will take issue with me saying that. And then if you're, like, I'd say, I don't know, Protestants in my town had whole different accents and nicer houses and stuff. So we lived in, like, what my dad says was the nicer bit of town. And he's really annoyed, I see, I'm working class.

Is he? Yeah, he gets so angry about it. So my dad was a mechanic when I was growing up. and then when I was an adult, he went back to, well, he didn't go back to uni for the first time and now he's like the boss of this truck truck company. And my mom was a housewife and then she worked on the Tesco checkouts. At the same time as you? Yes, she did.

Well, everyone in Bathgate worked on Tesco. Like my brother's, I'm pretty sure at one point, three or four out of the five of us worked in Tesco. because my brother's stocked the fruit and fish. And did you have pets, by the way, growing up, so many pets. They were like my main friends. Actually, that's quite fucked that I didn't mention them in the book. Sorry for swearing.

Because they were my main friends. I had a series of hamsters. We had a chinchella. They're awful pets. Is that a Scottish thing? Because we had some friends. To have a chinchella? No.

I'm thinking we had some friends who lived in Bears. No, they're like South American. I know. But the only people I know who've had Jingill is the Scottish. Oh, he's over there. Look at him Ronfern. Why is he called Raymond? Look at this.

Oh, I'm going to text him to my boyfriend, be like, we have to get a dog like this. But he's always, whenever he sees cute little dogs, he's got, I think he's got a little leaf in his fur. So he's called Raymond. My sister was called Rachel and we lived in Australia. Which way should we go from?

That way, that way? This way. And everyone called her Ray. And then when I lost her, I thought it would be a nice kind of tribute to her without being frankly weird. There's a robin. Did you see?

I love robins. Yeah, you know that's meant to be a dead relative when you see a robin and that was as you were talking about. sister. Sorry for being such, I'm so Irish Catholic. At Christmas one time in Ireland at my boyfriend's family, Robin flew into the kitchen and his sister was like, Granny's here, but then she shut on the new coffee maker that his mum had caught for Christmas. It's honestly that everyone in my family thinks that Robbins are your relatives. Oh, I love that. Because they appear at weird times.

I'm going to think that all the time now. I love that fan. Yeah, you should. So tell me your sort of the energy in your house. What was it like? Were you... Everyone talks over each other? Well, I've just interrupted you. There are. Yeah.

I remember when my boyfriend came to meet them, he was like, I've never seen people interact this way. Everyone just shouts and talks over each other. And I think the night he came to visit him, it was so unfortunate as well because my brother was a sailor and had just come back from this ship in America and announced he was leaving his partner for this American girl we'd met who was gay or thought she was gay and they were running off together to get married so my mom was standing in her dressing gown crying while everyone just like shouted over each other and then my boyfriend

was like god it's like it's like being in a play or something and I was like this is this is the normal level that they're at all the time. And you, did you feel when you were growing up, did you always have that sense of, I don't quite feel like everyone else? Yeah. From a very young age. Yeah, I thought I was adopted for ages. I thought I was adopted in adulthood, even though I have like a strong resemblance to my parents. And I just always seemed to be saying the wrong thing to people and everyone thought I was doing it deliberately. Yeah, it was just constant and then the other thing is my family not so much now but they were insanely religious I met this Irish girl that did social work in Bathgate and she said you know

the Catholics in Bathgate are more religious than in Ireland it's like they've preserved the culture in 1950s Donigall so yeah there was that as well and I just didn't seem to, yeah, just seemed to be constantly not fitting in with all these expectations, which sounds really cliched. But I also had really obvious autistic traits like I would have meltdowns over the sensation of my clothes from, I don't know, from when I was like two or three. And I've only found out recently that my mum had said to my brother, when I was a teenager, that book the curious incident of the dog in the night time had come out and my mum said to my brother I think that's what ferns got it's like you could have brought it up with me before

but people used to want to avoid getting diagnosed because you were undiagnosed it must have been having this constant impact on friendships and you know your school experience and yeah I didn't get very much out of school I was really good at school but I didn't get a lot out of it. I think I would have been as well just being homeschooled because a lot of my education came from my mum because she was very proactive in letting us pursue our own interests and we had a lot of extracurricular hobbies and stuff but I mean in school I would just zone out I was barely aware of what was going on. And why was that do you think? Because my school especially my high school it was like being

in a men's prison. I mean it was just horrendous. Yeah it was like sorry I just got distract this is like the set up of this podcast is so perfect for an autistic person because we're walking and we're doing sort of a parallel socialising that doesn't involve making eye contact too much so you can really concentrate on what you're saying. I remember I remember knowing I was a bit odd because I didn't really seem to feel the same urge to socialise as other people. Like I remember girls coming to the door to ask me to come out to play and I just got to a point and I was like, can't be bothered with this?

I really would rather just sit on my own reading. And all my memories of, there's not a lot of chat about autistic joy, but all my happiest memories are of reading on my own, like a child who adore, who adore what are those things called flying foxes? Just going on a flying fox back and forth for about an hour pretending I was flying around the world in my head. All my happy memories are things like that, being alone. And it's weird how that gets pathologised as this strange thing because it's not.

And people should be more aware of, if that's what you like to do, you should be able to do that. And I used to play piano for ever. hours and hours and hours on my own, especially in my teens, because my mum just told me recently that my dad would say, like, this is a bit much. I know we wanted her to learn an instrument, but she's doing this too much. And my mom was like, just let her do it. And you would also sort of take yourself off and learn languages and things, would you mean? Yeah, that was my big thing. I loved it. Yeah, because my mom was saying like, sorry, I keep crossing my fingers and you can see it because I can see in my eyes.

I've told you about Robbins and now it's the magpie superstition. I love this though. I wanted to do it secretly and then I was like, she'll be like, what is she doing? Come on Ray, let's find another magpie. That cafe, by the way, employs autistic people. It's cool. I feel you were saying that like a hint, you can get a job there. No.

No, but it's just to... I mean, I've never said no, because you... It's a dead-coot initiative, and they're nicer than, like, 90% of... Because I find London really, like, difficult to deal with how sullen everyone is. I've never got used to it. And then in that cafe, everyone's buzzing. So, I'm getting this picture of you as being very...

...focused on stuff that you love and very passionate about that. But obviously, you know, the tax you pay on that is that you're not, a lot of the time you're sort of feeling that you don't fit in. Did you feel like a problem in your family? Yeah. They very often said that I was unpleasant, evil. Because my mom would always say, like, when I was a teenager, she was like, you know, you've always been this bad.

Like you've always been evil, ever since she had that tantrum in Edinburgh airport. And I was like, when are you talking about? And she was like, you know which one. And she was on about when I was two, and I had a meltdown in the airport. And the airport is, of course, the fluorescent lights and the noise and the chaos. I was just having these repeated meltdowns from when I was a toddler. Is it just this sense of like flooding almost? Yeah, I should probably close.

clarify the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum in case people don't know. A meltdown is like where you get overstimulated from a buildup of too much sensitive input and then you lose control of what you're doing. Whereas a tantrum is something people do to be manipulative, like toddlers will do it and then they'll just abruptly stop crying when they get what they want. You went into, I suppose it was kind of a mental health unit, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. When you were teenager, you... CAMS, it's called, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

The thing that prompted it was I was obsessed with getting straight A's, and I had a very all-or-nothing mentality where I was like, I have to get these grades and get into like the best, you know. and I think at the time I thought that was what made me go daft but I think it was also I just couldn't take

school anymore like having to try and socialise in this big noisy school the fluorescent, I've got a big issue with fluorescent lights being around them all the time and trying to study and in school there was like people setting fire

to their own mouths at the back of French class and stuff it was just chaos and then I had sort of a breakdown but I would think of it now as like autistic burnout. Yeah. And then they put me in this unit and it was just

the way it was run was as if we had done something wrong so from the first day that I went there I said the word crap when I was talking to one of the other girls and they went that's not a word we used. here trying to avoid saying the name of the place and my parents were like yeah

yeah she's going in here this is going to be great and I was like but I haven't done anything wrong so I used to go there during the days instead of school and then I studied for my hires in there and then I just went back into school to take my exams which was weird and were you always aware that humor and was a cut But human was a currency for you? Were you always aware that you were funny? No, I was a lot more like, people, adults always seemed to be really shocked

by stuff I was saying, or scandalised. Like, what sort of thing? Like, I remember a friend's dad thought I was dead funny because I'd like, I think he was drinking some wine and I asked for, I was like asking for a bottle of Lambeauscoor or something, just being an idiot. Just saying stupid things. Once I worked out, I would get a rise out of people by saying things.

I sort of wanted to do that more. And then I remember thinking that it was funny because I had this dreadful Saturday job in books where all the women fucking hated me. Because if you're autistic, there's all these little titles that neurotypical people, they can just see that you're not one of them. So even though neurotypical people don't know what autism looks like, the way that we move

and speak is when we learn how to mask, it's almost overly stylised and there's something uncanny about it where people just pick up on it and something in their, is it like their lizard brain, just knows you're not one of us and I'm going to exclude you from stuff. So every Saturday I'd have this miserable shift with these horrible women, then I'd come home and talk about it to my parents and they were just like howl laughing and that felt really good so yeah it was always like i was always taking like the most bleakest stuff and making it funny because even i remember my best friend at school she's she was really really popular my best friend was really normal but she was really cool because she would just laugh about all the weird stuff that

happened so she even says now she's like she's like I don't know why I was so cool about you being in that unit because anyone else would just think god that's so strange and it was too embarrassed to tell my other school friends whereas with her I would have a laugh about it you experienced being sort of having to leave your home didn't you your parents your parents kicked you out well my dad would always get me back my mom would kick me out and then my dad would get me out and then my dad would me back generally was the pattern because I had to reduce for the sake of the it would have been boring to say how many times they kicked me out but it honestly felt like it was every week at one point and why were they kicking you out well

I used to just think cause because my mom's a bitch but now having lived with my boyfriend for I think we've been together for 10 years you get when you're going out with someone a long time you get a really good perspective on what you're like as a person and it's not flattering and now I've seen what he has to live with. I think my mum was just like had had enough because I would do things like when I was going to sleep at night I would punch the walls to try and calm down or I had this rocking chair that I would rock back and forth then. Again I don't know how these these are all doing things like that are all incredibly obvious autistic traits so it's mad it wasn't picked up on.

And did you get in trouble with the police or anything? Oh yeah, yeah. God, yeah. That's so shameful. The main thing was my mum was always really angry about me having sex, and I don't know why. But we're just, like, very different people. She's like very, very pream and proper. She phoned me up one time.

This sort of crystallises how different me and my mama. She phoned me up one time out of the blue. As an adult, and she was like, Fern. Don't you just love sparkly shoes? And I was like, what are you on him? I went, no. So yeah, we were just like this very, very odd match. Oh, he's a shitsu.

Yeah. He's so beautiful. Is it a boy? Yeah, Raymond. Oh, Raymond. Sorry. Just the sort of floating. Yeah, this one that was just walking.

Well, I was saying to my friend, he looks like, sorry. Is it a Pekinese? Is you a baby? No. Mate, I don't think that's a shit-su, is it? I mean, I'm not. Whatever it is, he's great.

Oh, thank you. So go on. You were you, being really interesting in there? Oh, yes. Oh, my mum was, um, Before that there's people. I'd say things went badly wrong when I started having sex because she cried for about a week. Actually a week.

And that's another thing that I found really interesting that isn't talked about a lot is if, because the stereotype of autistic people is that we don't have relationships and that we're asexual. And that's true for some autistic people. Then the other thing is autistic women are not about, for not having any regard for gender norms or what people call girl code. So sometimes tend to be promiscuous or what people would say promiscuous. I think that's a judgmental label. And then because they don't take into account that there's like a social cost for it.

So yeah, I remember my mom just crying and she was like, do you have low self-esteem? And she just kept being like, why, why did you do this? And yeah, it's just Catholicism in it. They're so weird about it. And Scotland's sexist in a very sort of quiet, paternalistic way. It's like a very sort of creepy and misogyny up there. So the reason I wanted to do the book about autism and feminism is because if you're an autistic woman, you're so constantly bumping up against all these limitations and stuff that it means you get the worst of.

sexism sometimes. It feels to me that there are certain ideals that you're meant to live by as a woman in society and a lot of it is tied up in frankly being dishonest because it's about suppressing your feelings and emotions. Yeah, yeah. It's about being passive and quiet. Yeah. And it's hard enough for neuro-typical women to do that. Exactly. But when you have have autism there are and your brain can't actually function like that yeah it's magnified isn't it to the power of a hundred and that that aspect of it was the thing where I thought this could be interesting I want it to be something neuro-typical women read as

well oh good was there another magpie I was just that one no because you saw one earlier that's the second one I have to see two at the same time though I mean I don't the rules fun. This is just my role in my head. Well they have to be in the same area. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know it was a postcode thing. Oh, they're lovely and slim, aren't they? That's the last thing I thought someone would say about a reply. But yeah, I thought neurotypical women would find it interesting because it's things like, like if you ever read those things about we got a woman to reply. to emails using a man's email account

and then look at the difference in response and stuff. Well, you know how much, if you're a woman, your communication can be misjudged because you have to meet certain feminine standards. If you're autistic, you're just like, constantly bumping up against that. Oh, I'm just repeating what I was saying and I know what I want to say

and it was a better thing than that. That was what I was gonna say. though. I couldn't, for years, I couldn't understand why I was like so into feminism, but then also so terrified by groups of women. And then I read this autistic psychologist's book, Unmasking Autism, it's called, by Devin Price. Devin Price is a trans man and he basically wrote about this thing called Toxic Femininity. And it's things like, the way women communicate generally can be so hard if you're autistic because things like passive aggressiveness is so hard to pick up on or doing little side eye glances and stuff so you often feel like you have no idea what's going on in a group and you know you've done something wrong that you can't put your finger on it because I only ever really felt comfortable when I was around like other mad women in the unit supposedly mad I think a lot of them were autistic or um

when I was working in strip clubs. Like when I was at Edinburgh uni, I had more strippers as friends than I did students. And so, I hated uni. Well, we should say, so you went to university, you did really well in your A levels and you applied to Edinburgh. Yeah. But this is Fern.

So Fern doesn't say, I'm going to do English lit or history. Yeah, let's go over to the logs, Fern. Oh, great. I don't want your boots to, I don't want, is it, if it's too muddy, we can. No, these are old books, it's fine. Yeah, you did at Edinburgh University. You did...

Is it Arabic? Yeah, Arabic and Persian with Islamic history. No, but I dropped out and switched to English let fairly quickly. I get the impression that you found... It was almost like there was no manual for how to do this. I didn't know... I couldn't work out how to submit an essay. I didn't know what buildings to go to.

I couldn't seem to do anything. I couldn't feed myself properly. I would just eat one food over and over again. And I did three first years at uni before I finally got through first year. That was also because then other mad stuff started happening in my life. So while you're at university,

you decided to start stripping to earn some money basically. Yeah, yeah. On a whim. Well, no, I'd been thinking about it for a little bit because I didn't get any money off my parents and I was getting £80 a month from the Scottish student funding body and that was to cover rent and everything so that all I didn't last and then I was back and forth to the uni hardship offices getting these hardship grants and then I was like I'm going to have to either drop out

which I don't want to do move back to Bathgate and go to uni from there which is not doable because I didn't like living with my parents or I'll do this. And then I ended up doing it for about two and a half years. Sometimes I'd make a lot of money and then I'd take time off for my exams. But I mean now, God, the way things are now, it almost feels quite quaint to talk about being a stripper because so many, it's very olden days. Do you know what I think?

I think it's very like the 1920s, something because everyone now is on only fans and all sorts. What was it like? Stripping? Well, I'd always, now like a true stripper, I'd been asked about stripping before in interviews, say, to promote my friend's shows. And I was like, I'm not even talking about stripping in this show, so why are you asking about it? You sleaze. There's always Scottish journalists. And like a true stripper, I was like, I'm going to talk about this when I'm making the most amount of money possible. from it. Because most, I mean, most, a lot of the strippers on you were doing it because they wanted to do unpaid creative work.

Yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah. They were, well, I don't want to say, because I'm still in touch with people from it now. Of course. But quite a lot of us went on to do really good jobs. You made a really interesting point about how, in some ways, stripping really worked for you, and you someone with autism because it's so transactional there's no hypocrisy they know why they're there you know why they're there and there's none of this misreading or also the lighting's fantastic it's because i hate fluorescent lights so it's nice and dark um the music's great it got me really into r and b um the company's good but um yeah i really loved working there because I felt so excluded at Edinburgh

uni. Edinburgh uni is mostly privately educated or very posh southern English people. So I remember thinking uni was going to be this amazing thing where it wouldn't be like school, everyone would be bonding over books and stuff. And then I got there and I got called a commoner

within like days of being there at Freshers week. Well, did someone actually employ that? Actually, we got, no, we got, I was in the queue to some, I think Tiffany that sings, I think we're alone now. She was playing the student union in Freshers week and I was in the queue with my Scottish flat mate. And these girls overheard us talking and they went, what's that smell? Smells like commoners. And I just was like, oh this is how it's going to be. It was awful.

I look at that incident and I can see obviously they see a very pretty girl. What are you on about that? No, but Fern, it's only when you get older. Take it from an older woman. Oh yeah, I have you. You can only get pictures of me when I was younger and being like, wow. But you can only see that actually, of course, I can see that was them being threatened. They felt threatened.

They wouldn't have said that to a guy, I don't think. Oh, right. Is Raymond going to be okay near these dogs? Oh, oh. Come on, Ray. So I'm getting a flavour of what an anxious dog parent I would be. Because I didn't want him to even go near that dog. And it was while you at university, you didn't a lot of money from the stripping, hadn't you?

No, not compared to other strippers. probably was the least successful stripper of all time. The amount I made was shockingly bad for, given it's a job that like, that kind of ostracizes you from other people and given how upset my mom was when she found out, I didn't earn enough. How did she find out?

She found out not for years and years after. I'd mentioned it by accident during a new material gig, just blurted it out, and then this journalist, printed it and my mum was scanning the newspaper through the checkouts and Tesco and she saw it and I got this angry phone call and then we didn't speak for six months. What's this one? Oh it's a wedding! Oh it's a wedding isn't it's lovely? That's so cool. Oh just married how lovely. Yeah that makes sense because the registry oh is it are they married? Oh isn't that lovely?

Oh, Ray, go and say congratulations to them. Congratulations! Oh, congratulations. Oh, isn't that lovely? Yeah. They got married. So it was while you were, and it was while you were at university that you started to get involved in journalism and editing the student newspaper.

Because I had enough money to do it from my job. Because you have to work for free. And that eventually led to you getting into comedy. Yeah, yeah. Because you wrote this piece about trying stand-up. Yeah, which I've since learned as one of the most cliched pieces you can do. But I'm really grateful to my editor

that pushed me to do it because I was too shy to do it other than that. I would have just... I'd kind of said to my mom, oh, I think I should be a stand-up, but that was during one of the times where I'd gone mad and been signed off uni again. So I think my mum was just like, oh, you're not well.

And then I used to email the stand comedy club in Edinburgh saying, do you think I should do comedy? And they get loads of emails like that, so obviously they didn't reply. It was just by chance that this, I don't know if my editor knew I wanted to do it, but once I'd done my first gig, I was like, oh, I'm definitely going to do this.

And then I moved to England after graduation to do a post-grad as a news reporter. But within six months, nine months, I'd quit it, because my lecturer was like, or my yearhead was like, you either have to stop gig in or leave the course. And I was like, well, I can't stop gig in. When you did that first gig, did you sort of, a lot of comics talk about that feeling of I just feel right. Yeah, yeah. Did you have that sense?

Yeah, it was mental. Like, it was the feeling that I thought that you would only get if you were in a really fulfilled relationship or something. But I mean, now I'm kind of cynical about it now because I'm like, well, it's just narcissistic supply, isn't it?

It's not this, it's not really this beautiful thing. It's just your ego get invalidated. That's very self-aware, though. Well, you have to be because there's so many mad nurses and comedy. So I want to be like, I don't want to be the king of them.

Yeah, so my first gig, it wasn't good by any measure, but it was enough for me to want to do it again. You entered, so you think you're funny. Yeah. And that means. a big difference. And I think and after that you were sort of gigging pretty constantly. Yeah, I was living in Manchester in the spare room of another comedian and

just gigging all the time and it took me about I think about three years and then I got an agent and I got on TV too early. I got um Stuart Lee put me on a TV show that he had. And then I moved to London. But I mean, I'd say it took, I think it took me about five years before I could quit my job. And what was your job? What were you?

Oh, I did loads of tech. I was a secretary. I was a receptionist. I had a dreadful job at a TV station clearing the, to a music clearance. you know so if they want a bit of music for the news you get permission to use it and that was another job where I was in an office of all women and just felt like something isn't right here just the way they communicated was so passive aggressive

and I found all the noises they made really stressful so I used to wear headphones to try and concentrate and my boss was always like please please don't wear headphones and I was just making reasonable adaptations for myself in my working environment. That's what it is. Because it's only now people are talking more about having, well, I mean, you know what, after lockdown, loads of autistic and neurodiverse people were saying, how come you've managed to make all these adaptations so easily?

Because it was a dream for autistic people to be able to work from home. But no one was ever willing to do it before. Yeah. I mean I remember becoming aware of you and I remember. Yeah, I just remember other comics talking about you, Catherine Ryan, who I know we're both. Oh my God. Huge fans of and I just I'm so it's actually embarrassing how much I like her. Is as embarrassing. Because she's just always been nice to me from when I was new. She's not someone, you know a lot of people you get the sense that they're supportive up to a point. Yeah. But then it's like, very Well, I don't want you taking any of the cake, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas you feel with her, she's like, great, let's all have cake. Exactly. So you've been doing, you've done Taskmaster recently. I was very, the way I was on that is how I am around the house. And I was the most, because I guess the goal in comedy is to be the most yourself. And I started off in comedy, very shouty and aggressive, but that was a way to cover up how nervous I was. whereas I just

the Alex Horn that does Taskmaster and the whole crew of it were so, so nice that I just felt like I could be myself like I used to feel bad I never, when I got into comedy I was never, I just wanted to do stand-up

rather than doing stuff with a view to getting on TV and I never thought I would get on TV stuff and then I got put on 8 out of 10 cats really early on when I was only three years in And I didn't know that you're supposed to almost be like an immediately recognisable character straight away. I think I'm quite strange, but I'm not strange.

What I mean is the thing a lot of English people notice about me first is my Scottishness and I have very little interest in talking about Scottishness. So I used to feel bad that I didn't do well on panel shows and that I didn't feel comfortable on them. Come on, Raymond. Oh! Do you like Fern? Is that your friend?

Maybe I could adopt him. Oh, Farn. He's so amazing. Can you tell me what breeder you got him from? Because I really want one now. Oh. Do you think, Fern, that comedy was attractive to you as a career because of how your brain functions?

Oh yeah of course it's such an autistic friendly job because you spend a lot of time on your own on public transport or in airports that's like 90% of the job is just being on your own and having a think and then for my tour shows they're trying to get me a tour manager for the next one and I have to keep saying look I don't want to talk to someone in the car on the way back I just want to be on my own I Are you a control freak? Yes. I know the other thing I like is with comedy people are only going to respond in one or three ways, maybe four ways. They'll laugh, they'll get angry with me, they'll be bored and look at their phones. Whereas in everyday conversation, you have no idea how people are going to respond. You're constantly trying to work out patterns. Tell me briefly, I need to let you go soon, which I should walk this way?

this way. So tell me about your wonderful partner. I say wonderful because I really like the sound of your partner. Yeah he's amazing. Because you'd had some checkered relationships hadn't you which I presume is going to be inevitable when you're particularly when you're undiagnosed and yeah you don't a lot of um autistic women are really vulnerable to ending up in dodgy relationships or being exploited because we don't read who's a bad person and then also if you're autistic you're much more likely to be estranged from your family or not have very many friends so if you find someone who likes you you just attach to them yeah which is mad because I was told by a doctor that I couldn't be autistic

because I'd had boyfriends I think he was singing in fresh I think he was there was a man singing in French and it was I quite like you his energy. And so your partner, you really have managed to make it work. Yeah, yeah. All those things got worse after my diagnosis. And we broke up, but we got back together because he's just very, because I just thought, I can't live with anyone.

I think I should just be a hermit. And he was like, you have to stop having this all or nothing thinking. because he was the one that really helped me and pushed me to get diagnosed because I'd been putting it off for years and I'd even had a woman come up to me after a gig saying I was doing material at the time about how I could sense that other women knew there was something just off about me and this woman came up and she was like you're describing being autistic you're describing being an autistic woman go off and read this book and I'm so glad she did that because even though I already knew and I'd tried to get diagnosed when I was 16, because I'd been

fobbed off, I kept going, oh well I'm not autistic and I'm just going to learn social skills like a language and I'll get rid of being autistic because I'm clever enough that I can just get rid of it. So I was doing that for years trying to mask, it's called, I think ADHD is a true ADHD people mask as well. And you really, it's the exhaustion that what I found when I got diagnosed is people saying, you, so you do, I think it's some, that masking thing can be really tired. I would go home and just think, I just want to sleep now. I'm shattered. Oh, look.

What are these ones, Fern? Oh, there's two magpies. Oh, thank God. Yay. Two magpies, hey. Are you not a big crier, are you? Well, I am. but I didn't think I was.

I think I am. Really? But I'm not sure, I don't know, like I'm so used to suppressing it. Yeah, so a lot of my emotions come out just with like the lamest films, like the notebook and stuff. Although that's a really dark film about Alzheimer's. Are you, I imagine you're quite good at confronting people. No, no. No.

No, I'm terrible at it. That's the other thing was I've felt since doing comedy, there was this image had been built up of me as she's so aggressive and blunt and brutal. But then in my day-to-day work dealings, in fact, like here's an example of it. When I got diagnosed, the doctor gave me a thing to give to my agent that said, this is how Fern works

and she will often say yes to jobs she doesn't want to do to avoid a confrontation. Since I gave that to my agent, he'll phone me up and be like, do you want to do this? And then I'll go, no, and he'll say, oh, but it's a good job, you should do it. And then I go, okay, yes. And the other day he had to go,

but do you actually want to do this about three times? And then I said, no, I don't. But you still turned up today. No, no said yes to this one straight away. Why do you think that is so fun? I think that is so fun. That's interesting, that the honesty thing, is that because you sort of have a lifetime of thinking, I get it wrong, I don't know how to navigate kind of interactions, so I need to just fit in and be compliant. Do you think that's what it is, that why you find it hard to say no? Yeah, I mean, it might even just be separately. My mom was quite an unpredictable person because both me and one of my younger brothers are terrified.

any kind of conflict because my mum would just be like suddenly crying. I want to know what you think if I was to speak to your close friends. I always ask people what do you most hope they would say about you when you walk out of the room and what do you most fear they would say about you? So let's start with the shit one first. Definitely what they what well my best friend says I can be incredibly patronising. My other, I'm best mates with a comedian called Alison Spittle and we used to do a podcast together. I always feel like I bully her, so I don't know if she says anything about that. In terms of good stuff she says about me, I heard her complimenting me on a podcast saying that I always really have a good think about where it go for dinner, which isn't that

good of quality, is it? That's a rubbish quality. Um, to be fair, she was on our food podcast. Um, so Fern, you're going to get back to your beautiful cats. I feel I've had so much to talk to you about. I haven't touched enough on your cats. So can you talk me through the pets in your life as, as we are currently? And then I'm going to hold you to it and find out your thoughts on Raymond. But first, talk me through your beautiful cats.

Um, so I wanted a dog just before. lockdown and then my boyfriend said you can't because you're away like half of the year and I'll end up looking after it so I googled cat that is like dog and also cat that is a good hunter because we had mice and then I found main coons and they're basically giant cats they're really friendly they're so gentle with their claws and their teeth and they're also really silly and mischievous and I was like this sounds amazing so I got my kitten Rua, I got him days before lockdown happened and then I just was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with him to the point that it was embarrassing during lockdown and a lot of my friends would start saying how's your cat like in this way that made me know I'd

mentioned the cat too much and this cat because he's a lockdown cat has been held and carried every day of his life yeah so he'd he'd just be picked up by anyone he'd be so easy to steal. My boyfriend carries him to bed every night. That's mental eh. So, what do you make of Ray after spending some time with him, Fern? Are you... It's just made me, like, painfully want a dog more than ever, because when I got my second cat, it was supposed to be a dog. And then this plumber came round and he said, oh, you've got a main gun. You have to have two of them, or they'll get lonely. and her cat was meowing excessively. So then I got Lupa, my other cat,

and I've had her about a year, but I still want a dog. So hopefully I'm going to get my kitchen done up, get all this building work out of the way, then I'm going to get a dog. Well, will you come back home when you get a dog fan? Yeah. I think whatever dog you get.

Well, I want one like Raymond's now, But I'd have to find out if that type of dog would hunt my cats. He's just amazing. Do you know what? He prefers cats to dogs. All right. So he just has such an incredible personality. I also was reading this Guardian article about lockdown regrets. So people that had moved across the country or quit their jobs and stuff or got a dog.

And it said that no one that they interviewed regretted getting a dog. So that's cool. Well, Fern, I'd so love meeting you. Yes, you do. I think your book is so brilliant. It's called Strong Female Character. And it's brilliant. So congratulations.

And I've really loved meeting you. Would you like to... Oh, goodbye, Raymond. You're so beautiful. Oh, God. Bye. Bye, Fern. I really hope you enjoyed listening to that.

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