A MULTI-award winning comedian with a soft spot for Scotland is to make a rare appearance in Kirkcaldy next week.

Josie Long will headline the final Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer with the “jazziest” highlights from Tender, her hit show about new motherhood in uncertain times.

London-based Long, who won the BBC’s New Comedy Award aged just 17, has been a favourite for the best part of 20 years at the Edinburgh Fringe, where her shows have since been nominated three times as being the best from the thousands on offer.

She’ll be joined at the Creative Scotland-supported bash by vocalist/harpist Rachel Newton, winner of the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year, and Ozgur Baba, a Turkish musician who will make his first appearance in the UK.

The Radio Four regular has long-established ties with Scotland, having often performed at events organised by Fife’s Fence Records and Lost Map, the Isle of Eigg-based label run by Johnny Lynch aka The Pictish Trail.

It was Long’s love for the music of James Yorkston, who curates Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer, which first took her to the East Neuk.

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“I’ve been a fan for a really long time – about 15 years,” Long says. “Around 10, 11 years ago I went to see him perform at a church in London. That’s where I bumped into Johnny Lynch, who was supporting. He gave me a CD and we became friends. I started playing gigs and festivals organised by what was then Fence Records. Going to places like Anstruther, Pittenweem and Cellardyke with a bunch of people I loved so much was very exciting.”

Long and director Doug King made two short films in Glasgow earlier this decade, and last year she starred alongside Harry Potter actor Sean Biggerstaff in the duo’s debut feature film Super November.

Shot in Glasgow and Clydebank with Scots comedians Janey Godley, James Kirk, Ashley Storrie and Chris Forbes, the film sees hard-right extremists force power from a London government.

The year saw another first for Long, who gave birth to a baby daughter that May. Tender, her ninth full-length show, sees her take on the fears and hopes often experienced by new mothers but rarely explored in comedy clubs.

“I describe the show as looking at how do you put someone into the world when everyone is telling you it’s the end of the world,” says Long. “It’s trying to describe that intensity of that first year of motherhood, how it feels to be simultaneously in that smaller, more vulnerable space to look at the wider world and how big and frightening and difficult it is. But it’s definitely a lot less serious than all that sounds.”

Yorkston says the final Tae Sup of a year which has seen the likes of novelist Ian Rankin and musicians from near and far travel to Kirkcaldy, will be “a classic”.

The date will be the first UK performance from Baba, a master of the baglama or saz, a pear-shaped lute. Yorkston discovered Baba’s hypnotic reworkings of traditional Turkish folk songs via Youtube, where an extraordinary video showing the white-maned musician performing in a farmyard to clucking hens and unexplained explosions has been viewed over three million times.

Tae Sup aims to present such unique international musicians within a Scottish context different to Celtic Connections, says Yorkston, who will launch his third album at next month’s festival with double-bassist Jon Thorne and sarangi-player Suhail Yusuf Khan.

“We’re going out with a super-strong show for the final Tae Sup of the year,” Yorkston says, noting that Creative Scotland funds means he’s able to take the showcase on the road in 2020.

He continues: “Josie Long is one of the most respected comedians of her generation and is making a very rare trip to Fife. She’ll be headlining, but the other two acts are every bit as special. Getting Ozgur Baba is another real coup for Tae Sup and Kirkcaldy, while Rachel, who creates the most beautiful music and sings in Gaelic and English, makes up a ridiculously strong bill.”

December 14, Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 8pm, £15. Tel: 01592 583302. www.taesup.co.uk www.josielong.comYorkston/Thorne/Khan launch Navarasa: Nine Emotions as part of Celtic Connections on January 22. www.celticconnections.com

Josie Long plays The Stand as part of Glasgow Comedy Festival on March 16. www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com