10 things that changed my life: Susie McCabe, stand-up comic

IT felt like a release, because I had known I was gay from a very, very young age.  It was the shame, that’s what it was, back in the early 90s. I knew from when I was about eight, knew that I was different.

Obviously being brought up Catholic, all the ingredients were there for a disaster.

When I did come out there were some people who were hurt; they were disappointed. And then there were a lot of people who just didn’t care.

It was a difficult, difficult time, but it was for the best. It was a turning point in my life, coming out at 17 and going: “No this is who I am.”

I’m just a happier person being who I am because I’m just kind of honest.

2. Working in Delmonicas

I HAD found myself out there and I didn’t know any other gay people. I worked in a clothes shop in Glasgow and there were three gay guys who worked in the shop who used to take me out.

Then I got a job a month in the pub after I turned 18 and I discovered this world.

The gay scene kind of puts its arms around you like a family. You meet people and they’re lifelong friends.

Those people put their arms around you and go: “It’s alright. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

And I did have a lot of fun, and I met people from all different all social classes and all backgrounds and ethnicities, and I had a great time.

I was living in the city centre and I was experiencing things that I had never experienced before and it was just a great time and it helped shape me.

This is something that sometimes saddens me as well. In many ways the fight for equality was won by the generations before me.

It was my generation that started to see the equality really taking shape with New Labour coming in and all that. What that also did, is it almost diluted that sense of community.

You don’t really have to be underground in a minority. Which is wonderful but that sense of camaraderie, and we are all one team, is somewhat less.

We’ve gained so much but we’ve lost a little bit of something.

3. Football

I HAVE loved football my entire life. My dad used to rip his hair out – not that he had much hair – because I was such a little tomboy.

My football love has always been Celtic. I remember the first couple of games that I went to were during that magnificent centenary season.

My brother would take me with his mate and it was Pak Bonner and Frank McAvennie. And then David Murray and Souness ruined the 1990s for us.

I grew up in the east end of Glasgow and it very much defines me. I could see the stadium from my mum and dad’s bedroom window. I could see the floodlights, and it was like this king of mystical place.

When I was younger, before my grandfather passed away, my brother used to go to the game. And I used to sit on my grandfather’s bed and listen to the game on the radio.

Then Mark would come in and talk all about football and it’s always been a really integral part of my life.

Being brought up a Catholic at that time, it wasn’t just about football. It was part of your culture and heritage, set up to feed your great-great grandfathers and great-great grandmothers because they had nothing and this football club was born out of poverty. That doesn’t mean Catholics can’t support Rangers. When those men won the European Cup my dad was 17 so that allowed my dad to believe he could achieve anything.

4. My grandmother

SHE was by far the most important person that I will ever have in my life, Regardless of what I may or may not achieve. I was close to my grandmother from a young age and she lived until she was 96, and I was 36.

She absolutely shaped me. And she was amazing. She was kind and she had a very, very hard life. And I could tell her anything. I told her I was gay. She didn’t care.

She lost six children stillborn. And then she had a 10-year-old son, Charles, who was killed by a drunk coal lorry driver. He’d been delivering coal to the pub and had a few pints.

This was in 1942, two years after she lost her brother in the military, four years after she lost her younger brother, Eddie, in Normandy.

She didn’t marry a great man. She married my papa who was a great grandfather but a terrible husband. She was sad when she spoke about these things but she was never bitter.

She actually passed away the Wednesday before the Brexit vote.

I didn’t get much sleep after she died. On the Thursday night as the votes came in Nicola, my partner, told me to go bed and try and get some rest. I had the funeral directors in the morning, a really busy day.

Nicola woke me up at 5am to tell me we were out of Europe. I was fuming. Fuming. I came in and put on the telly and Norman Tebbit was on the TV.

I phoned my brother and went: “Oor nana’s in a fridge and Norman Tebbit lives and breathes, where’s the justice in that?”

5. Rugby

I GOT into rugby at school. I was about 13 or 14 and the school started up a girls’ team. Lorna Sullivan, the wife of former Celtic player Dom Sullivan, set it up with Jimmy Dempsey who’s actually the brother of Brian Dempsey – who saved Celtic with Fergus McCann.

It was amazing because I suddenly got to play this sport that was so different to football in every sense of the word. It has rules and behaviours like no other sport. You realise you don’t speak to a rugby referee the same way you speak to a football referee.

We used to go to SRU coaching days and I got to meet Gavin Hastings and Scott Hastings and Gary Armstrong. And these guys and some of the women internationals, like Kim Littlejohn, came and coached us.

The whole camaraderie post match with the rugby, and the applauding each other off the field, it really taught me a different way to look at sport.

It’s a game, and you give your absolute 100% commitment to that game. But after that, you leave the grudges at the side of the pitch and you have a beer or, in our case, a can of Coke and a packet and cheese and onion Highlander crisps.

6. Music

HAVING a brother who was eight years older than me meant that the music he liked filtered down to me. I’m mad for the music and mad for the Celtic and it’s all his fault. He radicalised me.

He joined the Air Force and when he’d come home he’d bring back CDs and say "make-up tapes’’ and it would be like the Happy Mondays’ (right) Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches, or U2 or The Housemartins.

These albums really shaped not even my formative years ... before my formative years.

You go from the Happy Mondays to the Stone Roses and then your mate gives you a tape and says listen to this and it’s the Beatles’ Red Album.

And then you listen to that and it blows your mind and then you go and get all the Beatles albums and you’re right into the Beatles.

And then from that comes the Kinks, the Small Faces, but in the background my mum was listening to Motown. So I grew up with that influence and Lionel Richie and the Commodores and stuff like that.

My dad never had the best taste in music, I won’t lie. He was more of a country guy. But then my brother would come home and say I’ve got this Elvis album. So that would just blow my mind.

Music is still a massive important part of my life. I sit in my living room just now and I’m surrounded by pictures in frames of my favourite album covers.

Music’s still what I find solace in. I probably don’t listen to anything released after 2000. I’m happy with that.

7. Blues Brothers

I HAD a broken leg when I was a kid and I watched the Blues Brothers – I was way too young to be watching the film, and I absolutely fell in love in with it.

I fell in love with that music, and I absolutely fell in love with John Belushi because I thought he was just the funniest guy in the world.

It’s hilarious. You’ve got Nazis and Catholics ... how’s that ever not going to be funny?

The music though, you go there’s Aretha Franklin (below) or there’s Ray Charles or there’s James Brown. I could then put faces to these names. This is before MTV.

This film is still one of my absolute favourites. I would put it on to make myself feel good. It just makes me want to go to New Orleans or Chicago.

8. My mum having pancreatic cancer

THREE months after my Nana died my mum was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Me and my mum get on, but I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. And then I see my mum so, so sick and going through that treatment and I made an absolute promise to just be a better daughter.

That really brought me and my mum and my dad together because you realise just how fragile everything is. Pancreatic cancer’s only got a 13% survival rate and it made me go: “I don’t know how long I’ve got with my mum.” And we might never have mum and daughter days when we go round shops and look at dresses, but we can still have a really positive mum-and-daughter relationship.

9. Training to become an electrician and then becoming an estimator

IT’S probably the first time that I found something that I enjoyed. Actually, that’s not true because I enjoyed the pub. But yeah, I could just have a normal life on the back of having that career.

I trained to be a sparky and then I got the chance to become an estimator and that’s where I started to build up my life from.

I bought a house with my ex-partner and that’s when I became an adult. You know, that was probably the moment ... 2006. I was 26. And that was probably the time when I grew up. That was probably having a career and I could see an actual career path ahead of me and I really enjoyed that job, and I love being an estimator.

I met some great people who, again, are still my friends. I trained up someone who is now an estimate manager and is now one of my best friends.

It was a defining moment of me accepting who I am, being comfortable with myself, working in a construction environment and an office environment and being in a male-dominated environment and just being out and being honest and not having to hide.

10. Stand-up comedy

ME and another friend were drunk and he dared me to try stand-up and we were going to do it together and we tried Viv Gee’s comedy course and that was it.

That was me finding something that I was meant to do. I absolutely loved it. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done.

People just kept giving me gigs and giving me opportunities. Not exactly BBC opportunities, but the Pat Rolinks of this world sending me to a golf club in Shotts. If you can do a golf club in Shotts you can make a room full of people in Glasgow laugh in a perfect comedy club.

Alan Anderson took a punt on me, giving me my first headline spot, and made me do my first ever long show.

Janey Godley sent an email to The Stand asking them to give me gigs because I’d been gigging for 18 months and I’d never gigged at The Stand.

I was through in The Stand supporting Dylan Moran and Tommy Sheppard was backstage and he asked why I wasn’t doing a show with him, and I said: “I didn’t think you’d give me a show because I’m just a wee pleb.”

And he said I’ll give you a show at The Stand next year.

Tommy Sheppard and Eva Mackay and Sarah Watson all absolutely gave me so many opportunities. I just kept getting solo shows and selling them out and a year later I’d get moved to a better night.

In the meantime Kevin Bridges really championed me. Really championed me. He was saying to his management company that this girl, every time I see her its different material and she’s smashing it out the park.

It honestly doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life. I remember my marriage breaking down and you still have to go and fulfill gigs. And it doesn’t matter because those 20-25 minutes you’re on stage, Dr Comedy kicks in and you’re just doing your stuff. It’s the greatest feeling in the world. It’s probably better than scoring a goal for Celtic.