'GIVE me a minute, I'm just gonna fire up the car," says Fred MacAulay. "I'm going to be driving, but I'm hands free. I think it's legal, isn't it? Och, it should be all right . . ."
Turns out, the comedian is en-route to the Merchant City in Glasgow, where he'll join the guys from his BBC Radio Scotland show house band, the Easy Orchestra, in rehearsal. "I'm going to be singing tomorrow," he explains in his typically cheery mann
er. "Three songs. On stage. It's going to be my first ever, non-Fame Academy gig. I'm right up for it.
"I'm going to do the Fratellis' When You're Lonely, Frank Sinatra's You Make Me Feel So Young and Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out. We'll see if I can do them justice," he adds.
Suggesting to MacAulay that, after his ill-fated stint in Fame Academy, singing might not be his forte only brings laughter from the Perth-born comedian. "You must be deaf," he jokes.
In all seriousness, the popular stand-up and Radio Scotland presenter knew from an early age that singing wasn't his strong point.
"I must have been nine and was at Rattray Primary School and wanted to be in the choir because there was a day trip to Perth for some singing comp," he recalls. "But I was dropped from the choir for not being good enough.
"I suppose it was a good lesson for Fame Academy because I did what every man would do in that circumstance – I burst into tears. I made such a fuss I got back in," he adds, laughing.
A firm favourite who's gone from warm-up man on Have I Got News For You to radio star and entertainer of sell-out crowds across the world, MacAulay is clearly far better suited to stand-up than he is to a singing career.
Currently, the 51-year-old former accountant is approaching the end of a two-month-long Scottish tour, which stops off at the Queen's Hall next week.
So how's it been? "Great. I'm so chuffed with the way it's going," he enthuses. "The gigs have been going really well so far, the numbers have been good and the new material is working.
"In order of importance, new material is first and foremost, so I'm very happy about that."
While he doesn't want to give his best gags away, MacAulay does reveal that part of the show includes a 20-minute presentation of a primary school book he created aged five.
"I first did it in the Fringe a couple of years ago, but I never toured it," he says. "It's working better than it did at the Fringe, though."
"It's a kind of year's storybook. Some of the slides get a laugh themselves, and some I've had to build a narrative around. But it's a lot tighter than it was at the Festival, so it's working better than before.
"Obviously, I was quite thoughtful as a child and figured many years in the future, I was going to be so stuck for material that I'm going to need to show a slide show of this," he continues.
"It's an indication of what I was like as a boy – I talk about how optimistic I was and how optimistic I still am as a person."
And is he optimistic that his new material will have the crowd in laughter tomorrow? "I think after 20 years in the business people come to my gigs expecting to laugh and I half expect them to laugh as well – but there are no givens in comedy," he says. "Like I say, the new material has been going down well elsewhere, so hopefully."
As far as his own comedy idols go, MacAulay places Billy Connolly very high on his list.
"You can't have anything other than respect for somebody who's had that body of work and still does it," he enthuses. "I mean, I made a conscious decision to go and work down in England, because it was a bigger market. Billy's decision is to work all over the world, because it's an even bigger market." Connolly, of course, created quite a stir recently when he opined that Edinburgh people simply aren't funny. So, as he prepares to visit the Capital himself tomorrow evening, where does Mr MacAulay stand on this?
"Well, I guess Billy's kind of bullet-proof, and he knows when he says something like that it's going to get picked up and there will be stuff written about him," he says, adding cheekily, "Me, I still need people to come to my show. With that in mind, I'm saying Edinburgh people are the funniest people on God's earth.
"As for traffic wardens in Edinburgh . . . well, that's a different story entirely," he adds, laughing.
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Fred MacAulay, Queen's Hall, Clerk Street, June 27, 8pm £8-£12, 0131-668 2019The full article contains 822 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
