1. Becoming a drama teacher

ONE of the most enjoyable periods of my life was when I became a high school teacher in the late 1970s/early 80s. It was also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Regardless of how hard acting jobs are, there is nothing like standing in front of 2C on a Friday afternoon. If you can entertain them, then you can entertain any audience.

I taught at Firhill in Edinburgh for nearly three years and while it was wonderful it gave me a real insight into how exhausting teaching is. To become a drama teacher I went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, now the Conservatoire. I didn’t even know it existed. I grew up in a mining village in Lanarkshire but my English teacher suggested it and I went and auditioned and got in at the age of 17. Walking in there opened up a whole new life to me.

I was terrified for two or three years and felt like a fish out of water but I kept singing – I’d been singing in pubs and clubs in Motherwell since I was 14.

It didn’t enter my head that I could become an actor. I was a woman and there was not a lot of women on TV or role models for me growing up.

I didn’t go to the theatre. You would do a turn at parties or a poem or a song but I never thought I would end up doing my own shows.

2. Seeing Wildcat

WHEN I was about 18 years old I went to the Citizens Theatre to see 7:84, who then became Wildcat. It was a show called Out Of Our Heads by John McGrath and I just knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Here were actors and musicians doing good theatre but in working-class accents, singing and telling stories that were relevant to my world.

That changed my life, although I still did not think it was possible for me to become a part of it.

Later when I was teaching I heard Wildcat was auditioning.

I’d met my future husband, Bob, by then and when we were talking about it he said he didn’t want me to end up as someone who was always saying “I should have done that” so I went for an audition.

Unfortunately, it was already cast but I was told John McGrath, who was one of my idols, was doing a season called Clydebuilt. I auditioned for that, got the part and handed in my notice.

I had done my thesis on 7.84 a couple of years earlier so it was a bit bizarre that there I was, working with the guy I had done my thesis on.

3. My husband

MEETING my husband, an economics teacher, changed my life. He was very involved in politics, left wing and also a feminist, and that really changed the perceptions I had about my life.

I had been involved in student politics, but as teacher I became involved in trade union politics and became very active in the women’s movement. So it all fitted that I joined a political theatre company.

I read The Women’s Room and suddenly my mother’s and grandmother’s lives made sense and I better understood the way women were treated in society. Embracing feminist politics has never left me.

Theatre was very open and welcoming but men still ran everything. Feminist politics made me question the order of things and realise there was another, better way to do things. I was at times regarded as “trouble” because if you spoke up or asked difficult questions – especially as a woman in the early 80s – then it wasn’t that well received!

Bob was always supportive and when we had kids and my career was taking off, he became the main carer. Not many men would do that. Being a parent is not easy and being a male parent wasn’t either – where do you take your baby to change? It wasn’t that enlightened then. We have been married 30 years and he has continued to be that touchstone, that person I go to for an opinion and advice. He is the one who tells me not to get swayed by the shite of showbusiness.

4. Going on TV

Colin Gilbert, head of the BBC’s Comedy Unit saw me in Wildcat and asked me to take part in Naked Radio which then became the Naked Video show on TV. Naked Radio was on around 1984/85 and it was the first time I met Gregor Fisher.

I was terrified of him as he was so talented, so funny. I was only 25 or 26. I was a bit like “these guys know what they are doing and I am shite”. That’s the Scottish disease, the no-good-enuff gene.

I was the only woman. There were female PAs and secretaries but no women in positions of power and few women writing at all, even when it became Naked Video and went on to TV.

Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield were writing for us but they didn’t really write much stuff for women so it was a struggle to get decent parts and you didn’t usually get more than one woman in a comedy show. At that point if a sketch involved a doctor in a hospital they said it had to be a man because if it was a woman that would become the joke as there were so few women doctors around. Thankfully Ian Pattison (pictured above) came on as a writer and wrote a couple of fantastic parts for me – one was Mary Nesbitt and the other a divorced woman character. He wrote the sketches which became Rab C Nesbitt.

5. My one-woman show

NOT being Mary Nesbitt any more but Elaine C Smith changed my life. I think it was around 1996 that I did a one-woman show on BBC at Hogmanay. Before that most people just thought of me as Mary Nesbitt and freaked out when they met me because I didn’t have blonde hair.

In a way, it was a compliment because it meant I played the part well but they did not really think I was acting. When I did my own one-woman show it completely changed everything. At the beginning, it was all “who is she standing there and telling me what’s funny?” – there was still that attitude. It was all right for Billy Connolly to do it and to talk about shipyards, which most women in the country have never been in, but it wasn’t all right to talk about women’s stuff.

There were real prejudices but if a story is funny you go along with it and a woman talking about life can be every bit as funny as a man.

Younger actresses have said I showed them what was possible which is great because when I started out it was “stay in your place”.

There were so few parts for women and we were all in competition with each other. I now try very hard to encourage other women and tell them how great they are.

Very few women did that for me when I was young and I did not see a route I could go follow.

6. Belief in Scottish independence

AS a socialist, the received wisdom was that belief in an independent Scotland was some sort of tartan nationalism akin to Nazism. My experience has shown it to be the opposite.

After the miners’ strike I left the Labour Party totally disillusioned by the abandonment of working people and then it was a gradual realisation that there was a better way for Scotland and its people to progress.

I have supported independence now for around 20 years and been chair of the Independence Convention for 10 years. It goes along with my belief in independence for women. At the indyref, many women of a certain age voted No which didn’t really surprise me. If you can’t envisage independence in your own life then you are not going to envisage it for your country.

I was left off a few Christmas card lists when it came out that I was a founding member of Artists for Independence – we got letters from the STUC asking us not to do it, but during Thatcherism I thought “this is not going to change”. Scotland was constantly voting Labour and never getting what we voted for. I am still a pariah to some Labour Party members which makes me very sad. I just wish they would open their eyes and embrace what half the population of the country wants. I wish they would respect it, even if they don’t agree with it.

7. Panto

WHEN I first played a pantomime dame I was told that women shouldn’t do it because they weren’t funny. Rikki Fulton was one of the men who disapproved so I was up against it, but it is about the type of performer you are.

I’ve seen men be terrible dames. But put a guy in a frock and that’s funny, so a woman doesn’t get that easy laugh at the beginning. Becoming a bona-fide panto star changed everything but I am still the only woman in Scotland to headline.

Last year I won Best Fairy in the UK which for me was better than winning a Bafta. I’m nominated for that for Two Doors Down this year but I’ve already got the award I wanted. I won it for my part as the fairy in Sleeping Beauty at the King’s in Glasgow. I eventually did get a beautiful letter from Fulton saying he thought my one-woman show was so funny.

8. Losing my mother

IT WAS devastating; she was only 71 but was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 66. She was a wonderful grandmother and mother. She died in 2005 and the loss is still horrific. It changed my perspective about life. I did not want to be an actor any more.

I was depressed. After about 18 months I realised I was being half a mum, half a wife, half an actor and I needed to sort it out so I went for therapy.

If you break a leg you go to the doctor and I had broken my heart so I needed to go and get someone to help me. I feel quite proud of myself for doing that.

I had a dream in the middle of my grief where my mother was over my bed saying “Listen lady I did not fight so hard to stay here for you to throw it all away – get your arse in gear and get on with your life!” That gave me the kick I needed!

9. Having a family

WE HAVE two wonderful daughters, Katie and Hannah, and we are grandparents to four-year-old Stella. I never particularly wanted to be a granny but it’s the most joyous wonderful thing. You get your kids back again without the responsibility. It’s just fab. Katie called her after my mother and that made me able to see mum’s name again and not be upset. It’s like it brought her back. I was at the birth as Katie wanted me there with her partner. What a privilege – although it is much more terrifying to watch than go through it. Grandchildren remind you what life is about.

10. Two Doors Down

AT the age of 60, to be back on TV in a sitcom is not something I thought would happen and I am very grateful for it. It’s so wonderfully written and to have Richard E Grant emailing and saying it is the funniest thing he has ever seen is fantastic.

I love the fact that it has so many great women in it. It’s a vision of Scotland and how we are now, I think. And Christine is a gift that keeps on giving. She doesn’t have a man to temper her and she is free to say what she thinks and dress how she pleases. She just does not give a f***. And I get to swear on telly which is fantastic.