Fern Brady on Fringe success and BBC pilot Radges

'Another 4 star review. Away to masturbate in front of a mirror', tweeted comedian Fern Brady after reading The Skinny's assessment of her Fringe show People Are Idiots.

Two months later, she sits in the corner of Kilimanjaro coffee shop on Nicholson Street with a brand new MacBook Pro. After selling out every day of the Fringe, Brady ended August with a small profit – and she did so by following the most colossal anti-checklist for preparing a Fringe show:

• "I fell out with my agent of two years, two months before the Fringe."
• "I didn't hire PR."
• "I forgot to write a press release."
• "I used last year's photo."
• "I left my flyers at home."

Despite all this, the end result was a commercial and critical success. So, when Brady closes her laptop and says, "I've been sitting here trying to work out how to use it," she was doubtless doing so successfully by not following the instructions.

She now returns to The Stand at the end of the month for a 'Fringe Flashback' and is also performing various spots in Glasgow and Edinburgh throughout October while waiting to hear if BBC3 will commission her pilot, Radges, into a full series.

Set in a pupil referral unit, the pilot follows a group of late-teenage misfits excluded from education due to their social and behavioural problems. Or as one of the lead characters Mab puts it when asked 'what's the worst that can happen?': "It already has happened, we're in a mental unit."

Stand-up origins and the story behind Radges

Radges is partly autobiographical, Brady was referred to a similar unit herself at 16. Though Brady says Mab is the character who "she'd like to be", we suspect she identifies more with Lauren – a more studious, fish out of water in the unit who, over a series, probably has the depth to become Radges' true protagonist.

Brady crammed a great deal into the seventeen minute episode which perhaps feels more Channel 4 than BBC. Along with the great set-up it has sharp dialogue and showcases Brady's writing potential – and in the same year she's done so much to establish her standup. 

Brady grew up twenty miles from here, in Bathgate, and – once out of the real-life unit – studied just a few minutes walk away at Edinburgh University. She enrolled for a degree in Arabic and Persian but on the first day her tutor laughed when she said she was from West Lothian.

It was indicative of how she came to feel among posh students perceiving Edinburgh as an Oxbridge substitute. Soon, Brady was spending lots of time playing pool before transferring to English Literature. She started writing "piss take" columns for the music and TV sections of The Student Newspaper and was later shortlisted for The Guardian's student journalism awards.

She first launched into standup in 2009 via the unusual route of faking it onstage for a feature article while a writer at our longstanding adversaries Fest Magazine, and started her comedy career proper a year later. Though she soon enrolled on a journalism master's degree in Sheffield, her original career choice now paled when compared to comedy and she spent much of her time gigging rather than studying.

By 2011 Brady came joint third with Lucy Beaumont in the Gilded Balloon's So You Think You're Funny competition.

Despite finding her calling, Brady seems to have spent more time than she would have liked climbing the greasier parts of the comedy pole: "I've only just started telling people my real age. Very early on I was advised to lower it." "I'm 29," she's pleased to add. 

She was also told not to play The Stand in favour of one of the so-called 'Big 4' venues. She has a loyalty to The Stand and remembers feeling down-on-her-luck when "Tommy Sheppard [the venue's founder] sent me an email about Stewart Lee's Alternative Comedy Experience," which Brady performed on in the second series.

"I wanted to be a showrunner"

Perhaps Brady has spent too long pushing against her natural instincts, because this year the dam burst in a big way and did so, inconveniently, on the set of Radges.

"I wanted to be more like a showrunner," she says, on finding it difficult to relinquish artistic control to the director and producer. The stress was such that it prompted Brady to go into counselling and meditation, the latter with an emphasis on 'positive thinking'. (For the clever, cynical Brady to seek refuge in anything dressed in 'positivity' must mean things were pretty bad). 

But the result has been positive for these experiences, formed much of her Fringe show. Consequentry most of People Are Idiots was been written in the last few months rather than the usual slow build-up to a Fringe debut hour over a few years. In other words, it's another tick for Brady's anti-checklist: "I was actually sick of my club set anyway," she says of her older material.

During the Fringe she continued to do things in her own way even if it was perhaps in spite of herself: "I had a lot of industry people coming. But I refused comp tickets for some when I thought they could afford £8 for a ticket. I got emails back saying 'I know so-and-so and they'll hear about this'."

Brady perhaps isn't going to write a sequel to How to Win Friends and Influence People anytime soon, "You're not the first person to say that," she says.

Perhaps we're a a little harsh though, because Brady has charm. She pulls out a packet of Tesco's blueberries from her bag and surreptitiously slides them across the table: "They're unrinsed," she cautions. Her charm just lacks bullshit.

"I'd rather be myself," she says, about the decisions she's made this year. And being herself is what is working out for her.

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Fern Brady: People Are Idiots plays Blackfriars Basement, Glasgow, 24 Mar, 8:30pm, £9/£7 as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival