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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Best Behaviour

Susie McCabe

NextUp · 2026

Surviving a heart attack, mostly to complain about hotel breakfasts.

Released , on NextUp.

Susie McCabe opens Best Behaviour with the indignity of having a heart attack at 44, only to find strangers lecturing her about clean living while doing lines of cocaine. Rather than offering a redemption arc, the Glasgow comic treats her brush with death as an excuse to complain about hospital wards, English hotel breakfasts, and the relentless pressure to take better care of herself.

The set builds outward from July 2024, when McCabe was wrestled into an ambulance by two lesbian paramedics and ended up in intensive care at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Recovery brings its own irritations, including a wife who seemed more upset about having to shop at Lidl than about the hospital admission. Along the way, McCabe works out how to read a hotel guest’s politics from the way they operate a conveyor toaster, makes a case for handing foreign policy over to menopausal Scottish women, and questions how men can pee loudly enough to echo down a corridor without ever turning on a tap afterward.

NextUp Comedy released the 91-minute special in May 2026, following the show’s premiere at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival in March 2025, a sold-out run at Assembly George Square during that year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and a UK tour in spring 2026. The timing put McCabe in a busy stretch: she had won the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award in 2024, co-hosted the podcast Here Comes The Guillotine alongside Frankie Boyle and Christopher Macarthur-Boyd, and spent 2026 juggling the Best Behaviour tour with a separate follow-up hour, Coming of Rage.

Reviews from the Edinburgh run were largely warm, with five-star notices from ThreeWeeks and LondonTheatre1 praising her delivery and storytelling, though Fest and Edinburgh Festivals Magazine noted that sticking to one extended crisis left the set narrower than earlier shows like Merchant of Menace.

Notable bits & set list

4 bits

  1. Surviving a heart attack and emergency paramedic response

    Recounts the surreal humor of having two lesbian paramedics save her life in Bristol, texting her agent from the back of the ambulance, and being swarmed by a crash team for an angioplasty.

  2. Hotel breakfast buffets and industrial toasters

    Observational routine analyzing hotel all-you-can-eat breakfast dynamics, noting the thrill of finding a potato scone in England and deducing people's political leanings from how they operate the conveyer toaster.

  3. Unsolicited advice and trying to be on 'best behaviour'

    Highlights the irony of hypocritical strangers and friends lecturing her on health while doing lines of cocaine, sorting 13 daily pills like bad pick 'n' mix, and questioning whether 30 years of best behavior is worth giving up bacon fries.

  4. Hospital stay and domestic reactions

    Touches on colourful hospital patients, commodes, and her wife being more aggrieved about having to shop at Lidl than McCabe being in the hospital.

How it plays

Tone
Warm, candid, irreverent, and resilient, blending laugh-out-loud hilarity with grounded moments of solemnity and pathos.
On stage
Warm, defiant, self-deprecating raconteur with a rich Glasgow accent and dry wit, commanding the room with the soft power and authority of a veteran club comic.
Pace
Dynamic tempo and high stage energy; paces the stage, teeters on the front edge to emphasize points, balancing punchy observational material with patient narrative build-up.
About
surviving a heart attack at 44, lifestyle changes and medical recovery, unsolicited health advice from strangers, hotel breakfast buffets and toasters, Scottish health and mortality

What the critics said

Universally praised by reviewers for its warmth, charisma, sharp comic timing, and masterclass storytelling, successfully transforming a traumatic health scare into an uplifting and uproarious stand-up hour.

In the room: Rapt, packed, and uproarious, responding warmly to McCabe's candid, personal revelations and observational banter.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: comedy.co.uk, pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com, thestand.co.uk, festmag.com, list.co.uk, onthemic.co.uk, edfestmag.com, beyondthejoke.co.uk, news.stv.tv, theguardian.com.

Backstory

Conceived and developed after McCabe suffered an almost fatal heart attack at age 44 in July 2024 in Bristol, prompting a forced lifestyle change, health recovery, and reflection on survival and aging.

Details

Released
Where
NextUp
Topics

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