Fern Brady
Fern Brady (born on 26 May 1986) is a Scottish comedian and writer.
While at the University of Edinburgh, she served as the editor of The Student, a weekly student newspaper.
To finance her university studies, she also worked as a stripper.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Arabic and Islamic History, and then trained to become a journalist, although she had secretly been thinking about becoming a stand-up comedian since 2006.
In 2009, she was an intern at Fest Magazine, a free magazine covering the Edinburgh Festival. One of her assignments there was to write an article about a comedy critic trying stand-up. She has described this experience as the push she needed to realise it was what she wanted to do.
Her first professional comedy gig was in May 2010.
She reached the finals of the So You Think You're Funny competition at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe, placing joint third. She also reached the finals of the Piccadilly Comedy Club new act competition in 2012, and of the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition in 2013.
She has appeared on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Seann Walsh's Late Night Comedy Spectacular, The Alternative Comedy Experience, BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz, series 3 of Live from the BBC, series 14 of Live at the Apollo, and on series 3 of Frankie Boyle's New World Order.
She has also written for The Guardian.
In 2020, Fern and fellow comedian Alison Spittle started a podcast for the BBC called Wheel of Misfortune, based on the TV show Wheel of Fortune.
In late 2021, she co-presented the Dave travelogue British as Folk, alongside fellow comedians Ivo Graham and Darren Harriott.
In January 2022, she began a 25-date tour of her new show, Autistic Bikini Queen, having revealed her autism diagnosis in 2021.