I am about 20 years too late for most of the references in Sophie McCartney’s new show, One Foot In The Rave, but I enjoyed watching the audience as much as I did the show! It’s the ultimate girls’ night out and from the minute you arrive, the comedic expectation of her fans as they fill all the seats in the auditorium, is as much a part of the experience as the show itself.
Sophie knows her audience: 99% female (except for a few very brave accompanying men – enter at your peril!), singing along to her 90s soundtrack, reciting her catchphrases and judging from the chatter around me, anticipating what she was going to talk about next. With a tour across the UK and Ireland already in progress this Spring and resuming in the autumn, bums on seats are guaranteed.
Sophie is a comedian, author, and podcaster. A rising star on the UK comedy circuit and winner of the Funny Women Best Comedy Series in 2020, now rebranded as our Content Creator Award, she hosts her own podcast, Tired and Tested, (the number one Mother & Baby podcast), has written two Sunday Times bestselling books and given birth to three children. I need a lie down just reading this and there’s more!
Sophie announced her debut stand up tour Tired and Tested in March 2023 which sold out in less that 24 hours, making it Live Nation’s fastest ever selling debut tour for a female comedian. Due to extraordinary demand, the tour was extended from 15 dates to 63 dates in the UK. After an incredible response from UK fans, Sophie debuted her first international leg of the tour in Australia and New Zealand where she performed in Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
One Foot In the Rave addresses the next stage in Sophie’s life and begins to ask the all-important questions as the spectre of midlife and the perimenopause approach. She asks the kind of questions that I’m still asking myself:
What does life look like when you’re too old to be young, but too young to be old? Is it bad if you’re secretly thrilled when a friend cancels plans? Is growing old gracefully really better than a little synthetic help? And is a wild night out really any better than getting you bra and make up off by 9.00pm?
This is relatable female stuff whatever our ages, and although some of the cultural references went over my head, the humour didn’t. I’m all for her attitude which is to embark on life’s next big chapter with “sequins, snorty laughs, and a pair of killer orthopaedic heels.”
Speaking about life on the road, Sophie says: “I’m so excited to be on tour again, if nothing else – so I get four nights a week in a hotel room on my own. This show is really close to my heart, and whether you’re at the same stage of life as me, a little further on, or worried about getting anywhere near middle age – I want you to leave thinking ‘Wow, it’s really not that bad… and also, salmon sperm under the eyes…who knew?!’”
Sophie likes to think of herself as the instigator of the ultimate ‘mum’s night out’. And as the women around me ordered another bottle of prosecco and rang their babysitters to say they would be late home, I knew the party would continue beyond the show in the WhatsApp groups and on social media.
This may all look effortless on Sophie’s part but soon after she won her Funny Women Award, she went online to talk to our community about the long hours of creating and filming content, writing books and managing her social media. Adding touring night after night into the mix is not for the fainthearted.
It takes a particular kind of commitment and skill to deliver something as complete as this show and I will end where I began: this woman knows her audience and gives them exactly what they want. That, as they say, is Entertainment.
For upcoming dates of One Foot In The Rave visit the Live Nation box office here. Sophie is on tour in the UK until 10th October.
