Meet the Possilpark man behind the Glesga Da podcast

'I'M just a guy that canny say no,' Raymond Mearns says ahead of his seven shows at this year's Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
The comedian is returning to the festival with his solo show Looking For A Great Audience on Sunday, March 30.
It will take place at the Stand Comedy Club after being shortlisted for the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award in 2024.
Raymond says it was 'amazing' to be shortlisted for the award. He added he's lucky to be in comedy despite never setting out to become a comedian but says it was a 'very happy and joyous accident' that he did.
READ NEXT:
(Image: Glasgow International Comedy Festival) 'It's already a joy and a gift, it's amazing to be paid for something you love,' he said.
'It must be one of the best things in the world.'
Raymond says Looking For A Great Audience is 'just me doing my thing'.
He explained: 'I always do a solo show. I take elements of that and I take it to The Fringe.
'I'm fortunate I sell it out every year.
'That's just me doing my thing, all my madness and mental ideas and maybe roasting some of the audience in the front and that sort of thing and that's great.'
(Image: Supplied) A show Raymond feels particularly passionate about at this year's festival is Raymond Mearns Fool on Comedy Crew which will take place at The Flying Duck on Saturday, March 29.
Fool On is a Lanarkshire-based charity which seeks to improve mental health and emotional well-being through artistic engagement.
Raymond, from Possilpark, runs a Comedy Club workshop with the charity.
He explained: 'It's brilliant.
'There are people with disabilities and people who can't work for various reasons, people who've got mental health problems.
'What I try and do is point them towards telling a good story, a few jokes, maybe understand a wee bit more about how they could take some of the negative aspects in their life in a situation and turn that into positive and optimize it into passages of great beauty.
'People take themselves really seriously and comedy lets you laugh at yourself, and I think that makes the world a better place.'
The group previously did a show in Hamilton which he says got a 'phenomenal' response so they decided to bring it to the comedy festival.
The show is described as a 'brilliant hour of original stand-up and sketches'.
'Its going to be an amazing thing, it's the product of all the hard work of the people in the class,' he added.
READ NEXT:
(Image: Supplied) Speaking of why he works with the charity Raymond continued: 'I think your mission in life is to find out what you're good at and then once you've done that you've got to give it away, you've got to share it.
'With every word, thought and action you just try to make the world a better place.'
On March 26, Raymond will then be starring in Celtic Da's: A New Play By Phil Differ alongside Bruce Morton at the Oran Mor.
'As well as being stand up for the last three decades, I have done a bit of theatre and made a few films and TV shows,' he says.
'I'm not a brilliant actor but I think I've got some chops as an actor and I'm always keen to do something that's interesting and challenging.'
'It's about these two fellas and in the play, they're discussing things in their life.
'It's about friendship, football, Celtic, their place in the world and they're questioning that and the challenges you face when you're getting older.
'I think a lot of people will like it. You're always hoping you strike a chord with a lot of people.'
Raymond will also be doing three Laughter Fest shows at Cathcart Bowling Club which he describes as a 'pick of comedians' from the festival.
There will be three shows which will take place on March 14, 21 and 28.
'We're looking to get acts over to Cathcart and give them a wee bit of extra money through their act and it entertains the good people of Cathcart and the surrounding areas who might not be able to get into the city.'
Podcast Glesga Da, which Raymond does alongside Stuart Mitchell, will have a live show on March 13 at BAad.
Glasgow International Comedy Festival 2025 will take place from March 12 until March 30.
You can find out more at glasgowcomedyfestival.com.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Chicago Tribune

5 hours ago

• Chicago Tribune

Review: Giancarlo Guerrero steps into new Grant Park Music Fest role with a pair of genial and dynamic programs

Talk about a perfect storm. On Wednesday, Giancarlo Guerrero's much-fêted debut as principal conductor and artistic director of the Grant Park Music Festival was dampened by relentless rain. Audiences scrunched under the Jay Pritzker Pavilion fringe, only to play musical chairs dodging the structure's many (and ever-changing) leaky spots. When they weren't doing that, seat shuffles and squabbles competed with the evening's violin concerto. But if Guerrero appeared unflappable onstage, it's because he's been there before. He made his sophomore appearance with the orchestra in 2014 under nearly identical circumstances, down to the solo string showcase and contemporary American opener. Despite the lousy weather, that appearance impressed festival musicians enough to fast-track Guerrero to the top of their director wishlist a decade later. While last week's storm never erupted into thunder, musical lightning struck twice here with yet another exuberant, water-resistant stand by Guerrero on Wednesday, followed by a masterful account of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 on Friday. Wednesday's concert included two harbor works: 'An American Port of Call,' by Virginia-based composer Adolphus Hailstork, and Leonard Bernstein's 'On the Waterfront' suite. Conducting with his pointer fingers rather than a baton, and sporting a new goatee, Guerrero led a sparky, whistle-clean run of Hailstork's eight-minute curtain raiser. But when the music dissipated into quietude — recalling a boat drifting far off from shore, surrounded only by blue horizon — Guerrero guided the music with expansive ease. Bernstein's 'Waterfront' benefited from the same balance of gusto and intuitive pacing. Patrick Walle's horn solo up top sounded suspended in time, before an increasingly feral orchestra jerked us back to street level. Amid the ferocity, the Grant Parkers always sounded whetted and clean, moving through the works' shifting meters with fearsome precision. In the final windup to the end, electric energy gave way to ringing, Mussorgskyan grandeur. Between the Hailstork and Bernstein, Jeremy Black returned to the festival as both concertmaster and featured soloist, offering up the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Even the brunt of the evening's downpour couldn't wash away the strong impression left by this filigree, soulful performance. Black's sound in the opening theme and balladic second movement was sugared but never treacly. Meanwhile, the Allegro molto vivace coasted along serenely, Black's bel canto phrasing and pristine intonation never betraying its finger-flying briskness. Promisingly, Guerrero's orchestral accompaniment was every bit as tasteful. Negotiating solo string balance in the park is always just that — a negotiation — but Guerrero hit the sweet spot of clarity and restraint. The orchestra was able to be a bit more gutsy under Friday's soloist, Pacho Flores. The Venezuelan trumpeter has a sparkling sound, which he dispatched with doting attention to phrase and line in Arturo Márquez's lively, if unseasonal, 'Concierto de Otoño' ('Autumn Concerto'). The work was specifically composed for Flores in 2018, taking unabashed advantage of not just the trumpeter's lyricism but his gatling-gun articulation, unflappable stamina and chameleon flexibility. (He traded four different horns across the 20-minute piece: C and D trumpets in the outer movements, then a flugelhorn and soprano cornet in the middle.) Flores also knows how to work a crowd. Rather than shooting to the stratosphere in his third-movement cadenza, he crawled to the bottom of his range — an amusing subversion of trumpet tropes. He then turned his bell directly at Guerrero and playfully pppththhed at him through his horn, prompting a teasing 'what gives?' shrug from the conductor. That said, it's hard to endorse Márquez's concerto beyond a mere virtuoso vehicle. The orchestral backing is often trite, cycling through the same progressions for what feels like minutes at a time. If the concerto's many flavors of theme-and-variation were engrossing at all, it was entirely thanks to Friday's soloist and orchestra, both playing with tempera-rich color and joie d'vivre. For pops-adjacent music under a more skillful hand, look to Flores himself. He opened and closed his appearance with two self-penned numbers: 'Morocota' (named for a $20 Venezuelan coin) and 'Lábios Vermelhos' ('Red Lips'). Originally recording both with guitar accompaniment for a 2017 Deutsche Grammophon release, Flores sang through his horn with a suave melodiousness that would have done the Rat Pack proud, with just a shimmer of vibrato where it counted. His lush orchestral arrangements would have been right at home in that milieu, too. At one point in 'Lábios Vermelhos,' section trumpets got in on the fun, with a sneering little interjection. Yet another short, Latin-inspired curtain raiser opened the concert: 'Baião n' Blues,' by Chicago composer Clarice Assad. A staple of the Carlos Kalmar years, Assad's inclusion in Guerrero's opening week bodes well for the new festival chief's attention to local composers. Ultimately, though, this performance had some of the same early-season jitters as last week's opener, with a scraggly opening and subdivision disagreement among the violins. 'Baião n' Blues' already isn't Assad's most compellingly structured piece, but a more honed performance might have made a better case. While Mahler sought to depict the world's natural beauty and bizarre juxtapositions in his music, he perhaps didn't anticipate contending with throbbing helicopters, the squeal of a coach's whistle, and hot rods sputtering down Lake Shore Drive on Friday. The Grant Park corps rose above the usual downtown backing track with a fresh, focused Mahler 1. Guerrero cued the unearthly, whistling first bars with an ambiguous gesture that invited the orchestra to melt in freely. Offstage trumpets were piped through the crown of the pavilion stage, sounding mysteriously heaven-sent. When the theme arrived in the cellos, Guerrero maintained their levity and grace throughout the movement — and, in fact, throughout much of the piece, bringing an aerodynamic lightness even to the symphony's final cadence. Because Grant Park 'does things a little differently,' per Guerrero, Friday's performance reinserted Mahler's discarded 'Blumine' movement. Through a complex change of hands, the only surviving manuscript copy of 'Blumine' ended up in in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was rediscovered as part of the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s. If 'Blumine' is heard at all, it's usually as a standalone piece, for good reason: It's arresting but nearly always out-of-place amid the lustiness of the rest of the symphony. Friday's performance gave the same impression — gauzy and subtle, but stopping short of the richness and emotional abandon that would make a better case for its inclusion. Elsewhere, other idiosyncratic touches intrigued and often convinced: more perky staccatos by oboist Alex Liedtke, orchestral accents like bitter twists of a knife in the funeral march, and a slower reading of the klezmer-band interludes. In all, it endorsed Guerrero's warhorse chops as enthusiastically as his new-music acumen. Rain or shine, Grant Park is looking like a fair place to be under his baton.

New York Post

6 hours ago

• New York Post

New York residents shelled out $179.1 million on OnlyFans last year

New Yorkers shelled out roughly $179 million on OnlyFans in 2024, a new study found — far below the per-capita peak spending in the Mountain State. West Virginia, home to country roads and mountain mamas, was No. 1 in the U.S. in money spent on the sexy site per 10,000 residents — $116,313 annually, according to search engine OnlyFinder's 'The United States of Lonelyfans,' the first to delve into a state-level analysis of the London-based subscription site. Big Apple residents, by comparison, shelled out $88,646 annually, making it 35th in the country. Advertisement Nevada came in second, followed by Colorado, Illinois and Iowa. 3 Sophie Rain was the OnlyFans star most searched by New Yorkers. Sophie Rain/ Instagram The least interested state in the union was Mississippi, with a mere $54,728 spent annually. Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Alaska also ranked in the bottom five. Advertisement In New York, 83% of OnlyFans users are men — registering approximately $148.7 million of the state's $179.1 million annual spending — while 17% are women, who account for $30.4 million. Married people make up 47% of OnlyFans subscribers in the Empire State. Meanwhile, 36% percent of users are in the 25-34 age range. 3 Nearly 50% of OnlyFans users in New York are married, according to the study. romaset – The study also revealed which OnlyFans stars get searched the most, and Sophie Rain — who revealed to The Post last week that she already made $23 million this year — takes the New York cake, with over 246,000 monthly searches. Advertisement 3 Buffalo spent more on OnlyFans per capita than the Big Apple, which finished fourth in the state, according to the study. AFP via Getty Images Rain's cousin Camilla Araujo grabbed the second most-searched spot, with more than 110,000. New Jersey ranked 33rd, with $90,724 spent annually per 10,000 residents, while Connecticut landed in 43rd, with $81,941.

Newsweek

9 hours ago

• Newsweek

'F1' Onscreen: Critics Weigh In on Brad Pitt's Racing Blockbuster

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. With less than a week left for the release of the Formula One-based movie, F1, fan excitement is at an all-time high, with many awaiting a glimpse of what they could expect. Thanks to the press screenings for critics and audiences before the movie's release on June 25 (June 27 for North America), fans can now walk into the theaters knowing what to expect. F1's recent star-studded premiere in New York saw Formula One drivers, team principals, Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, and the crew make headlines with their appearances. However, what matters next are the reviews. IGN Starting with IGN, critic Clint Cage said that F1 has elevated the standard of sports movies. He said: "As a sports movie following some pretty tried and true tactics, F1 ups its game at every stage of things. This won't win it any awards for originality, but it still adds up to a real win." Brad Pitt, star of the upcoming Formula One based movie, Apex, and Damson Idris, co-star of the upcoming Formula One based movie, Apex, walk on the grid during the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain... Brad Pitt, star of the upcoming Formula One based movie, Apex, and Damson Idris, co-star of the upcoming Formula One based movie, Apex, walk on the grid during the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain at Silverstone Circuit on July 09, 2023 in Northampton, England. MoreAddressing the work of Director Joseph Kosinski, he added: "On a technical level, F1 is impeccably put together. Kosinski and his frequent collaborator, Academy Award winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda, put cameras in just... all the places. Picking up where they left off with Top Gun: Maverick, F1 is filled with impossible angles and quick, robotic pans that make us feel like we're at the mercy of these rocketship machines" F1 aims to showcase the premier class of motorsport to a wider audience in an authentic way, and IGN's review hints it has achieved that goal. Cage added: "There's a deep cultural familiarity with what a Formula One race is supposed to look like onscreen. F1: The Movie gets that too. One shot puts you intimately and dangerously into the driver's seat while the next feels broadcast-worthy. "The editing does the same as well, thanks to Stephen Mirrione, another member of the pit crew with an Oscar in the garage. F1 is cut beautifully and peacefully in stretches, chaotically and nervously in others." He added: "All the pieces that you'd expect are there - and, again, plussing up the 'familiar' is the best thing Kosinski and his crew have done with F1. They've built a super-charged vehicle that can outdo the competition on almost every level - give or take a two-and-a-half-hour-plus runtime." Rotten Tomatoes With a score of 88% on the Tomatometer, F1 seems to have made its mark. Here are a few reviews by critics: Samuel Leggett Jr. stated: "It has it all, amazing camera work, astonishing racing scenes and locations, a great cast, & electric chemistry from Idris and Pitt! This film is truly one of the best films this year & one of the best racing films of all time. Will leave you breathless!" Doug Jamieson wrote: "Visually, it's undeniably impressive. But strip away the carbon fibre, and what remains is a movie filled with clichés, weak character arcs, and a script that strains to be inspirational while instead delivering a lot of empty noise." Stephanie Zacharek stated: "Brad Pitt, at 61, has finally aged into roles like these. And sometimes, as F1 proves, they're the best thing that can happen to a guy." BBC Nicholas Barber of the BBC described F1 as "the slick and shiny new summer popcorn film." However, he pointed out that "the biggest issue with F1, though, is not its insistence on showing its leading man in a flattering light, but its equivalent, fawning attitude towards Formula One itself." Comparing Kosinski's work on Top Gun: Maverick, he added: "While Top Gun: Maverick was a masterpiece that pulled viewers into events in and out of the cockpit, F1 is simply a competently assembled collection of underdog sports-drama clichés. It never convinces you that its protagonists are human beings, and never persuades you that Ruben's team are more worthy of support than their competitors. I was more invested in the podrace in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace than any of the races here." Rating F1 two out of five stars, Barber said the movie is best-suited for F1 fans. He concluded: "Making a film about a series of long races just wasn't a bright idea. Formula One enthusiasts may disagree, and they may be delighted that their beloved motorsport has been put on the big screen in such a laudatory fashion. Everyone else: this is not where you want to be." Attractions Magazine Connor Webber of Attractions Magazine has praised F1, likening it to Kosinski's work on Top Gun: Maverick. He stated: "What the 'F1: The Movie' team was able to accomplish with the camera work and editing is unreal. My heart dropped watching the camera move while the car is racing at 200 mph. There are no punches thrown in this film, but it has some of the best action in any movie this year." Awarding F1 with a score of 4.5/5, he added: "Just like 'Top Gun: Maverick,' 'F1: The Movie' never forgets the human element: the heart, the relationships that make the spectacle matter. The performances here aren't just passengers in the ride - they steer it (hehe)."