Comedian Ray Bradshaw on reaching both deaf and hearing audiences (BSL)

“Sign language is sexy just now,” opines comedian Ray Bradshaw over Zoom from Perth, Australia, where he completed two weeks of gigs for the local fringe festival earlier this month.

The 34-year-old Glaswegian, who is hearing, cites Rose Ayling-Ellis and the Oscar-winning movie Coda as examples. He adds: “I’ve seen more deaf people on TV in the last three years than in the whole of the last 20. People seem more interested, keener to ask questions.”

For Bradshaw, as a CODA himself, growing up in Jordanhill near Glasgow’s West End (he still lives in the city), hearing loss was a perfectly ordinary part of his life. The middle one of three siblings, including sister Pamela and his brother, Mark, he has profoundly deaf parents.

He learnt to sign so young that he can’t remember doing so, and the toddler son he shares with his wife, who works in marketing for major sports events, is learning now.

His mother Jill, a sign language teacher and social worker, lost her hearing after contracting measles at 14 months old. Meanwhile his father David, originally from Stranraer, is a retired tractor driver and parks gardener. “Dad uses BSL, is a life-and-soul-of-the-party type, and has never shied away from saying he is deaf or being proud of it.

“It was just normal, for me aged nine to be on the phone to the bank for my folks. It never felt like a chore. I understood more about endowment mortgages in the late 1990s than any other kid I knew! But it made me confident speaking to people much older than myself and meant I have never been scared of talking in front of people.”

(Just as well – his comedy career has seen him play to 11,000 punters a night.)

After school, Bradshaw headed the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where he studied drama. (“I know how pretentious that sounds,” he chuckles.)

It was while still a student there that he performed his first gig aged 19, running out of material for his eight-minute set with a minute or two to spare. But it’s his third show, in Manchester, that he remembers with a wince.

“It was awful. Rangers had just played there, and they’d trashed the city.”

Initially, he didn’t talk about deafness during his act, since he was keen to do the issue justice and, understandably, didn’t want it to become a gimmick.

But then, in 2015, he did a BSL-interpreted gig. And at around the same time, he realised how few comedians were accessible when he played the Edinburgh Festival.

“There was a real lack of awareness, no funding, no incentive to change anything.”

But Bradshaw started talking to fellow comics like Aisling Bea and Joe Lycett, who were feeling similar disquiet at the situation. It was a trigger.

“In 2017, I signed my own show for the first time, and played the interpretation as a film. It seemed the only feasible way to do it financially.”

Then Bradshaw began a working partnership with BSL interpreter Karen Forbes, with whom he would go on to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe.

One reviewer wrote on the Broadway Baby website:

“Forbes does a fantastic job of keeping up with the ad-libs, interjections and audience participation that are a naturally fluctuating part of the set. The banter between them is a joyously cheeky thing to watch, and most likely a partnership that lots of the audience will not have experienced at a comedy gig before.”

Bradshaw himself adds: “The first interpreted show, I thought it would be a disaster. But it worked. Word had clearly spread among the signing community. I played in Glasgow, but people came down from Dundee and elsewhere. One woman was in tears because it was the first time she’d been able to go to a show like that. People have even gone on to learn sign language after coming to one of my gigs.

“When I toured the show in 2018, and after the gig at the Soho Theatre in London, I walked through the bar to leave, I was struck by the families there, and how they all looked like mine. When I was growing up, we never went to the theatre, or even the cinema. (I’m not that rude, so families can come.)”

Now all his shows are interpreted, some with an interpreter and others by Ray himself. For the dates in Australia, Bradshaw worked closely with local interpreters – interestingly, there is an 81% similarity between Australian and British versions of sign language.

“About half of my audiences tend to be deaf, and there are people who can’t hear at every one of my performances. They have reserved seats and we try to get a working loop system – not always easy. I once had to move into a different auditorium, in St Andrews, for that reason, at the last minute.

“I love the way I get instant feedback from my deaf audience members. Hearing people whisper so you don’t catch their words, but I can see deaf people telling each other in BSL what they thought.”

Bradshaw’s career has certainly taken off in recent years, and he is currently on his biggest-yet UK tour, with dates across the country until the middle of April. In May, he’s off to perform four weeks of sets in New Zealand. He has supported Frankie Boyle and John Bishop, and worked with the latter on his ITV documentary Life After Deaf about Bishop’s son’s deafness. (Bradshaw took the Liverpudlian comic to his deaf club in Glasgow for the programme, introducing him to his mum and dad.)

His gigs have won Best Show and Outstanding Contribution to Comedy at the Scottish Comedy Awards and he was the first comedian to win a Scottish Culture Award. He also hosts the Scottish radio football show Off the Ball.

Ray mines a rich seam of family life – marriage, teaching his son BSL, interpreting parents’ evenings for his own folks and being able to ‘interpret’ the teachers’ words – for his material. But, increasingly, his comedy is turning to the current state of the country and the world.

“The UK is a shambles just now. Previously, an issue like Brexit or Scottish independence would split a room. Now, with the worst cost-of-living crisis in 30 years the tide is turning. You can sense people’s anger – and I believe a stage should reflect the world around it.”

• Ray Bradshaw tour Deaf Com 1 across the UK until April 17. Learn more here.