We discussed... A lot. There was a lot to unpack. Yeah, she gave me some snowboard stories. The time she got hit by a ski person. We talked about masturbation for a split second. We talked about her arch nemesis from primary school that she talked about on stage once. And we learnt a lot about how to become a stand-up comedian and what it's like being someone who's probably in her menopause right now. Do you like that one? No, not really. You laugh. Oh, she laughs. She laughs. We like to have fun here. We're fine. Welcome to The San Rojo. We have Jill Cortner here from Glasgow. She is Scottish. You will find out more as she talks. And we will be subtitling this episode. Just in case you can't understand the heavy accent for all the viewers on YouTube you're welcome. If you're unsportified, you can't understand it.  I can't say. Subtiles for the heart of thinking. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So, former teacher, now comedian. What happened? A mid-life crisis. I've had many mid-life crisis. I actually know. I don't know. I think I was always that awkward and uncomfortable person that said their own things at their own time. Like, I went to work event with my husband and we were standing next to his boss and they handed us a plate of oysters. And instead of just saying, no, I don't like oysters. I said, I couldn't eat them. They look like vaginas, right? Now, that's not the right thing to see in front of your husband's boss. And it seemed like the right response because that bit in your head that would normally go, don't say that horrible thing. I never had a filter and then I stumbled upon the stand-up and I went up on stage once and that was it. I was like a heroin addict. That was it. Did you do a lot of, like, a pause? I did. I got a click. I wasn't, I wasn't brought in the first time out. Well, I've looked to the clip back and it's actually diabolical back at the time. In the context of being let the first time on stage, I got tons of laughs. And that is it. It's that weird acceptance or admiration or, I don't know, being in school. I don't know what it is, but there's something about people laughing at what you say. Instead of just raising their eyebrows and going, so far, it's true. I mean, because that's the normal response.  Do you know what I'm looking at? My husband going, Jesus. You know, like, I'm always embarrassed. Did you write him laugh? No, no, really. I think I just annoy him. He had always made us marriage. You know, like, get real with it. If you're engaged, it's a trap. Well, I'm two years in. Good luck. Yeah? Yeah, it's good in there. No, it's good.  Like, get infinite tolerance is not a thing. Like, the longer you're married, the more each other annoy. And then it's just like, you just let with each other's aggravation. It's just managing your aggravation. It is, yeah.  It's good. She laughs. Yeah. Well, me, I've got two kids and they think they're funny as well. Every new thing's sort of funny.  And it's a little, it's quite good.  So that's as much humor. But I try to avoid it at home because at the end of the day, I do it for 11. So, um, you know, you're not as funny at home. You just go to the peak and annoy to the dishwasher smell. My daughter, who fabric conditioner and cheese, do you know, like the ones they will put dishwasher in tablets. She could be one of them in her dishwasher. And her dishwasher has smell like frangipani for six months. And I cannot tell you how annoyed that makes me. Every time I open that door, I just could just waft.  There's nothing that's going rid of it.  It could be worse. I couldn't even smell it. It could be smelling like shears. Yeah, well, if you want to shed in your dishwasher, good luck to you. That's a kink that I've been out of. It could be. It could be. You do put on the heavier encyclopedia depending on how emotional it was. So how long have you been in comedy for? Four years. Oh, years. And you're already award-winning your comedy lounge, comedy comedian of the year. And I think that's about all I can remember. I won the funniest five as well. This year, which was a competition. And yeah, it's been great. Like, I've done really well last year, so I'm hoping this year to do even better, but limited expectations, kids. So what's your, like, what's your ultimate goal? Do you have one? To escape my bottle coil. No, it just, I think, probably just to do a bit of traveling and be dead good and everybody's going, oh, she's really good, you know. And I'm not saying I'm vulnerable because you're always vulnerable, but I'd like to travel. I'd like to go to other places.  Are you not somehow doing that? But especially I don't, I just kind of want to do the next bit and then the next bit. Yeah, it was a journey. Yeah, I'm just, I'm like a cat, a fella or a leaf. I don't look at the bush. I just look at the leaf and see what the next bit and one shouldn't do is, because I think if you get to, sort of, far ahead of, like, get expectations, I don't know. It compuses me. So I just look at the next goal, which is, yeah. What sort of company style do you lean towards? I suppose observational comedy and very, very down earth stuff. Like, I just, my family, my life, it's boring and it annoys me and everything can annoys me. And so it's mostly bad. It's just things that annoy me, really, and people around me and stuff that happens. Like, it's very, it's very day to day. I don't do anything particularly political or controversial and I swear a lot. And I like that. I used to, in the beginning, people would say, you know, well, you swear too much and I really like to swear on this book. Can I hook it?  You know, I like swearing. I'm Scottish. And being Scottish, it's in your DNA to swear and to swear well. I mean, we, we really didn't bend how you use swear words in Anthony Sinclair's and then you come over to Australia. And Australians really like to swear as well. So that, like, the double whammy of coming from two cultures, the entirely love expletives.  I think people do, like, feel that perhaps it's, like, hilariously. On Sunday, I committed, not committed, an Irish woman came me up after getting said, she thought it was undignified of a lady of my age to swear too much.  A, I am a lady. B, who wants to be dignified?  I'm not up there in the tixie doing the top half. You know, my kid. Yeah, what's on the show? It's like, what do you think of this?  You know, here you want to do a call and do it. You do it how you like, but I like swearing. It's a release for me. And especially if you've got kids, you bottle it up for years.   She can get.  How was it? Well, it's 50 and a half.  But anyway, I called him by vaping. And I thought, if you could fast forward your life to your teenage kids, and I look at my big deal that I've done with his mullet in his vape and all of this shit, I would not have matched up organic pumpkin for him. And I wouldn't have breastfed him.  And it just doesn't.  I don't know.  You give them this, like, air-frict environment. You can go to sleep in organic bamboo. Sleeps. Someone in there went wrong.  I don't know. He's a great kid. But like, what, what a point of that is, is what you think your expectations in the beginning of this sort of, like, perfect environment doesn't necessarily create this thing. They're their own people, you know. And I want to be their own person and he's there for me as his own person. Just going to guide them to a point where they don't die. But you've got to give them their own choices as well.  You know what I mean? I will be in receipt as best. You know, I was terrible at that age. So, like, I don't remember what that age is like. And that is where you want to just... You turned out all right. Don't marry him. Don't marry him. I'm hanging on me. I'm like, I'm like someone just hanging on there, just by the fingernails and each fingernails crack in one other thing, you know. I just... So are you, are you okay? I'm okay, but can we be inside all a bit top to me? Well, I had Andrew Wolf last week. Oh, well, then if you go. He said the bar high with that one.  And I'm not saying unstable, but we're all a bit skewed. Yeah, I've got a lot to say. And Dave, like Dave Hughes, my friend, he said that you should do stand-up. And I, and I'm like, I'm not ready. And I'm like, when are you ready? When are you ready? I was 50. Well, I was 50, I'm 56, so I was 52 when I started. I would, I could have done it at any point in my life. It just left for a couple of minutes. However, doing it late on in life and makes it much harder because nobody really loves the idea of middle-aged people in any sphere of life. You know, like, where are they? Get better. There's a community. Yeah, in some ways you are, but a lot of middle-aged communities have got awful as well. This is like, a kind of oldie thing and there's an entanglement thing to it. You know, and that is different, but I think to start old is hard. It's hard to be new or adult. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, I'd never been described as an often common comic. Never. You know, even though at four years... Just appear like a McDonald's.  Same latitude as a young comedian, because they look at them and go, Father, are you a comedian? You're not. You'll be shy. That's okay. But when you're an adult of a comedian, I think people don't, like, do you know what I mean? It's like, a bias. For me, for me, it's like, I personally prefer the older comedians because they're more relatable and they've got enough kilometres under their hood that they know what they're talking about and they can really draw in a story. Which means they rely on sarcastic humour, which I'm kind of over.   Do you follow it?    So I do the sort of nemesis of that and I'm not single, so I'm not doing tender jokes.   You know, if I don't, if that's where I'm at in my life, then that's where I'm, that's what I'm reflecting. I'm not talking about, I talk a lot about, younger guys have a bit of a bizarre obsession with, like, the step mum and mature, lady porn, right?  This is it. And at the end of the day, the young guys are all getting off to, like, horny milfs in your area and I just think that's funny. Step mum porn as well.  It's like the craziest thing.  What about wanking? Well, yeah, because it's a funny thing, isn't it?  No, I do, I do a joke about my son having 20 minute showers and we all know what you do in the shower.  I want my children to be clean if they do whatever you do, do what you do, clean your mess up. That's all I would say. Yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, we've all been there.  I spoke about that earlier today, actually, with my father-in-law. You don't age in your mind. No, he's over 60 now. He's just the same thing.  I said that this morning as well. Sitting at home doing Sudoku and watching Married at First Sight, you know, like, that's not... That's some people's reality, you know, but like... Sounds boring. I'm not in it.  I'm not saying I want my kids to be... Somebody has called me a gilf once and I said, I said, I'm not a gilf, I want to be a milf first, because my children are old enough to have their children. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, I want milf time before gilf time. Do they have friends coming over, like, looking at you? Not yet? No, no, they're all scared to me. They become Stifler's mum sort of vibes? Nah, not at all. Well, I do love her, though, Jennifer Coolidge. She's all over TikTok, doing it well. She's fantastic and she did that whole thing on her acceptance speech about, you know, like, that she'd given up the idea of being anything, you know, like, she felt like her moment had passed and that sort of life was passing her by a wee bit and then she got this opportunity and all of a sudden she's just blown up to be this amazing and I just think that's so touching and lovely and relevant to me as well because I suppose you kind of do think maybe, like, maybe my dreams of fame and fortune have passed me by and this is it or you go, you put a halt on that narrative and go, I'm not dead yet, I'm not ready for pipe and slippers and taking up lawn bowls. I'm like, I'm changing, I'm flipping that script and going, nah, I'm just starting, you know. I don't ever accept that, like, tip for buy it from anyone. It's easy to say that when you're young, though, when you get older and like you do get bit bypassed, I think I found it, I was invisible or I was getting invisible and I thought, I don't really want that to be me. I don't want to be just a faceless middle-aged woman shuffling in and out. I wonder what I feel like with my following. I don't feel faceless, but like with yourself, you did, you were a teacher, were you teaching at school? I was a lecturer. I did fine art and I ended up teaching in a college like similar to TAFE in the UK. And how long did you do that for? 12 years. Yeah. And then I had a bit of a midlife crisis, relationship broke down a long-term relationship and I thought, I can either stay in my job with everybody going, mmm, you're divorced, you know, come on out, you can come out for a drink with us or I could just leave everything and I went and I worked in Europe for two and a half years doing ski seasons and the summer seasons as well. Well, like chairlift and stuff? No, first season I did, I worked as a holiday-like rep in a snowboarded in Italy and then the second season which was summer and that was in Austria I ran a shali in Kitspule in Austria which was fantastic and then the next winter, actually no, the first winter was France, Austria, then I did Italy and the job I got in Italy, oh my god, so I went as a chef, actually no, I went as a holiday rep in Italy for a holiday company and the snowboard guide for the company broke his leg and I was the only one who snowboarded and they're like you could do the guiding and I'm like yeah, and they're like we'll give you more money and I was like like you have to do it and I was shite at snowboarding like I was really, I had really nice equipment because like when I was stationary I looked great, you know, like at the top of the ski lift I'd just be like I had a friend who did a snowboarding shop in Aberdeen and he kicked me out with all this amazing gear but I wasn't really that good so I got this job guiding and so what you meant to do is you meant to like take groups of people up the slope seven but I wasn't really that good and I didn't know any good routes so what I used to do is I'd take them up in the lift and we'd get off the lift and I'd point them in a direction and go this is where we're going and you go and I'll follow at the back because I was slower than the people I was guiding right so this is how I got out and I was like I'll come up the rear and protect you all you know like in some sort of like and they were like yeah yeah that sounds good and I did that and I was so out of my depth and I'd always be getting invited to things that were snowboarding right, all the cool snowboarding folk and I was so rubbish at it like they took me off piece one day with this whole group of snowboard guides and we hiked up this mountain and we got on this ledge and it was like a cliff thing and then there was this big powder field down it right and there was about six of us and they said we'll all take it in turns go down there and there's this beautiful bit of pristine slope and I thought that's too steep for me like I can't do the really steep stuff I never went on the steep stuff and I went aww so I pretended I was like fidgeting with my bindings so trying in my mind to think of a way out of this like if I could like have a binding malfunction I could like get out of it and they went down and down and down and there's like one guy in front of me and he goes do you want to go before I was like no no no it's okay and I'm watching them carving these big waves so now they've all gone down and I'm sat at the top of this cliff on my snowboard going there's only one way down and I'll probably die if I try and snowboard down this so I have to get down and not die so they're now all waiting at the bottom and what I did is if you snowboard and you want to stop you do it you go on your heels and you just go do do do do do do and I did I just heel edged it all the way down to the degree that I caused a small avalanche because I created so much snow under my board that it formed this massive big thing of snow that then dropped off and then started going do do do do do so they're watching me going what the fuck is she doing and they're waiting because like they'd taken like 10 seconds to go down I took about 4 minutes with this massive clump of snow under my board and when I got to the bottom like nobody would look at me it was so embarrassing it was just and that I've been out my depth my whole life but I ended up I got hit by a skier when I was guiding well when I said I was guiding when I was following my punters across the snow and he came off a ridge and hit me side on and knocked me out and he fucked off and left me for dead on the slopes and then I woke up in the helicopter because I'd been knocked out and I wouldn't wake up I wouldn't come to I kept like drifting in and out consciousness because it's these open-sided rescue helicopters and it was in Italy and the guy in the back of the helicopter had on one of those like you know those like mirrored visors and I thought I was in a Vietnam film I thought I was dreaming about a film so every time I opened my eyes it was good and I was watching tour of duty at that time so I thought it was maybe that so every time I saw him I'd just let him shut my eyes and go back to sleep you hear fortune at the sand plane in the background it was that and I came to open my eyes and go ah this is a nice dream and when we got to the hospital I'd broken some ribs and punctured along and then I lost my job as a snowboard guide that was alright that was so bad at it but I was quite ill for a long time nobody in the hospital spoke any English it was just grim we were in Italy last year for a wedding and a day before one of the guests because we all stated this accommodation right where the wedding was and it was a really nice area in Luca near Luca and the guy they were playing soccer or something in the paddock and he snapped his Achilles and then he had to go to the hospital and he was there for eight hours to know surgery because of some insurance shit or something he had insurance but just they needed to do something and then anyway he came back the next day he had cast like sling on shit and then he had to go straight away back home to Holland because he's from Holland and to get his surgery because you can't let your Achilles heal heal too much because you're fucked but yeah yeah that was my story of Italy but yeah I love snowboarding I went to Japan yeah I mean I loved it I did three ski seasons I did two Italian ones the second one I did before I got busted I it was in Livigno not my first ski season in Italy it was in Livigno and at that time MTV were sponsoring Jackass and they had the MTV and Burton freestyle competition and Jackass were in and I went to the party and met them also that was kind of cool so it was kind of cool like it was a good it was a good I just used to bluff it though you know like I just was like I always looked like I was probably brilliant at snowboarding until anybody saw me snowboarding and then so as long as I stood about like I just had such nice gear so all the gear and no idea yeah that's what I was going to say just thinking of a title of this podcast already how to bluff through life I honestly I've just bluffed through everything I'm such a charlatan I have this like complete imposter syndrome and everything I've done and the same with comedy it's like I've bluffed my way into this and I still don't feel like I get paid for most of my gigs and that's lovely but I still feel like such an imposter and any day I'll get phoned out I think everybody suffers through that I think everybody does like I've got mad imposter syndrome all the time the only thing that I'm certain for is this bloody podcast because I actually wanted to do it you know like interviewing people and talking to them but now I'm finding myself interviewing people on my TikTok and now people are asking me can you do an interview thing for the RAC arena for an event coming up and I'm like yeah sick but it's just what I do so I feel more confident now but how long have you been doing it over four years so we're at the same point so we're getting good at it maybe that's it so we've faked enough and now we're starting to make it I don't believe it though it's funny because like people will message and say like really nice things and you do that thing you know like if somebody says you look nice you have to negate it if somebody says you've lost weight you're like no no I'm actually still as fat but you'll do that whole like you can't take a compliment why do you think that is? because I'm Scottish and we're brought up in the bog of humanity where the only like when I got married my gran said to me on my wedding day I thought you were meant to be fat now that sounds like a horrible thing for your gran to say but that was her way of being nice you know like she couldn't say and you know like my dad when my gran died he had a brother and a sister who both died before him and before my gran and when my gran died she whispered in his ear I wish you died before Georgia Margaret now now that sounds horrific right to hear from your mother on her die but my dad did not take that as like a horrible thing that was her way of saying translated that she missed her two children that had died young and that she was sad that my dad but that's not how you articulate it in Scotland you'll say things like that you know I mean we watch a lot of American TV we watch a lot of films where you know mommy mommy I love you mommy you know and it's all this like oh you know the dying death bed you know and they're all doing their big you know look oh you were a wonderful child that is not reality the reality is it's a physical function that you know we all say we don't say Hollywood things we don't you know I don't know my dad's ever said he loved me I'm sure he does but I doubt he's ever said well it's made you more resilient through life yeah it depends it depends on how you grow up you could talk about nature and nurture I grew up with a lovable mum I didn't grow up with the dad I had a step dad that I never really clicked with apart from a couple of years when I migrated here and he got me into footy and that was our little bond that we had for a little while but most of the time I always saw him as I was just bothering him any time I asked him for something it was a bother but my mum she carried me the whole time up until about four years old when I got too big but like she emotionally carried me still does you know like now more like it the tables now I'm emotionally carrying her but I'm just regurgitating all the shit she taught me and it's made me more resilient because at the beginning I'd get bullied at school I'd come home and she's like who the fuck are those guys who gives a shit and now I say the same thing when I was a school teacher I didn't swear but I said you're getting bullied who cares who are these people but 2020 I was teaching 2019 and 2020 before I fucked off and started doing TikToks for money yeah the kids didn't perceive it that well because they were cotton wooled more do you feel like it's a huge difference because I've got a friend yeah I was bullied horribly at school I mean well yeah that's Glasgow right well a lot of comedians I think come from that bully sorry and I was bullied horribly by a group of people all through primary and secondary school and a funny thing happened there was nothing funny about it but my parents would they'd never talk about it they'd see you coming in with like a bloody lip and I used to get hair pulled out and you'd have like bald patches and my mum would say things to me like go and sort your hair you know like it was like in a my sister used to walk home at the same time as me and she would cross the road as I was getting a kick in outside school because she was embarrassed at it and you know so it wasn't that whole like you know if you're getting bullied you know like I talk to my kids and we sit down and we're like explain it away when I was brought up like that wasn't how it was you just go home with it you endured it you know against your will but last year hilariously I got a DM from a woman called Pamela because that's her name look straight at the camera there Pamela I'm not going to give you her her surname but you know who you are and she sent me a DM just going I was a real bitch to you in school and you know that was really unfair and I feel bad about it and you know I'm not an alcoholic are you not though Pamela and this is not a cry for help yes it is actually but you know I really wanted to say you know after all this time it was really unfair and I'm like bitch please you know what 45 years down the track you're sorry for what you did I was like you don't get my forgiveness you don't get me responding to this you don't get I just thought you can just you can just live with your guilt mate you know because I very much doubt I very much doubt you suffered the way I did and I just thought it was extraordinary that she had the nerve to DM me in some sort of like cathartic she must have been going to therapy and they were like you know sorry you shut out before you die you alcoholic bitch but I was like nah you know like just not I'm not I don't forgive you because you know I think you're pathetic and I did look her up on Facebook and so actually I was looking a lot better than she was so that was quite nice but I went out that night the night I got the DM I took it I printed it off and I went and I read it out an open mic thing and I just did like I improvised like a 15 minute set around this and I actually felt great you know because what I said I said is like there's three things you can do in that instance you can DM back it's okay I've grown up and I'm much better looking than you and my life's great you know you could have done that you could ignore it or you can recite it on stage you record it record it and maybe one day send it to Pamela and we're not I didn't do it because I just thought I'm a bigger person than that but I did enjoy that but I just thought it was like I just thought it was the worst of humanity that like just some things aren't forgivable you know like and I'm like oh you were having a hard time so you used to pull my hair out and kick me in the teeth it was okay then well how was that what how was she you guys when that was happening it was all the way through primary school like so from about like eight or nine to about 14 so we're not talking like one summer you were a bitch it was a huge amount of my life yeah it's it's it's I thought you were running though yeah okay the way I look at it and this is something I tell the kids when I was teaching them at school the people that mean to you now will become different people years from now yeah but they won't mean shit to you and if they no they won't but but they'll be different people they will have matured in some sort of way and then and that's kind of why I personally would probably just reply to them saying oh good hope your kids aren't fuckheads like you were you're a better person than me but I would say I would say I hope your kids weren't as bad as you are because hopefully they're better people than you were the thing is though if I opened the channel of conversation with her I wouldn't stop yeah like because it was very very hurtful to get that DM because it kind of brings it all back and like you never forget it but I just thought ah and after all this time you're still popping into my life like you know like you've got some entire woman and yeah I didn't forgive her I don't forgive her and I just think I hope your kids I'm not I'm not charging you and you're way about it I've said to my children because at various points in their life they've been they've had issues with other kids and I'll say thing I'm like I'm I don't give them the traditional answers but I will say to them the people that are bullying you are sad and pathetic and unhappy and probably jealous of you for whatever I was smarter than most the kids I was in school with and that was what I was picked on for being like super brainy and like that was your thing and it's like well I'm not going to pretend to be as thick as you Pamela to to make your life feel better and so I'll tell my kids that I'll say they're they're sad pathetic people and just be grateful you're not as bad as them but it is a crap thing to go through yeah it is especially like she would have hit you up because she's seen you succeed in a in a new way I wonder and like how I see that and this is my other way this is my demon side now talking I would have I wouldn't have opened the channel up but if I did I would have said something like oh so you came across me I'm doing well now you thought to reach out because it's the same thing with me I've actually had this happen too in a way not not my bullies or anything like I don't have demons anymore they can all get fucked but I've had people that I haven't talked to in over 10 years like I'm 32 now and when I was 22 I'd be working with specific people who are older than me or even my friends at the time 10 years later they all have kids 5, 6, 7 years old and some of those younger when I was younger those people older than me have teenage kids and that's my prime demographic on TikTok so now they're coming hitting me up this has happened like a handful of times because now they've got leverage and their kids are going oh my god you know him can you invite him over and I'm like yeah first time it was cool but then I'm like wait this is happening regularly why are you hitting me up now just to are you not cool enough for your kids to come and carry like the best the best time though and it's because it's my mother she's a school teacher she had a on her phone there's a screen like her screen is me wallpaper right golden child just kidding locked screen is me and unlocked screen is my sister so so when she's the younger one but yeah when she checks the time it's me but the kids would see it the phone and they would be like miss what do you have him as your wallpaper did you know his tiktok famous she's like yeah that's my son and then like I remember that year specifically she called me she said I'm struggling my year sevens are a bunch of fucks she went and spoke to them no I didn't speak to them they literally a week later discovered that I was her son and they've all been saints isn't that cute and now like a lot of my comments on tiktok my mum your mum is my teacher at school or your mum was my teacher at school I was actually out on Saturday night watching some friends shows sorry not yours and at the end I went out to a bar and yeah there's some of her old students were there like 19 years old just fresh up come speak to me that's a legacy you know yeah it is it's nice and I think that's the hard thing about being a teacher is it can be a thankless task but I still keep in touch with quite a few friends and they're grateful for you they were grateful I was a great teacher and I loved it you know and I put an awful lot of passion in like I put I'm balls deep in everything like no matter what it is I'm in I'm fully invested it's just as well I don't understand cryptocurrency or gambling because like I'd be I'd be in on like podcast title idea number two how to be balls deep in anything I've just jumped like I just jump into things so enthusiastically and then just run with it like I I just I've been that done that my whole life you had a catastrophic failure at one point where you did that and just went fuck no that was cooked no everything I've set my task to I've been pretty good at years and years ago I wanted to box and I trained for boxing for about five, six years Jesus and I was really I was really good I just used to train all the time I used to like go to the gym all the time go to the boxing clubs all the time spar all the time and this is previous to when women really did box it wasn't there weren't like boxer size classes there weren't there wasn't any women doing boxing at that time and I absolutely loved it and I wanted to do that this is a funny story I couldn't get any women to box with because I'm tiny and at the time so I'm still the same height as I was then five foot two and I was 50 kilos I was just tiny and so to find someone there was no one in Scotland boxing at that weight and so I used to spar with a friend of mine Graham who was a guy who was the same size as me and that was great but I could never find opponents to actually have fights with because I was ready it was fight ready but there was nobody to fight with and I went to the university boxing club one night and the trainer there an old guy called Bill Sharkey said to me oh he goes we've got a surprise for you and I said what and he went we've got a woman for you tonight and I was like yes yes this is it and he's like just go and get changed come out and I come out in the rings there and there's my opponent and this lady was called Reema and she was from Russia oh weirdly enough and and she would have been 5'10 5'11 you're fucked Bill like a brick shit house she was a she used to train weight lifters in Russia for Olympics she was like a trainer she was like she had these traps she was on the roads she was like yeah and I looked at her and I looked to Bill Sharkey and I looked to my and I'm like you know she's she would have been 20 30 kilos heavier yeah that's not in muscle and about a foot taller than me and I just looked at her and I looked to him and he went go on then and I'm like and at that moment and this is talking about jumping in deep at things you're ill prepared for I'm looking around like hoping that like do you remember like when you you wait for your mum it'll go Jillian can't do the boxing today you know our dinner's ready and she's got homework to do I was looking around like looking for some it was like the snowboarding thing at the top of the cliff I'm looking around going there's got to be an excuse there's got to be a way out of this and there was no way out of it and I'm looking around and everybody's looking at me everybody's looking at me and the fear of going into a boxing ring to know you're going to get battered is like people say stand-ups hard and I'm like yes stand-up is hard but that time going into that boxing ring with that lassie was the fear of death you know like you're like I could this I'm like and to put that foot over the rope to go into ultimate beating you know and I did it you know I never threw up and so we got in the ring and they take you in the middle of the ring touch gloves and you go to your corners and we're going to go like we're going to do two three-minute rounds now that sounds like nothing that sounds like nothing if you're not in the ring with a Russian weightlifting monster right it was like Rocky when Dove when Dove Ivan Drago and and I and I'm stood in the corner and I'm looking at her and I'm going she's not getting anywhere looking at her you know she was enormous and the bell went we touched gloves and I did what I always do in these moments I survive and I survived by going on the back foot back pedaling round the ring for the whole three minutes she never called me right and I go faster and faster she got more and more pissed off Bill Shacky's going stand and fight and I'm going fuck you bell and I'm like back down back back back back back and then the bell rang they're like that just how you get that was the end of it right and I was like I'm ok with this right because she never laid a glove on me not she honestly not a mark on me so everybody was pissed off right but I was alive and I'm like no I'm fine with this it's fine and then we're getting at the changing room and there's just me and her because we're the only women there right and she didn't speak much English I don't think and so I'm sitting on the bench you know these like benches in the changing room and there's like the lockers here and like you're quite close to the lockers maybe about like two three feet yeah and then she comes out the shower stark naked right and I'm like a vert in my gaze because you don't want to look creepier and I don't know and also I wasn't catching her eye because I was embarrassed and running away from her and well I'm ok and I'm I'm sat on the bench and she's right in front and we were back to me and she bends over and pretends to do something with her toes for quite an extended period of time and mooned me her butt was like about three maybe thirty centimetres from my face and I'm sitting on the bench and I thought and this is the way you dominate someone is like you never laid a glove on me and now I'm going to put my bomb in your face and it was like when I think about it now I just think it was really funny and I've told people that story and they went I think she was coming on it yet and I was like I didn't see the signs I didn't see the signs and it was like I think it was like animals do you know when they're trying to show dominance it's like you couldn't actually hit me in the ring and now I'm just going to put my bare arse in your face and yeah that was my only female actually there was one other there was a girl who did rugby who was also short but like really big and I didn't fear her so much because she was the same height and I thought you know that fit and I knew she had never done boxing for a long and the bell rang and I within about 10 seconds I hit her square on the bridge of her nose and do you know like in Tom and Jerry cartoons when one of them gets hit and the wee birds go above their head she did that she stood there going and and right across like you could just see it like the minute I hit her that was it she was spaced out and that fight was like ended at that point one hour and one yeah I know but yeah that was it so like I'd love to have done boxing and had I been younger when I started by the time I was ready you know if it had been 10 years later there would have been opponents and I reckon I would have been quite good you could be a coach now if you want I could have been a contender undefeated I loved boxing I went and saw Mike Tyson fight and seen a lot of people great fights and yeah that was something that's something I could have been you know but that moment passed and I survived but I still think about that girl the rugby playing girl I saw her in Aberdeen about a week after I hit her and she had like the mask Zorro of bruising oh god she had like two black eyes and right across wow she's never done to me did you moon her no I didn't but if in trouble that can work yeah you know like if you're frightened so you're dominant so now you're taking hits on stage let's talk about heckling how do you handle hecklers like hecklers don't bother me too much because I portray a savageness that most people slightly fear me they kind of like intimidating yeah I think I'm a wee bit intimidating because I've got that like I'm an ex-teacher I'm a mum and I used to box and I think that's sort of like I think people sense it so if they want to if they try what if I've found Reema and I put her in the audience I could take her down now like I think about it in hindsight I just think I should have like honestly if I'd stood in for Toa Wahar I would have my nose but had mask of Zoro as well yeah I would have been worse than the mask yeah so tell me about your roasting you were roasting someone before we turned the cameras on yeah I did a roast which I've never done before and I always quite fancied I loved watching roasts and I thought that looks fun I'll give that a go and I did a roast of another comedian and I did really well I did I did some really great jokes and he he was less competent she always said but I really did enjoy it but it kind of left me feeling a bit I don't know it made me feel a bit solid there's something about just being mean like constantly it's actually quite draining on you you know like to do like if something heckles you like I can usually shut people down in a way that is fun and engaging and nobody feels victimised or picked on and I think that's the key to heckling if somebody heckles you you want to shut them down but you don't want to make them out to be an absolute tip because that's when it goes wrong because you'll see all those heckling ones when they go wrong it's kind of when they're a bit too mean so I think if you can shut somebody down and not humiliate them you'll have a better chance of actually shutting them down do you come prepared with the roast or do you make it up on the spot? no you come prepared so you write the roast so you write them as a sort of joke so you know who your opponent is and then you both exchange but mines were really funny like he's from Zimbabwe and I said that he wears links no lamara which is really good so my jokes were all some of them were really grim but they were funny but they've got to be mean and that's what's really I said that he's so overweight that he flies coach in his arse flies freight you know like you pick physical things but you also pick like cultural stuff so what about in this time and age of doing that roles reversed let's say I'm roasting someone of the female gender they identify as you have to say that now and they were overweight clearly and I would say the same thing I think it's okay in a roast because when you go in for a roast you've signed up for do what you want and that's the deal with roast there can't be there can't be constraints in it because it then can be super difficult I had a black opponent and I was nervous of that because you don't want to do stuff that will make you look like a racist because people can clip it out of context so that's difficult so if you had a transgender person also that gives you more like you have to be more careful about how you word it so you don't come across as being some horrible so I think in roasts it's fair game to say what you like and I've seen tons of roasts online we love an overweight person on a roast because that's if you're going to roast if you're going to roast anybody you want them to be overweight more meat to go around you need an extra heavy duty spit but yeah it's fair game I mean I got roasted on being ugly and old and overweight and I just thought yeah I'd joke some better and I won who's your inspiration for comedy? Billy Connelly is my favourite comedian and Kevin Bridges also another Scottish comedian but I also there's so many comedians but I grew up with Billy Connelly and I think I loved his descriptiveness and that's what I love I love describing things I like using silly words to describe things that make me feel like they paint a picture in people's heads you know so that's I suppose not an inspiration but I suppose he was the first comedian I ever really connected with you know I remember watching Billy Connelly when I was a kid my favourite all time Jim Carrey I love Jim Carrey Jim Carrey is phenomenal and I still think he's super funny now and I love how he skates with that edge of darkness as well but there's so many fabulous comedians there's so many people that inspire you I suppose but I suppose I inspire myself because I never give up and I just give things a go and I shouldn't because I'm always out of my depth I've never understood my dad's used to say to me I think he wanted me to be a boy because he had three daughters and I was the last and he used to say you can achieve anything in life if you try hard enough and although that's not entirely true there's a bit of that sticks with me and I think I don't know self-limitation I just think I want to do that I'll do it you know I should be self-aware enough to go nah this is not what you should be doing but I'm not I love a challenge I love things that are really hard you know that's not euphemism I like things to be difficult I like things to be harder than I'm capable of is that how your husband proposed to you you wouldn't marry me pussy well he's 10 years younger than me so he met me I was just like a tornado you know and that's what he married he knew I was like this I never hid it I was pretending to be some nice docile I mean he found himself an 18 year old really well he did I think he struggles he's older than me in his mind for sure he's absolutely the adult in our relationship and I'm just a ludicrous manifestation of too many ideas and not one single train of thought you know do you see ADHD or anything like that all of it mate let's not I absolutely that's a thing now everybody will say they have this and that and I think I absolutely do is there any point in getting diagnosed for me no because I got through school because I was bright but I don't see the point in it now it's part of what I am sort of I'm not saying it's my superpower maybe it is my superpower you know because it makes me hyper focus on things is that helpful so that is part of my makeup and I don't want to be medicated for it because I think if I took away a bit of that then maybe I wouldn't have the creative focus that I have I'm the same I don't want to I feel happy with me now I'm happier with me now at 56 than I've ever been at me I'm more at peace with myself and I'm more accepting of my flaws than I've ever been I've always thought I was just too weird too odd didn't fit in, didn't fit any norm and now I know that that's okay without going into jumping to conclusions of becoming a therapist what would your advice be to women around your age who are struggling to find themselves maybe or they've lost their sense of identity or maybe they've had kids in their 30s and they haven't really recovered from that because you know that's what happens yeah it is what happens I mean you do lose your identity all I would say is you know what the smallest things can make you feel better about yourself get your hair done go and buy yourself something nice that'll make you feel physically better I think sometimes our physical happiness how we feel we look on the outside absolutely correlates to the inside so do something that make yourself not hate how you look because sometimes that can manifest itself into that inner of that spiral of decline and try something different you know it doesn't matter if you feel it doesn't matter if you're rubbish at it just pick a stupid thing doesn't matter what it is there's a ton of things out there that might resonate with you and you might be absolutely fucking brilliant at one of them but if you don't try you're never going to know and you're not dead yet Jennifer Coolidge is at our hottest most supreme being at the age she is she stands on stage with a tummy and owning the fact she's no plastic surgery she's just a real genuine woman at the height of her career and it's happened now in her 50s and I just say get out there and give something to go you know you're a long time dead you'll regret it if you don't you know yeah exactly I'm not saying I'm an I don't think I'm an inspiration to anyone but I'm certainly I'm not ready to retire that's for sure you know so in terms of retirement and I'm segueing this to cancel culture in a weird way because people some comics retire early because of this I'll give you my personal opinion about it first and then I'd love to hear your viewpoint but I feel that cancel culture has kind of done a full circle where now it's on its way out again where people have just kind of gone you know what take a fucking joke get on with your life if it upsets you scroll on keep moving you know and I've I grew up in Kaguli I grew up in the country where all everyone's a dickhead to each other you make a joke about it if it upsets you you'll be like oh well today's tomorrow's another day whereas now you say one thing and you're offending someone that doesn't even fit the demographic because they're offended for them what are your thoughts? I think comedies like Netflix there's a lot of things you can watch if you don't like it flick on to the next one that's what I'd say if you pay money to go and see a comedian and they're not your cup of tea vote with your feet get up and leave and you know you can tell all your friends that you hated them but that's your entailment as a punter I think as a comedian you can say anything you like but there are consequences to your actions as well you can say things they may come back to haunt you and you have to be mindful of that if you're okay with that say what you like but we don't live in a bubble we don't live in a bubble of you can just say what you want and it's okay sticks and stones will break your bones the world really isn't that naive sometimes you can't retract things sometimes you hear things that somebody will say and that stays with you for a long time so I'm not saying you should overanalyse everything you say because I say a load of shite on stage that I never plan to say it comes out and sometimes we go over the line sometimes we say things we regret and that's part of being a comedian and part of being a performer and I just think I don't want to get cancelled but I also I want to be able to say what I want to say I think comedy is one of the last bastions of free speech and for that that's a great thing and there's comedians for everyone there's super left wing and super right wing and you can pick somewhere along that spectrum there's people as woke as hell go and say them if that's your thing there's people that do really edgy come and see me I swear a lot and tell about jokes about having a fat belly and avoiding sex I mean that's my thing there's a comedian for everyone and you just pick the right person you know when you're on stage and you have a set of audience that have come to watch you a majority of them there for you or do you find that there are some that go do you think this woman's mad? I think most people quite like my manicness on stage because I'm very high energy and I like to try and win people over I think when you come out on stage most people go oh she looks like a nice lady and then it spirals out of control and they realise maybe not such a nice lady but a funny lady so that's where I go from I don't want I never want anyone to leave I would see that as a failure if someone walked out and left because they hated me that much I would be devastated because I don't want people to dislike me you want to be loved there's a bit of that in comedy we're there for attention we want you to all of us I don't really want friendship I just want 5, 10, 15 minutes of love from strangers how do you read your audience when you get out there? you have to read the audience absolutely I've got material that's suitable for different age groups different types different levels of sobriety you know like because if they're hammered you can really have a super lot of fun so late nights are a better spot no always late nights I've done some shows at fringe where it's been quite late night and they've been sober as a judge what's the prime spot you think? I think probably about 7, 8 o'clock is a nice time but I like late night shows as well I did a show called Fat Cave which is a late late night show and it's got some really amazing comedians on it and I was lucky enough to be on it this year and I was very nervous because I felt out my depth again because they were all really good comedians I was like oh I'll be rubbish and I just thought nah trust trust the thing that's in you that's there and I ended up by the end of it I really feel I had nailed it and it was great and it felt great coming off having really good comedians watching you going she's not a lame old bird so when you're reading the crowd and you start have you ever realised that oh shit I've picked the wrong if you do crowd work with people in the crowd some people are really good for it I suppose the more you do that the better you can pick a good mark but sometimes you'll ask somebody something you get nothing you have to be prepared if you're going to do crowd work and you ask I'll say things like opening questions like are there any virgins and nobody ever owns up to that and then I'll just pick on a young guy who looks like a virgin and then you have a bit of fun so they don't need to respond so like if you ask a question I know I'm terrible if you ask a question and you get no reply then you have to have a backup like how do you get out of that without looking like they haven't answered you back like last night I asked the question which was so the joke was like I really I have this fantasy about a man in uniform and I said ladies we all like men in uniform and they all went yeah and I said what do you like and at that point nobody answered and I said there's firemen we all like firemen and I said well I told my husband this and he went and he joined the Scouts but I didn't need I didn't need a response from them but if somebody had said firemen or somebody said something I could have done a wee bit on that and then come to so you need to be able to like reverse like hard fast reverse and that's I think that's one of my things that I'm thinking about if I was to start you don't start with you don't start with crowd work do you know what to start with crowd work not car work like a contingency plan yeah well I don't think you need to think like that you need to start out write your five minutes and just rehearse it and go for it I can't remember shit I've got the worst memory yeah well it doesn't get easier with age mate so do you know what I mean I'm like I'm five minutes from Alzheimer's but I mean you know I'm still there so how do you remember a 10-15 minute set oh I just talk shit and go off in tangents like I have no if you go on a tangent how do you do you go and try and make a hit every couple of minutes every couple of seconds or do you go for the long I don't do long form stuff I do long form stuff but I won't jokes all the way through the long form I've written sets about everything in my consciousness really amazing I reckon I could do that but I just remember like I'd get out on stage and I wouldn't have stage fright I'd just forget what I'd have to fucking say the more you do it so I forget tons of stuff that I've written and it's really good and then sometimes during a set I'll be just improvising a bit and then I remember another bit and then I'll do that and then that's triggers a synapse in your brain that goes to another bit it's like a mind map you know you can go like I used to do very linear sets and sometimes I do linear sets but if you're doing club sets and you've been paid for seven minutes it's usually a finite thing but if you're doing longer sets you can then play about with it more you can go a little bit random and you don't get longer sets at the beginning nobody trusts you for more than five minutes and that's a good thing that's enough so you can learn a linear set I read one day I forget who it was from it was like a famous comic back in the day and he said that you need to write every day at the same time he said you need to sit down half an hour or an hour and just write whatever comes to mind I write every day and I don't write at the same time every day because I've got two kids and another job so I fit it in where I fit it in I take voice memos on my watch I take voice memos on my phone I've got notes, I've got notebooks I've got stuff everywhere it's chaotic it's schizophrenic in my brain and so is my note taken but if you write it down there'll come a point where you get an opportunity to tell a joke about a thing and you'll remember that you might not remember it every time you're on stage because I don't at some point you'll go like I do a whole joke about Costco about going to Costco like you get diabetes entering Costco and I had a whole bit about it and I always forget to do some Costco stuff but then the other night they were remembered a bit about it and it's Segway so that's how I work it's not ideal as I said there's no plan to my life it's just it's haphazard and that's the joy of it I love that I'm a comedian it's about to start no, no, no, hypothetically I'm not saying I'm starting a platform TikTok that'll do is my fix what advice do you have? don't dress like a tramp nobody likes it don't be horrible to anybody because don't try and shock people write what you know about don't write about abstract concepts that are beyond you if you like sitting in your bedroom masturbating and playing tour duet I don't know, Minecraft, whatever write about that if you like knitting and cats, write about that write about stuff you know about and it'll be genuine I think audiences always know if you're authentic and you're genuine you can't hide it so if you go on stage and try and come across Dave Chappelle he's gonna buy it if your fixation is popping pimples and online shopping it doesn't matter what it is there's relevance for everything everybody's viewpoint is important so just keep it real and practice and write and don't dress like a tramp that's my advice and be funny but also if you want to do it it's a huge commitment it's a huge commitment I have never had a break from comedy in four years I took two weeks off at Christmas and it felt like I'd been away from it forever it's like if you want to be good and you want to be successful you have to do the work there's no way around it, there's no shortcuts there's no bypassing it there's no jumping the front of the queue it's labour intensive and I find the same thing on social media I just loved it at the start and I just kept doing it it's a bit different for in person I feel Wolfie thinks I'm like he's convinced I'll be good for me it's open mic nights and things like that they're fun though open mic is such fun it's the only time in your comedy life where you can be shit and nobody's judging you once you get a bit of success like every level of success people are expecting you to kill every time you go on stage it's hugely disappointing whereas I opened that first honeymoon phase of just like you can just be you and you can try things and nobody's going that was rotten never do it again you just come back the next night and be rotten and be rotten and then one day your dog shit set might not be as dog shit you know because it will be dog shit what was your first year like dog shit? nah I've done a lot of dog shit gigs but I was never really that bad I was never like I've seen bad I have seen people that like I look at them and I just think they come back week after week after week and I think if I was ever that bad I don't know what your motivation is to come back but they're driven by the same thing that drove me but I was naturally probably a bit funnier some people are natural comics and some people are taught like they train themselves and not every, you're either one or the other yeah I'm hoping it's natural it's maybe easier if you're natural that's what I like self-awareness, talk about self-awareness I want to bring in something that I'm naturally and that I like that I'm good at and people like me doing it that's like the ultimate golden formula I think your physicality has a huge bearing on this when you walk on stage people before you even open your trap they'll make a judgement like that first time this is what I'm saying about not dressing like a tramp if you want to dress like a tramp and that's your shtick go for it, I'm only kidding but if you have a physical presence there is something a point of difference that automatically will engage an audience now you're very tall and you're very striking so I think that would be a good initial thing and for that you have an advantage over some people a lot of people look a bit much of a muchness so how do you what's your point of view going on stage that's what I doubled down in online and that's what I doubled down in at school as a teacher because when I went to get a job I would make sure that I would come in and give my resume because that would always get me a job because they remember what you look like and I now dress on stage and it's a very purposeful thing that I do because it kind of wakes people up and they go you know so what you look like weirdly is as much like my dad always said I had a good face for radio yeah thanks lad but I do think people have faces for comedy as well like how they look their look is a part of it I think I'll give it some more time but I'm definitely more confident thinking about some ideas yeah my personal experience as a teacher Daniel Delby does it really well he's a former school teacher now and he's got his celebrant stuff his thing with his hoods rhyme thing and I take inspiration from Dave all the time like he's written some of my tiktoks and they went viral and he's convinced I'd sell out like Aska well you would you'd have a fallen but that in itself isn't going to help you because the thing that's great about comedy is it levels everybody is like it doesn't matter like what you can have this amazing fallen people and they will come see I mean there's famous people do comedy and people come to see them because they're famous and they'll laugh it doesn't mean they're particularly good at comedy within comedy none of us want to be that person even though they're successful and they've fell in out arenas Jack Whitehall there's a great example in the UK massive massive star sells out every tour of what she's stand up it's so dog average but he will fill out rooms and they'll all come and they'll laugh and I just think nobody in comedy wants to be like he's successful do you want to be successful or do you want to be funny me I want to be funny and hopefully a bit successful but I don't want if somebody said to me like you could become famous like if you went on Big Brother or married at first sight you got famous and then you started stand up for all these people that come see because you're famous for that and then you're doing some old dog and pony stuff well that's what I did with wedding photography I leveraged my following and people started booking me as a wedding photographer because I found me on tiktok and the kids were like begging their parents and that's not a reference to that being good at that doesn't mean you're going to do that so that's the problem with having a following if I was doing it and I was you I tell nobody and I'm going to do the work incognito and then when you get half decent then you can alert your fans and get them to come see you because I think the worst thing that you could probably do is have this like posse of like sick of fans that are going yeah it's funny you know I went to see Steve Martin at the Riverside Theatre and I won tickets to go and see him and he was massive and the tickets were so expensive and this place is packed thousands of people there it's Steve Martin and the first 15 minutes of that show was his school photos they would pop up him aged 5 and the audience just pissing themselves out the funniest thing and then the next photo would come up and I thought imagine that is what and he did very little stand up and what he did was so tired and I just thought that is just depressing you know I mean there's a comic here in Perth I'm not going to mention who it is but I used to watch them when I was growing up and they were hilarious back then and now I'm older watched this person a couple times bore me to shit and and it was a shame because I had this expectation of them from when I was watching them when I was younger and I was just like man I mean good on them, good on them for still going but it's the double edge sword of being famous though isn't it it's like how to still stay relevant as a comedian when you're famous because people are going to come and see you anyway so you don't have to make people want to see you they're going to come and you've got a captive audience of adoring fans and it's a bit like the same with music you see people doing these big arena tours and you listen to them and you think that's crap you know that you were probably way better when you wanted it yeah exactly and that's what I feel about so if you don't want it anymore you hang your hat up and take up golf I don't know Scottish people invented that too now you know a little bit about me can you give me a wee little roast I know you haven't prepared anything you look like stretch borat I've heard that one before alright okay what else I can't do on the spot appearance I like to like coconuts honestly what's that about you can't shave your legs that's the possibility I'm just putting that out there and I know a man with legs that hairy he's got a back even hairier you can actually I bet you can abseil off your back you know just there you go not bad not bad what about TikTok being popular on TikTok give me a wee roast on that give me a genuine roast for influencers on social media give me an absolute nah I can't off the head next time you give me some time and I will come and I will no you don't need to give me topics mate you just give me five minutes I've seen your face now you look like Magnum PI light you know Magnum PI shite you know I don't know you look like Magnum fuck ta beaver I don't know there's a two thing there I think we could go somewhere with that Magnum fuck ta beaver I like that save a beaver they call me that in front of my school that's great that's a good thing mate I'll be there for that I think if I'm reincarnated I'm going to come back as the bully maybe that's why I like maybe that is why I like the roast thing is it's an opportunity to be the bully for a bit but I didn't it made me feel a bit icky you seem like a nice man thank you well hopefully everybody else enjoyed the stories I sure did for everybody thank you for being here as well with the wrap up and putting it at the front of the podcast we discussed a lot there was a lot ton yeah she gave me some snowboard stories the time she got hit by a ski person we talked about masturbation for a split second we talked about her arch nemesis from primary school that she talked about on stage once and we learned a lot about how to become a stand up comedian and what it's like being someone who's probably in her menopause right now do you like that one? no not really we like to have fun here it was good my eggs are rattling about it and said me like raisins they're gone and I'm good for that because being sexually liberated when you're not interested anymore is fantastic you can focus on fun things and just forget about cheese cheese is life for me alright guys you can find Jill on at fringe and on instagram and facebook gillcordner and you can see me about Perthham everywhere mate get about her that's it thanks for listening as always good thanks


As you know, this is in Azure, they keep changing their names. So this was the old name, but they're previewing it recently. And we also look at the open source solution that is permitted. So in case you don't want to pay for about seven different Azure, and you want to use a fully open source solution, but also have a look at the previous as the other option. So this is what the application has been so far. It's a simple to do this kind of application, which is like a series of tech talks and it's going to be used as a front end or as back in the API and SQL server 2017. And all this there are containers. So everything is categorized in the first part. We mainly focused on how to categorize the application, how to shift the code as part of container images. The second one was about sticking all this together using Docker Compost. This one is kind of an outdated approach nowadays. There are much more better tools. This is good to start with. And recently I came across a tool called scaffolding. I also talked about it on my blog.  You don't have to go out of your ID while you're still making the code changes. It can pick up those changes. It can build the images in the background and it can deploy if you have a local, let's say Kubernetes cluster deployed. All this is instantaneous within seconds. It can make all this work. But this was like almost four months back when I didn't know about scaffold. I was using Docker Compost. In the third part, we looked at orchestration using Minikube, which is a single node Kubernetes cluster. So before going full-fledged into a multi-node cluster and into cloud on-premise environment with Kubernetes, this was a way for us to get everything tested in almost a cluster like scenario. And last part was about doing the actual Kubernetes provisioning on Azure, getting the Kubernetes cluster provision right from the beginning, then deploying the complete application using state-full processing with the help of a concept called persistent volume and persistent volume plates. And we also connected to the data source using Operation Studio. So let's start with today's session and we'll be talking about how do we develop multi-container apps when you have multiple containers running? What are the different approaches we can take? So I'll start first with how do we develop the local containers itself if you're starting and you're having some application to containerize the image, you build the image, you're about to package and deploy that application. How do you test it locally? Then we will move on to the cluster solution, which is Kubernetes. And we'll also look at how we can monitor these in the cluster. So let's move on to the demo part. So let's see if we have something running with Docker. I have about an hour ago, there was one image which was started. Let's deploy something which we built as part of Docker Compose initially. So I can do Docker Compose and then give the file name. And I can say up. So the whole stack, all those three containers will be started and they'll have the running application. Okay, so let's go into a new window and let's try the same command again. Look at PS to see what's running. So I've got here four different containers running. I can check one of them. So let's pick the latest one which is SQL and I can look at the, let's say the logs of that with the help of Docker logs. And I can use the name of the container which is SQL one in this case. And this will give me the complete log of what happened inside that particular container when the SQL Server container started. Same way I can find the logs of the other images as well. Let's say you don't find enough information in the logs and go inside the container and find out some more details. So the other helpful command is Docker inspect which gives you a lot more information about what the container is doing. So here if you look at this out there is it visible at the back. So you have the complete information about the running instance of this particular container and you can see the status, what is the image from where it is created, what are the environment variables it's using. So all this kind of information is quite helpful when you want to debug when something goes wrong and you want to find out what the container is doing at the moment so you can use this approach. So some of this I already showed in the first part when we went kind of deep dive into Docker. So I will not spend too much time on standalone Docker because if you want you can go back to the video of the first session and you can find more details here. Let's move on to the second part. Now let's say you've done this individual testing and now the application is deployed in a cluster. How do you go about identifying what is happening in the cluster? So I've already deployed this application on a case and one way I can find out about the state of the cluster is looking at the cuban display. So now I'm in a full-fledged cluster mode where the application is running on cloud. So this gives me the complete health of the cluster so I can find the overview. So what is the workload status? How many demands are running? How many deployments are successful? How many ports are running the replica sets? At the very high level. I can drill down for a specific namespace. So let's say pks part 4 and should refresh. Okay, there's some problem here. So this is usually the demo effect. I've never seen this work very effectively during the demos. I always have to go and recreate this tunnel connection when the demo is happening. Okay, so we can filter the namespace for a particular deployment and then we can see what happened during that particular deployment. So here if you see in the namespace a case part 4, I've got three parts running. I've got two deployments, one for the web, one for the API and for the database we had the stateful set. So you get the big picture looking at this plane. You can go into the details of each one of these. So the logs that we saw for the container can be accessed the same way from the logs option here. So you'll see similar logs shown in the web UI. That's one way. The other is you can go into the details of individual ports and let's say, again, here the logs will take you to the same logs, but you can do a excite, which is like you are now logging inside the container.  So let's say you created a file or you are expecting a file to be present and for some reason that file doesn't exist. This is one way how you can go into the container and you can start investigating. Can you see the logs over time? Right from the beginning? Or like, you know, for a week or so. Like let's say you're monitoring it and you see a spike or something. Yeah, you're watching out for loads. Yes. Across the containers, can you see that and can you go into? Not here because this is like the default UI provided by Kubernetes. That's where the next monitoring solution comes in. So that's the next part. So this is using the UI and another good part which I find again useful here is you can have a look at events. Now in this case, there are no events which happen, but for some containers you can find that there are a set of events which took place. So maybe we go to the state full set. Now in this case, there are no events which have taken place, but if there were some events, you would find them here. Usually the API should have the event because I'm using a concept called containers and it creates a set of initial container which populates the initial data and those kind of events should happen, should be shown here, but they're not visible. If it occurred, you would be able to see it in the event section. So the same information what I have on the UI can be queried using the command line. So I can go back to the command line and I can query the status of this cluster. So I can use the kubectl commands here. So here I'm getting all the services and if you see there are multiple services running, but I don't get any response because this works on the basis of namespaces. So if you don't provide a namespace or one of the filter additional parameter, you will get the default service which is just the Kubernetes service running. So if you have provided namespace, then you can give this additional parameter of namespace and you can query the services which are running. And like any other CLI, you will have multiple options. Like in this case, I'm saying, give me all the ports which are running, but also include if they are uninitialized. So you might have a state where the port is getting created and still not fully available to start, but you still want to have a look at that. In this case, I don't have anything uninitialized in the status. Everything is ready and running, but if you had any uninitialized ports, you would be able to see them here. So we looked at this. Next is monitoring the cluster using OMS. Now, looking at individual containers, you might get to know what is happening just at one particular container or one service level. When you deploy this into a bigger cluster, when you have, let's say, multiple replicas of the same service running, you might want to have a complete picture of the cluster as well as how are they performing. You might want to have a look at the CPU usage, the memory, how is the workload running on each and every node. So this kind of information, you will be able to get through a monitoring solution. And by default, that information is not readily available. You might have to dig here and there in the Kubernetes plane, the dashboard. But Azure provides a solution for us, which is called as the Azure Monitor. And this you need to enable when the cluster is provisioned. So if you go to the Azure portal, when I go to my particular AKS cluster, I have the option of enabling this monitoring solution. This is under preview. So if you look at these two, the metrics and insights, these two monitoring solutions, they are currently under preview. So when you click monitor containers, if it is not already enabled, you will have the option to enable it. I've already enabled it for this particular cluster. And this gives you like the overview of cluster. You can find a dashboard. You can do three downs by last like 30 minutes hours. So you have different dimensions, different metrics based on which you can get the state. You can do apart from the cluster at individual nodes visualization of what is the state. I particularly like this feature which allows you to drill down at the node level then it allows you to look at the container. It goes at the very, very detailed level of information. You can do the same thing for controllers and containers as well. And if you are good at query, if there is somebody who likes to do SQL kind of work, there is also the option of log monitoring. So when you choose logs, you have the option to use the log API provided by Microsoft to query the state. So you can build your own queries here and you can get the complex if you wanted to. There are multiple instances of SQL. Some of you will be able to access all of them and actually get the logs. So multiple instances of SQL, in a sense, one SQL, multiple containers. Multiple SQLs in different containers. Yes, you'll be able to access them. So you will have to deploy them as multiple containers and expose them as multiple services. Nice. Okay, so this is quite handy. If you want to stick with Azure and if you want like very minimal effort and to get started, this is one of the most easiest solution I've found so far. If you don't want to spend money, because this you will have to incur the charges. It depends on your retention period, how long you want to retain this log information and how much data is getting stored there. Let's say you have got 100 containers. Every container will be producing logs. Every container would be producing that telemetric data and that needs to be stored somewhere. So you will have to pay for those charges. If you don't want that, you could use a open source solution, which is Prometheus. Has anybody heard about Prometheus? Could we take these into power BI? It should be possible because this is not something specific to AKS. The solution is at the Azure level. So if you can query other Azure services, it should also be possible. I haven't tried it. Okay, so anybody has worked with Prometheus or Grafana before? Have you heard about it? Okay, so Prometheus is an open source solution, which is part of Cloud Native Computing Foundation, CNCF. So if any project is there, which is adopted or which is supported by Cloud Native Foundation, it means that they support all these Cloud Native technologies and it has better support as compared to other open source projects. These are bound to work very well with other Cloud Native technologies and that's one of the reasons why it is being adopted and supported by the CNCF Foundation. As I said, it's open source. It's very good at handling the time series data. So it has optimal kind of storage and retrieval patterns when it comes to storing time series data. And one good feature Prometheus has is support for alerting. So it's not just doing like monitoring, not like your usual what happened before. It could also look at some of the metrics and it can give you almost near real-time alerts. You can configure this. Then there is Grafana. So let's have a look at Prometheus first. So I've deployed Prometheus and Grafana which are again available as Docker container images. And this is deployed as part of the monitoring workspace or namespace. And it gives me two endpoints. One for Prometheus, one for Grafana. So let's look at Prometheus first. So this is the UI which is provided by Prometheus. If you want to have a look at some of the metrics that Prometheus captures. So let's say we want to see CPU, we want to have a graphical view. So this is again similar to using the query syntax of monitoring and having a look at what's happening and then building like a small dashboard or small visualization around the metrics. Better part is the usage of Prometheus here. So instead of doing all this stuff on your Prometheus queries or metrics, we can use Grafana. Now Grafana as of yesterday has support for around 47 data sources. They say wherever your data is, we can query it. It has 39 different types of panels. So you have as you can see here, there are maps and these beautiful visualizations which come built in. And then as an output or dashboarding, it supports various dashboarding tools, more than 1200 as of now. So some of the most common ones are Elastic and InfluxDB. So let's look at the Grafana dashboard. So here are some metrics it has collected from the deployments that have happened. I can use the quick ranges. So I can say give me all the deployments that happened in the last seven days for a particular namespace. So I can choose this. I can say for a case. This is just the deployments, but there are other things like the capacity planning. And you can see how rich the visualization is here. This is all built using the built-in visualization tools provided by Grafana. And that's one of the reasons why it's quite popular. So how did I build this? I'll show you the code quickly. As I said, this comes as part of Docker images or they provide Docker images. And the part that I like is it gives us infrastructure as code capabilities here. So whatever we create is all documented. It's all descriptive in a very descriptive manner. I can define what my Grafana dashboard should look like, what are the visualizations I want to have. I have the full control. So it's not like somebody built this and let's say he's not available and you don't know how he built that particular dashboard. You have to wait for that person to come back. You can go back here. You can see what are the components he's using. You can customize it further if you want. This is what I like about Grafana as well as Prometheus. So for Prometheus, I have all the YAML files here. So it's all like what we did earlier in case of normal application development and deployment using the YAML. The same concept is applicable here as well. So we looked at the demo. What are some of the mistakes or tortures that I found while developing this application or in general that I find. When it comes to Docker, one of the most common mistake I personally do is I go on the terminal and say Docker run the command but you realize Docker demo itself is not running. So that's one mistake. The other one is typos.  So usually you will find people making small typos here and there and you might spend quite a lot of time trying to investigate why you have the let's say SQL Server container running but your API is not able to connect to it. Maybe the service has a name which is not matching the label. So that's one of the common mistakes I see. When it comes to the Kubernetes command line incorrect context. So usually you will have like a different context when you have Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows running on your laptop and you connect to the let's say cloud cluster or on-premise AKS cluster. The context might be different and you might deploy an application into one context and you're trying to access it from the other. It will not work. It's not in sync. Other one is missing namespace or wrong namespace. So if you're using namespaces to logically segregate your clusters you might miss to have a namespace in one of your application deployment file and again the same thing. The service is deployed, it's running. When you look at the dashboard it says it's running but when the application tries accessing it because the namespace is not matching it will not be able to work together. On the AKS specific things APIs is sometimes difficult to manage or difficult to remember because nowadays you see most of the software they get released quite often and documentation sometimes may not be the most relevant one. So you might find an API which is documented but it doesn't work with the current version. The last one I found was default role-based access enabled for recent versions of AKS. So for almost six to eight months I use a script. So if you look at my code base I have a deployment script or PowerShell script which deploys everything for me. So it takes all the parameters like which subscription I want to use what is my resource name, resource group name what is the cluster name and all that and in one shot I am able to provision all these resources. So if you look at this line 35 if I don't have this line in the newer versions you will find that the cluster is created and you deploy the application it doesn't work it doesn't get deployed because role-based access is by default enabled with the most recent AKS clusters on the system. So that brings me to the end of this talk here are some references so the demo code is available on GitHub there are links I've provided for Kubernetes Playground Azure Monitoring Solution that I used the container monitoring with log analytics this is another solution where if you're not working with AKS but you have other container solution like docker swarm and you still want to enable monitoring solution you can use the third option then Prometheus and Grafana and then I've provided couple of cheat sheets so whatever commands I will show you you can find them readily available in these cheat sheets. For the references all the slides for the previous four as well as this session will be available on these two links I usually post them to speaker deck and slide share and here are the reviews from the previous session so I'll be sharing it anyway I'll give you the link up so you can find it there so the earlier videos thanks to Alan and engineers SG they are available on engineers SG website I've also provided the links to these videos on my blog so you can find it there so thank you thanks a lot for taking time for this session that's the GitHub URL if you want to have a look at the complete source code if you have any questions you can provide some feedback that could be helpful there are only like four questions while I take questions if you can put it back that would be great so how about the Prometheus services right same way they are probably cloud also providing the Prometheus services yes so which one is there better option or is I just kidding you are not an option nowadays everybody is providing Prometheus so Prometheus is like the most popular container orchestration platform at the moment so you'll find it on on premise as well as cloud you'll have it on AWS Azure HP's private cloud IBM wherever you go you will have support for AKS it is based on the open source Prometheus version so if you don't want any of this you can as well go directly to the open source project you can start it but the advantage of using a managed service is you get all the support around that so you have the full base security you have this monitoring solution now with one click I can enable monitoring for that Kubernetes cluster if I don't use these managed services then I would have to spend that much amount of time effort to build those additional capabilities and that's the additional work to work for me so it really depends on where you want to go I know some people like one of my ex-colleagues he would say I want to start right from the scratch I don't believe in Google I don't believe in AWS I want to know what happens right at the core level and he built the Kubernetes cluster right from the open source world that's what's it is available for Prometheus it is on AWS on AWS Kubernetes you can using Docker deploy the Docker you can you can deploy Docker with the Prometheus version you need to enable hypervisor and things like that with Windows 2016 it comes by default so you have better integration with Windows 2016 what do you want to talk about I have different questions I just have a quick one on your monitoring I think given the affinity to Power BI I think it looks like a great solution on Power BI so really quick for you know I am part of the Microsoft community as well part of the SQL and Power BI is about the one thing we want to do is here as Malaysia's walkthrough stuff we would like to capture it in Microsoft teams have you guys heard of Microsoft teams right and then you can actually have a guest account where we are all in one group and they will have a tab for you know containers for example so we can keep the conversations contained any uploads can be done right to teams you know