A five-part audio series of Mrs. McShoogle, Scotland’s Second Finest Actress, starring Carolyn Pickles, was launched on major platforms in April 2024. The series reached no. 4 in Belgium, no. 26 in the UK and no. 138 in Australia in Comedy Fiction on the Apple Podcasts’ chart. It also reached no. 40 in Fiction in Belgium. It is a Double Honours/Yellow Brick Grove co-production. 

The audio series is available here and on all major platforms: 

▶️ YouTube ▶️ Spotify ▶️ Amazon Audible ▶️ Apple Podcasts ▶️ Podbean

The stage play of Mrs. McShoogle, Scotland’s Second Finest Actress, was first performed at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in June 2022. The role of Mrs. McShoogle was played by Carolyn Pickles and the director was Colin Wakefield. The published script of the play is available on Amazon. Author’s profits from the book are donated to The Born Free Foundation; from the audio series, to Animals Asia.

A special thank you to Penny Horner and her team at the Jermyn Street Theatre for their generous help and support. 

The Mrs. McShoogle illustration is by John Partridge, to whom we are most grateful for permission to reproduce the image.

COLIN WAKEFIELD has directed five one-person shows: A Woman of No Importance and A Lady of Letters for Leda Hodgson; The Diary of a Madman for Terence Beesley; My Dear Howey for Pauline Gray; and The Madness (Tennyson’s Maud) for Kenneth Branagh. He has also produced and directed two of his own plays at the Jermyn Street Theatre: the comedy On Your Honour and the thriller Audience with Murder, both co-written with Roger Leach. As an actor he has worked extensively in repertory, and has toured with Cheek by Jowl (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom), Bubble Theatre and Whirligig Theatre. He has appeared in two West End musicals, an actor-musician version of Sweeney Todd (Judge Turpin) and Stepping Out – The Musical (Geoffrey), where he first worked with Carolyn Pickles. Colin has written twenty pantomimes and family musicals with composer Kate Edgar, as well as a thriller, Sleep No More, with David Gillespie. He is currently writing Rhyming History – The Story of England in Verse, published in twenty volumes by Double Honours Publications, with illustrations by John Partridge.

JONATHAN FORTINGALL completed the script of Mrs. McShoogle during the 2020/21 pandemic lockdowns, and is currently writing his next script which will be a more personal piece. For the past twenty-five years he has worked in hospices and animal rescue charities. In an earlier life he worked for the Scottish Tourist Board and wrote the What’s On and Essential Edinburgh Guides, and the Dumfries and Galloway Holiday and Children’s Guides. Mrs. McShoogle is his first play.

Audience feedback

“Carolyn Pickles is terrific in her total conviction and infectious self-belief." 

"The plot is so ingenious you scarcely see where this is heading, and so every turn is a surprise. You allow us to regard Mrs. McS as a zany pal, constantly in trouble, hilarious, defiant, absurd, ridiculously vain, but above all brave, and then pull the camera back, as it were, to show her as others see her right at the end. Extremely comic yet ultimately poignant, a complicated figure who has nonetheless, through your amazing repartee, kept us laughing from first to last."

"Brilliantly bonkers. Been snorting over McShoogle. Carolyn packs a Pickles punch!"

"Who knew that Hannah Gordon was Scotland’s equivalent to Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen rolled up into one? Who could have guessed that name-dropping could be turned into a literary genre? How could one acknowledge the many hundreds of national treasures the Scottish arts world could produce almost without repetition? In short, a great piece of writing, acting and direction."

“Carolyn Pickles not only takes this character off the page, but she takes it off the scale!” 

"Kiki-Jean's concluding stream of consciousness is a very moving piece of writing indeed. It's remarkable how the listener is manipulated into thinking that they're hearing comedy when in actual fact a tragedy is enfolding. Pathos is supremely difficult to write and convey, but it is achieved beautifully."

Script enquiries: yellowbrickgrove@btinternet.com

Production enquiries: doublehonoursproductions@btinternet.com