THIS week, columnist Ruth Wishart looks forward to what promises to be a great night's entertainment on the Rosneath peninsula next weekend.

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She’s a wumman who takes no prisoners.

A feisty female fae Falkirk. And whose alter ego, the novelist, playwright, actor and stand up comedian who gave birth to the Moira Monologues, is Alan Bissett.

Alan is coming to Cove Burgh Hall on the Rosneath Peninsula on Saturday, March 17 with two dollops of Moira – the first half reprising the award-winning show he launched in 2009, and the second, More Moira, with her inimitable take on current events.

Moira, not a woman to be messed with, was originally based, says Alan, on his mother’s sisters.

He says: “All [were] strong, powerful women and great storytellers. Yet I was aware that there were very rarely women like them represented on stage, except for The Steamie of course. But that’s now 40 years old.”

Apparently the aunties were not at all offended by the loud, sweary woman Alan says is an amalgam of them all.

“They loved seeing themselves!” he says.

Yet originally, Alan tells me, the monologues were written as a prose piece, as befits an award-winning author of short stories and several impressive novels.

“But I decided to read them to my then flat mate," he says, "and of course as soon as I started to say the stuff out loud, I went into performance mode.

"And she said, ‘what you’ve got there is a stage piece’.”

He wrote it for a woman, and originally thought to cast one in the part, but the more he composed her voice, the more he was attracted by the thought that playing her himself would be more challenging for the audience.

As indeed it was. The first show was a riotous success and subsequently people kept asking him when they could see Moira again.

So he brought her back to life for a performance at the Glasgow Comedy Festival of 2016, which promptly sold out, and wrote a sequel for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe the same year, which won a Fringe First.

So it seems the great Scottish novel is on hold whilst Alan/Moira keep this hilarious incarnation on the road.

“Novels need a lot of time and head space," and with a two year old and other baby on the way, I think I’ll not be working on a book again till the weans are at school!”

Moira mark one lived at home with her boys and her dog, and her mammy was round the corner.

Nine years, on the mammy and the dog are no longer with us, and the weans have fled the nest.

But she’s now a granny, and a gimlet-eyed observer of our life and times. So if you’re coming to the show fasten your seat belts – and leave the kids at home!

Moira Monologues and More Moira are at Cove Burgh Hall on Saturday, March 17. Doors and bar open at 7.30pm, and the show starts at 8pm.