TV Cream

Hall of Fame

MURRAY, Chic

murrayThe hinterland of the sex comedy may have meant that superbly lunatic Charles Murray’s film career will never be pondered by wonks in slightly too square specs, but there’s enough there to make the Greatest Stand Up Comedian Who Ever Lived – fact! – a right to claim a place in the Hall of Fame. Despite having ‘Big Fat Policeman’ as the dominant part in his personal pantheon, his involvement in Casino Royale alone (the proper one, not that one with the apparent SS major with the Gym Body 8 as the star) is plenty. More famously was his turn in Gregory’s Girl where his squarely provincial attitude to life was brought to the fore and a slightly quirky, mildly funny piece of localised whimsy was a smash hit in the US as a result. So much for the need for floppy hair and blazer-with-jeans fops to trap that foreign cash. Hardly a career that set the heather alight but let’s face it, when you find out Chic Murray is in a film, you watch it. Not a feat mastered by Tom Cruise, we should point out.

FINEST HOUR: Shooting Orson Welles through that DER telly in Casino Royale. Daniel Craig would’ve shit himself.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Glenn Aylett

    July 21, 2019 at 9:33 pm

    Once wound up a less than friendly woman ticket clerk on the Glasgow Subway as part of a television prank by asking her if the train had first class and a buffet car. Whit ye talkin aboot, same as my grandmother once asked one of the notoriously miserable staff on Newcastle Central if they ever attended a charm school. Chic Murray was class and still well remembered north of Gretna.

  2. THX 1139

    July 22, 2019 at 12:55 am

    His talking dog routine was a classic of daftness. Sad that so little of his act survives in the archives (unless someone knows better?).

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