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Scotch and Wry

FINEST COMEDY BBC Scotland ever managed to cobble together, broadcast once a year on Hogmanay. Starred RIKKI FULTON with top flight help from primarily GREGOR FISHER but also sometimes TONY ROPER and Fulton’s wife who also made regular appearances on THE TWO RONNIES (“Your game m’lady”…”thank you Blenkinsop”). Legendary sketches date from mid-80s peak. Supercop (once with a guest appearance by MARK MCMANUS reprising TAGGART) was the perennial show-opener, followed by pastiches of TV shows of the calibre of The Beechgrove Garden which were infinitely more entertaining than the originals (“…with George and Jim, the Sunshine Boyos,” demonstrating the best way to keep a tray of drinks in winter – mostly by planting them down and taking cuttings,”…from the top no’ the bottom.”) Also see Red Indian Chief Swifthalf attending interview at the Jobcentre; the Gallowgate Gourmet at Dirty Dicks Delicat’messen; the South Side Episcopalian Ping Pong and Scrabble Association carol singer and the nymphomaniac. All built to the grand finale that was Last Call, a piss-take of the dreadful Late Call that STV showed for many years as its sop to religious broadcasting which involved a minister or priest talking in moderated tones to the late night, drink-sodden public. Sat in a leather chair with a lamp by his side Fulton performed in several guises for this segment, such as The Rev W. E. Free as a Free Presbyterian Minister and the excellent Rev David Goodchild as a mild-mannered minister who unwittingly drinks a bottle of gin before broadcast and descends into alcoholic and slurred ramblings before excusing himself – “Could you keep my seat, I feel a prayer coming on.” But most memorable was the Rev I. M. Jolly whose morose and depressing rambings usually involved the attempted suicide of parishioners or the continuing nightmare that was his marriage. Best of all, at the end of every show and following the credits there would be a jibe at the eternally worthless Hogmanay Show, usually taking the form of a variation on Fulton and friends laughing at a party and his attention being called to the Hogmanay Show starting whereupon he would throw the television out of the window.

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  1. johnnyboy

    May 15, 2011 at 1:48 am

    All fondly remembered, and you’ve got the main characters mentioned already: Supercop (to a bacofilm covered Gregor Fisher playing an alien who’se just stepped from his similarly covered craft), “Cannae park there sunshine; double-yellow lines…..I said, Knightrider, ye cannae park there!”
    Or, ‘The Curries’, a spooky portrayal of our beloved Scottish folk-singers, The Corries: “The song tonight is about the Glencoe Massacre”, and proceed to decribe in graphic detail what happened to the poor soldiers that took part in the battle, making G Fisher (as one of the Curries) throw up listening to the description.
    The drunken Weatherman: “There are Gales from the North; and there’s a shower from the west. And when the gales from the North meet the shower from the west there’s going to be a hell of a party!”
    Too many to type, really. A missed gem.

  2. Chris

    September 22, 2015 at 7:13 pm

    I liked the other weatherman ‘Peter Toss’ who said that the south of Scotland would be troubled by the big freeze and the north would be troubled by the wee frees, as usual.

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