SCOTTISH COMEDY export leavened with two southerners when transferring from radio to TV. Birthplace of Rab C Nesbitt, the Baldy Man and, er, Siadwell the spotty Welsh teenager. GREGOR FISHER, ANDY GRAY, HELEN LEDERER, TONY ROPER, ELAINE C SMITH and JONATHAN WATSON were your regulars, recurringly augmented with JOHN SPARKES, RON BAIN, KATE DONNELLY and LOUISE BEATTIE.
Glenn Aylett
June 13, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I beg to disagree: Naked Video was very funny. Siadwell the Welsh loser and his pet wasp and his Llanelli terrier was very funny as he looked like the kind of boyo the local rugby team used as the ball. Also it gave birth to Rab C Nesbitt so had something going for it.
gman
June 16, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Looking back at it now, the only funny bits are Siadwell’s monologues, and nothing else
David Smith
June 25, 2015 at 12:52 pm
The end credits for the latter series replaced the roaring Thatcher with John Major as a buck toothed mouse, I recall…
Joanne Gray
February 20, 2017 at 8:32 pm
Didn’t think much of Helen Lederer’s monologues, but the rest was very funny.
Glenn Aylett
August 25, 2019 at 4:43 pm
Sometimes she was OK as the neurotic woman in the wine bar, but she was one of the weaker figures from the new wave of comedy. Latterly ended up in the notorious ITV celeb reality show Splash.
fuz
November 16, 2017 at 9:36 pm
Stuck strictly to the Eighties Sketch Show format: Gregor Fisher at the helm of the Outer Hebrides Broadcasting Corporation to introduce news-clip-of-Thatcher-as-punchline, genre parody song about two thirds in, three minute extended theme instrumental of quick visual gags in the middle somewhere. All grainily filmed to look like half three on a January afternoon, whatever the weather
Pat
January 28, 2018 at 1:37 pm
It’s still worth a watch today, special mention to the Bullseye sketch which skewered the show 10+ years before Peter Kay did!
Ysthaf Gynghori
July 23, 2020 at 7:07 pm
I bet Naked Video did a funnier spoof of Bullseye than Peter Kay. He is almost as funny as piles.
Richardpd
April 16, 2021 at 10:39 pm
From what I remember the Rab C Nesbitt sketches could get a bit more surreal than the series for the sake of a punchline, even though that was fairly loopy at the best of times.
Glenn Aylett
May 3, 2024 at 3:46 pm
Could there ever be a bigger putdown of all the good work of Glasgow’s Miles Better and the 1988 Garden Festival than Rab C Nesbitt, who lived not too far from the site of the Garden Festival and where the BBC now has its Scottish studios. Having connections to Scotland and knowing a few Glaswegians, Rab C Nesbitt was a fantastic stereotype of the unemployable alcoholic older Glasgow male: you can take the man out of Govan, but you cannae take Govan out of the man..
Richardpd
May 3, 2024 at 10:55 pm
I can remember Bill Bryson mentioning in one of his books how much Glasgow had changed in the 20 years from when he first visted, mentioning how it was European Capital of Culture in 1990 & no-one laughed. An early Rab C Nesbitt episode deals with his views on this event.
Glenn Aylett
May 5, 2024 at 11:47 am
I was in Glasgow two weeks ago and the Clyde is lined with hotels, expensive apartments, museums, television studios and bank offices. Yet go to the East End and it’s still Glasgow like most people imagine it: pubs with no windows, dodgy second hand shops, council estates( schemes) and old tenement blocks. Great city,though, for a cheap pint, probably half what you pay in London.
Richardpd
May 5, 2024 at 10:39 pm
Manchester is a bit like that, lots of new developments but there still plenty of iffy areas to avoid if possible.
Certainly I’ve managed OK in Glasgow, especially once I worked out how to use the exact change only bus fare machines!
Glenn Aylett
May 6, 2024 at 9:57 am
They’ve sorted a lot of the gang problem out and Glasgow is quite safe these days.