Comedy icons face generation gap in new sitcom

More than three decades after alcoholic Glaswegian street philosopher Rab C Nesbitt burst onto our TV screens, actor Gregor Fisher is struggling with a familiar bain of modern life. Passwords.

“You’ve got to have a password and it’s got to be 12 letters and it’s got to have an exclamation mark,” complains the 70-year-old.

“It drives you nuts doesn’t it!”

Sitting beside him Greg McHugh – better known to audiences as Gary: Tank Commander – asks him: “What’s your password?”

‘I have no idea,” replies Fisher, “And you need so many of them – and then you dream up a password and it tells you, this is not good enough.”

It’s a familiar intergenerational exchange – and a theme explored in Only Child, a new six-part sitcom that brings together two of Scotland’s biggest comedy talents.

McHugh plays bit-part actor Richard who pays a long-overdue visit to his recently widowed father Ken (played by Fisher) – but finds him struggling with life

He quickly realises his dad needs some full-time help in his Highlands home.

“So I go back and try and help him – but of course my presence triggers some reactions,” explains McHugh, in an interview with BBC Scotland’s David Farrell.

The older actor interrupts: “There you are – sounds miserable. You hear yourself say ‘Why on earth in the name of all creations would I tune in for that,’ says Fisher, seemingly still in character.

“But it’s funny,” interjects McHugh. “It’s really funny but also touching. It’s got everything.”

There’s so much of Gregor Fisher in ageing technophobe Ken, you might wonder just how much acting was actually required to play the part.

Fisher describes his own his own real-life battles with technology – and rails against his daughter’s apparently ludicrous suggestion that he might watch the Six O’Clock News on catch-up.

“I know this man inside out,” he declares.

McHugh also sees links between his own life and the “struggling actor” character he plays in the new show.

Gary: Tank Commander – his sitcom about the lives of an Army corporal and his three comrades after they return from deployments abroad – was a huge hit.

But there’s a vulnerability about the acting profession he still relates to.

“We’re never safe in this game. You go through periods when you do feel vulnerable.

“I live down south and I’m not terribly well known down there. I have people stop me saying things like ‘you fitted my cupboards, didn’t you’.”

Fisher recalls a similarly humbling moment in the back of a Glasgow taxi recently.

“The taxi driver said ‘I thought you were deid’.”

The two men are friends in real life and there’s an obvious chemistry between them.

In the new show they are joined on screen by a wealth of Scottish and Irish acting talent – Amy Lennox, Stuart Bowman, Forbes Masson to name just a few.

McHugh is hopeful it will join a growing list of Scotland-based comedies such as Two Doors Down that have successfully reached across borders.

“Scottish humour has been kept in Scotland sometimes where it should have been shown to the whole of the country,” he says.

“Now it’s being shown to the whole of the country so that’s the most exciting bit.”

Fisher has a more pragmatic take on the matter. “I think it’s good if a sitcom’s on the telly and it’s funny – I couldn’t give a stuff about if it comes from north, south, east or west.

“If it makes me laugh, if it amuses me, if I care about the characters, it it’s well-written then that’s fine – the genesis of it is immaterial to me.”

So is Only Child any good?

“I haven’t a clue,” replies Fisher – clearly a man who doesn’t give praise gushingly.

But then come a verdict on scriptwriter Bryce Hart’s work which, coming from someone who’s spent more than 45 years in comedy, makes you sit up and take notice.

“I think this is one of best written pieces of work I’ve ever been involved with.”

Episode one of Only Child goes out on the BBC Scotland channel on Thursday 21 November and on BBC One on Friday 22 November.

All episodes are available on the BBC iPlayer from Thursday.