Original subtitles

Scotland is a small country with a very large funny bone.

Downloaded from YTS.MX

We're known the world over for our quick-witted patter...

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

Oh, hang the suppers. We're paying for the banter.

..deadpan asides.

Oh, Christ. What is this? Murder, She Wrote?

What is it that makes us quite so funny?

He says, "I need somewhere to park my bike."

Is it our honesty?

Now, you, Isa, are a nosey bastard.

Is it our natural charisma?

Oh, there's nothing so wild and crazy as the Scottish.

Our rich language?

Or is it the way we have of dealing with the hardships that life

throws at us?

I suppose some of you sometimes think that life's not worth living.

So do I.

To find out the answer, we will dig deep into the BBC Scotland

archives, where we will find decades' worth

of classic characters.

I'll tell you this, boy...

From super cops... OK, Stirling, out the car.

..to super sexy cops.

From bonny chanters...

everything

..to total chancers. Hiya!

We'll have the best-loved catchphrases...

Gonnae no dae that.

Isn't this just pure, dead brilliant, William?

Greetings, traveller. What is your name?

And we'll unearth some hidden gems.

You'd better believe it.

We've assembled the best and brightest funny folk

from up and down the land for a right, big hooley.

Mine's broke!

Oi-oi!

So why not join us in celebrating our nation's finest export...

..our sense of humour.

One, two, three...

Something else! They're aff their nuts in here!

There you are, folks. No matter how cold it may be out here,

we can be sure of a very warm

welcome when we go in to join the festivities.

Slainte.

PARTY WHISTLE TOOTS

This year marks 100 years of broadcasting by the BBC.

In that time, it has achieved many remarkable things.

It's broadcast live from the moon...

..covered iconic national occasions...

..shown us the wonders of the natural world...

A perfect, clean bottom.

..and, importantly, it's made us laugh.

HE CHUCKLES

Over the next hour, we'll be taking a look at what makes us Scots quite

so funny...

..and why it means so much to us having our unique sense

of humour on the telly.

Television was vital to my sanity when I was growing up.

We didn't have Facebook and Twitter.

We had to make our own insecurity out of twigs and mud.

So the only entertainment we really had was television.

When you saw something Scottish, "Oh, it's us. It's us."

And it's so rare.

So, as TVs started appearing in our living rooms, what

Scots were on it, making us laugh?

I remember finding Andy Stewart really funny.

You know, a guy in a kilt doing Elvis impersonations.

Stuff like that was really strange.

But I knew as a young kid that that was funny.

from the Isle of Skye

and I'm awfully shy

when I go by

Of course, we Scots didn't get TV programmes made in Scotland

until 1952, despite having invented the bloody thing!

Our big Scottish programme

comes from our outside broadcast unit, but now we open our new studio

and we've got all our cameras assembled there to show you the sort

of work that you will get from the new studio.

But it wouldn't take long before we started trying

to be funny on screen.

In 1957, the first sketch was broadcast on BBC Scotland,

and it featured Jimmy Logan trying to put a baby to bed.

LOUD SNORING

HE SNORES

ALARM BLARES

Oh! Hmm!

Of course, Jimmy was already a big star long before he appeared

on the telly.

But television let Jimmy bring the swagger and patter of his

music hall upbringing into people's living rooms.

APPLAUSE

Before we invented television, Scottish comics

were making folk laugh in theatres and music halls

all around the world.

These deep music hall roots are one of the things that makes Scottish

comedy so distinctive.

You know, of course, people went to the theatre and saw Strindberg,

but the rest of us came to variety shows, and you saw

your life reflected there.

I've just been in shopping on a Saturday morning in Aberdeen,

in Onion Street.

LAUGHTER

Union Street, sorry! Union Street.

Should be called Onion Street.

The prices will bring tears to your eyes.

The music hall tradition gave us some of TV's best-loved performers -

Rikki Fulton, Chic Murray, Stanley Baxter and Lex McLean,

known as Sexy Lexy to his fans.

McLean!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

He used to repeat things. I couldn't, I don't do impressions,

but..."Oh, aye, I walked into...

"I walked into the road, aye! Is that right? Is that right?"

You can tell the difference, can't you? You can tell the difference.

But he started the show and he came out for his first opening salvo

to the audience.

He'd be wearing a ridiculously over-the-top, camp suit

with plus fours and things like that, and he'd walk up and finally

go, "Well, what if I am?"

And then start his... Start his routine.

AUDIENCE GASP AND CHEER

Give that a saucer full of milk, will you?

His Sexy Lexy nickname came from his material,

which was very risque for the time.

Did you hear about the two nudists?

They got engaged, then broke it off because they were seeing

too much of each other.

Bawdy humour was already part of our patter,

but Lex brought this real chat to the screen.

Two bottles of milk. One says, "I feel fresh this morning."

The other says, "No use looking at me. I'm sterilised."

The music hall traditions also gave us the ground-breaking

Stanley Baxter Show, which pushed the boundaries of TV comedy

in the '60s.

APPLAUSE

Thank you very much, and good evening.

I'm only 25 years old, but, you know, my mum would always put

on reruns or DVDs of The Stanley Baxter Show.

His style of humour was incredibly Scottish, I think.

That sort of, you know, taking the veneer

off something and making people look a bit ordinary

and sort of showing the sort of artifice and all that stuff.

Absolutely Scottish.

When did you discover you have this great gift of languages?

Oh, I have knew it for many year.

As a diminutitive wean, I was speaking French.

I remember sucking a piece of fruit and then saying to my parents,

"Mere Pere."

The sketch where they had a bed and breakfast,

but it was all to ceilidh music.

And they were doing the bed to ceilidh music and dancing

around, and we were in hysterics.

And I remember going up to the bedroom and changing the bed

with my mum doing it.

I was about maybe six or seven and I just remember it, it's so

vivid in my mind that we were, "Dee-dee, dee-dee..."

CEILIDH MUSIC PLAYS

Stanley Baxter looked gorgeous in these elaborate outfits.

Ostrich feathers and wigs.

And he would cover his eyebrows and glue over them and draw

a new eyebrow up here in his forehead to look

like Marlene Dietrich.

I think in one of the first pantos, I wore one of his dresses as well.

I wore a gorgeous sort of ballgown.

And he did have the longest legs ever. I think I had to have

about two feet chopped off it!

I teach ballroom dancing, and I've had what you call itchy feet

for as long as I can remember, Alan.

It wasn't funny because he was in drag.

It was funny because what the characters were saying

and doing was funny.

He wasn't... Drag wasn't a gimmick.

It was an art form to him.

I think Stanley Baxter would have slayed the competition

if he was on RuPaul's Drag Race UK.

Maybe not as much as me.

BAGPIPES PLAY

I'm like the Loch Ness Monster.

A legend.

There's a vulnerability about the kind of Scottish sense

of humour, because we're able to poke fun at ourselves, our culture,

at our parents, at our upbringing.

You know, there's a relatability there.

The first sitcom on BBC Scotland, called The McFlannels, was a hit

at the time because the characters sounded like genuine people

that you could meet in any tenement, in any street.

No, no, I'm all right. It's your mother who's no well.

There's nothing wrong with me. I fear there is.

You're not very long for this world.

I don't know what you're blethering about.

To this day, authentic language remains an important part

of our humour.

Oh, there's the mashed tatties there.

Eh, Christine, get a bit of the old mashed tattie aboard ya, eh?

Tatties means "potatoes", Gordon.

And mashed is...

.."all mashed up".

Scottish comedy is very much connected to this authenticity,

this authentic voice,

and it doesn't necessarily need to be it's who you are,

but it's a voice that people understand.

A real voice that people understand.

Now it's time for arts news.

Interpreting for the Neds tonight, Rab McGlinchey.

How you doing?

Everybody should be represented. Everybody.

And I don't see why not,

why can't we have somebody who does the news

in a thick Glaswegian accent?

A bank in the centre of Aberdeen today was held up

and an undisclosed sum was stolen.

Police announced they hoped

to have suspects rounded up by the weekend.

Undisclosed sum, man. That's a lot of keech for a start, by the way.

Cos they know what exactly how much it is. What happened, right.

Five bears in the back of a van. They breinge up,

breinge intae the bank, right, tank all the money.

Half-a-mil my mates told me and aw that. Polis don't know who

they are, man? Fannies! Goodnight.

We use swear words.

We use cuss words,

but not necessarily for their initial purpose.

I'm very lucky to have in my hands the very first BBC bleep machine

commissioned by Lord Reith himself

to disguise what he referred to as the coarse and unholy language

emanating from the majority

of Scottish light entertainment programming.

Here's to it.

Here's to the BLEEP sheen of it.

Here's to every BLEEP bit.

Here's to the BLEEP BLEEP it.

Here's to the BLEEP...

I'll show you how it works.

Cover your ears. It's quite loud.

CLICK

Take it again.

CLICK

For f... BLEEP

You know...you know that Scottish people were the first

people to use the word BLEEP? Did you know that?

It's true. There were these things where they used to have like...

You're the first person on this sofa to use it.

I'll say it now. BLEEP!

Comedians or jesters or whatever would do this...

It's like, it's called flinting or something, I can't remember.

Flighting or something. Flighting, yeah, I've heard of that.

It's like drag queens reading each other.

But anyway, one of the...one of those things

is the first recorded thing of the word BLEEP!

I think that's a great sort of attribute for a country to have.

And it's a funny word as well. Yes, it absolutely is.

Yes. It starts with an F.

My favourite swear word that anyone uses in Scotland

is BLEEP, all right?

Because when someone uses that word, the C word,

when someone uses that word,

it's, you know, normally it's...

GASP "How awful for you to call me that."

But in Scotland,

you can be a good BLEEP, a bad BLEEP,

a sound BLEEP. "You're a good BLEEP!"

You can be a sexy BLEEP,

you can be all the BLEEP you want to be.

Affectionately calling someone the C word doesn't always land.

Didn't land at... The difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Maybe that was just my parents.

It was a banned word for a long time.

Did I say that to your mum? Did I say that to...? God, no.

I was like, I just had massive anxiety.

I'm like, "When did I say the C word to your mum?"

I can't imagine the look of disappointment she'd give me.

No. SHE LAUGHS

That is my vocabulary.

That is the Scottish language.

That is the Scottish language.

"You're speaking slang."

I'm like that, "That's right cos that's oor language."

Rabbie Burns's made our language, so this is my language.

I don't give a BLEEP about that.

I've got to BLEEP sit next to Paul McCartney at BLEEP Chequers.

Scotland is a linguistically diverse nation

which has given us countless accents and archetypes to play with.

You've got your... REMOTE CLICKS

..gallus Glaswegian...

How's your balls?

You should know. You had them last.

..the dour Dundonian...

I feel like that wee boy in Holland wi' his penis in the dam.

..your hairy Highlander...

There's nothing quite like bagpipes, eh?

Just sublime.

Morag, my fiancee, she's from Inverness, you know,

really clear and that.

And I've got cousins in Morayshire, which is not quite Doric,

but it's like, yeah, like posh Elgin.

Yeah. So it's, like, really good. I'm living in Glasgow now, so.

But, yeah, I still go back to Elgin like, you know?

There's a lad round here,

he's a farm adviser, you ken?

And he's originally from Orkney

and he comes and says, "Aye, Jim. Your sheep are looking...

"They're looking well enough this year." You know?

You see, if the tits and teeth arenae yes,

it means she's probably too old to breed successfully.

Like women. Whit's that, Mother?

We've virtually done away with consonants in Dundee,

but my favourite thing is when a Dundonian says

"I've eaten everything,"

he will say, "Eh eh ah ah."

There's no other place in the world that talks like that.

And I love the way, especially from going over the bridge

from Dundee to Fife, it's two completely different accents.

In the year 2345,

the Federation of Planets opened the Starfleet Academy

near Carnoustie in Scotland.

Right, Ensign, gie's warp factor ten. We'll open this big bastard up

and see if it's shit off a shovel right enough.

Taysiders In Space.

It's an absolute classic, a great spoof on Star Trek

if it had been set up near Dundee.

Set phasers tae malky.

Chewin' The Fat was the biggest sketch show Scotland had ever seen.

It's like hee-haw we've ever seen afore, Captain, ken.

Over 20 years after it was first broadcast in 1999,

sketches like this are still part of our national identity.

It's like a nod from the Central Belt that we actually exist up here.

It's like, "Oh, hi."

Captain? What noo?

Captain, there a right big whore ae a spaceship comin' towards us,

an ye want tae see the bastardin' size o' the thing,

it's a good yin or twa sizes bigger than oors, ken!

I love the fact that people from Carnoustie were really touched

that they...we made fun of them in that.

You can just imagine folks sitting there going,

"Aye, it's no' really fair. Naebody rips the pish out ae us, eh?"

Gonnae let us go to the replicator? I'm starving!

Aye, as long as you bring us back o' royal game soup

and a couple o' ootsiders.

I do think the Scottish sense of humour varies massively.

Like, there is tremendous difficulty and bleakness

about being raised in these places like, sorry,

East Kilbride and Paisley and parts of Glasgow,

that the lived experience just isnae the same up here.

This weather.

Why does it always rain in Glasgow?

To be fair, it is nearly July.

Glasgow humour is about the weather.

You know, cos it's so dreich in Glasgow. It's so grey.

And it's about "poor me," you know.

The Glaswegians have that wonderful "poor me"

and they do it brilliantly.

I mean, Gregor... Rab is a brilliant creation.

Right, I am not a man to play on sympathy,

even, although I've got this shrapnel wound in my heid.

Dundee, it's...it's surreal.

It's because it's light 24/7 and it does your head in.

And, of course, we have the...

The Broughty Ferry is the sunniest place in the United Kingdom.

Not a lot of people know that, but it's true.

TECHNO MUSIC BLARES

Bob, we're freezing.

I paid extra for those muscles, Darren.

The weather here is class. When I was young,

you'd go out the summertime and be picking strawberries

and picking blueberries to make your pocket money.

So you'd spend full days

just out enjoying the beautiful weather with your pals,

having a nice time.

And the craic there isnae about

who can make it as bleak as possible,

it's just about who could entertain each other.

Help yourself...to a wave.

SHE CHUCKLES Classic Frank.

There is something about the West Coast of Glasgow,

how dour we are,

and dry,

and warm and, like, eyes up,

wanting to talk to everybody, wanting to find out their stories.

I go for the bus a lot

and I have never stood at a bus stop

when I haven't started talking to somebody

and they haven't made me laugh.

Even if they haven't meant to.

Hello, Davie.

Ye big handsome thing, ye.

So language plays an important part in Scottish humour.

But how does that work when it travels down south?

Hold on. Come a bit far here, I believe.

It's always Scots that say, "And do they understand it down south?"

And you're like, "Why did you...?"

You know, I had a mother who used to do that to my dad

when we were in Blackpool on holiday,

cos my dad did have a very strong West of Scotland accent

and she'd say, "Jim, speak slowly."

And my mum would be speaking in her telephone voice to everyone

until she met another Scot

and she'd go, "H, Margaret, how are you?"

You know, that sort of trilingual thing that Scots have.

We speak English, we speak Scots,

and we speak our local dialect as well.

Have you ever had to explain your Glasgow accent?

All the time.

All the time.

Billy's authentic working class voice resonated with TV audiences,

not just in Scotland, but across the world.

In our house, in our living room, in amongst the vinyl.

in amongst the Bollywood soundtracks

and the Sikh devotional songs

was a Billy Connolly album.

And I remember distinctively being really scared by him visually.

Quite a scary-looking proposition.

Saturday night we were allowed to stay up late.

Parkinson's on and there's that guy from the album cover.

Oh, he's from Glasgow.

It was the first night of an American tour

and it wasn't my audience, it was Elton John's audience.

And they made me feel as welcome as a fart in a space suit.

And that must have been a moment

that a switch must have gone on in my head to say,

well, yeah, don't be Scottish about it.

If it's funny, it's funny.

Just because a Scottish guy's singing

doesn't make it any less funny.

As far you can see at that end,

the frame benders used to work.

Very, very dangerous occupation for the hands.

And the legend had it in here

that you can spot a frame bender in the pub

because he says, "Five pints, please."

On the farm, I've got a welder as well.

So when I'm welding, you know,

I pretend I'm like Billy Connolly in the shipyards.

"It was lovely. It was a lovely place to live in and work."

But I love him. Just his little phrases.

Tickety boo, you know.

Jobbie! Jobbie is a lovely word.

It's brilliant. I love it.

We think you're a big jobbie.

I think so many people like Billy Connolly

cos he's a wee bit of everything, do you know what I mean?

He's like a proper man's man to an extent

because he, like, works the docks

but then also he's got, like, dead long hair

and he dresses silly, you know.

So he's like...

He's everything to everybody

"Hey, Big Yin, you're awright. You're the same as us.

"You've drank wine up the graveyard."

I never drank wine in a graveyard in my life!

I have shagged in the graveyard.

Everyone loves a bit of Billy, even the English.

And they're always saying they can't understand us.

Oh, there's nothing we love more than heading down to England

and having our accents mocked, our currency rejected.

I mean, it's not as if we would ever make unfair stereotypes

about the English.

England is like a big brother who borrows your snazziest shoes,

goes ten-pin bowling, forgets to change his shoes back,

comes home with the ten-pin bowling shoes and says,

"Oh, well, it looks as if you better become a ten-pin bowling fan"

whether you like it or not.

The insecurities we carry about our big brother down south

have provided us with a rich vein of humour over the years.

I know the reason for all Scotland's ills is...

..them bastard English.

I have got scientifically proven evidence

to substantiate this one.

One - they're English.

Two - they come from England.

Three - they are scum...

Yes, we get the general idea.

Very funny sketch for the whole audience.

And it was a sort of piss take of sort of STV,

get the audience in, you know, 100 folk or whatever,

and they put something out

and the only answer to everything was,

"It's the English."

Yie's up from England, are you?

Yorkshire. Yorkshire?

Where is Yorkshire?

It's over to the left of Manchester,

where we fly to Dubai from. Oh!

Two Doors Down has been a hit all across the UK

since it first aired in 2013

because it perfectly captures the awkwardness

of dealing with your neighbours.

Give us a hug, Missus.

It's about a family and it's about the neighbours

and it's about the relationships that we have with each other.

This is Christine. She lives next door.

Hello!

Oh, wait tae I get turnt here.

Oh! This is Jaz, Christine.

Oh, hello, Jaz.

So you're Ian's gay lover?

Mum!

We all know the situation.

Anywhere in the world, we all know that.

We all know what it's like to deal with neighbours,

even if they're annoying you.

DOORBELL RINGS

HE SIGHS

Hello, Eric.

Christ, is it Halloween? HE CHUCKLES

We've been to a funeral, Eric.

Oh, I'm sorry.

In the episode when Gordon's mum and dad come from Yorkshire

into the house and all that and they're English,

it does show up those sort of differences with people.

So Yorkshire, eh?

Yes.

I must say, I like your tea.

That politeness of Christine saying,

"I really enjoy your tea."

Stupid stuff like that.

It's beautifully observed

that you're trying to...

Scots are trying to think

of something nice about Yorkshire to say.

No matter where you go in Scotland,

you can be guaranteed a warm welcome

and a big dose of Scottish hospitality,

even if you are English.

OK, so we can be a wee bit harsh

on our good friends from south of the border,

but it's banter.

Just harmless banter.

And while sometimes these stereotypes can be a bit hurtful,

we often encourage them ourselves.

For instance, drink. Now, it's just not true

that Scottish people are drunk all the time.

Some of the time.

A lot of the time. But not all the time.

But what is true is that we are the very best at playing drunks.

Isn't that right, pal?

Hey!

Now, up here, we have

some very important bottles of whisky.

in the dell!

And nobody could play the drunk better than Rikki Fulton,

as he did so often in '80s sketch show Scotch And Wry.

HE SHOUTS DRUNKENLY

One of the hard things about feeding Rikki was not laughing,

cos he's very, very funny.

I've been drunk since...since...

How long have we been at sea now?

We sail in half an hour, sir.

So I took to biting my lip.

Like, really. Blood coming out.

Mm.

Just not to laugh.

You want to get every little drop o' alcohol out,

so come on, get crushing.

Sometimes drunken people in a club can say something

and you don't understand a word they are saying,

but it's still funny.

Ho, aye. That'll be right. Ho...

Hoi, oi! That's it. What is going on here?

What's going on?

Rab in the pub wi' all his pals,

that reminded me of my dad and his pals in the pub

cos it's all the same...same banter.

Ah, Rab. You've been making us laugh with your heavy drinking since 1988.

Here, whit's the matter wi' you?

I just...

I've never drank a pint so fast before.

Thank God that's o'er.

You kidding?

This is just a warm-up!

Another thing we're famous for in Scotland

is our incredible work ethic.

Take me, for example.

As an actor, I sometimes have to work two days a month.

But some of our best-loved comedies are about people at their work,

trying their hardest to avoid doing anything

that their boss is actually paying them to do.

Para Handy, the master mariner, is also the master skiver...

In the old days, if you wanted a lay-in, well, you had time

to think of a reason.

But nowadays, what with telephones and telegraphs, the

customers complain before you even get home with your excuse.

What are you blethering about?

William! William!

City Lights starred Gerard Kelly as Willie Melvin,

another first-class skiver.

I was in the house all ready to leave

and I get this piece of just terrible news.

Somebody told you what time we actually start work here?

He worked at a bank but spent his shifts dreaming

about literary fame.

I have told you before loads of times I want to be a writer.

But that's hardly a real job now, is it?

Harold Robbins thinks it is.

Graham Greene thinks it is.

Well, stop hanging around with them!

Norman Mailer would be proud of you, Irene.

I don't know a Norman Mailer.

Oh, I knew a Norman McKechnie once, he was pure dead brilliant,

so he was.

So this is where pure dead brilliant came from.

Your tree is pure dead brilliant.

All the kids used to say this.

My husband was teaching in Glasgow, in Cathkin High at the time,

and he made me laugh one day because he was talking about some

of the girls and they were funny third years coming in and telling

stories and one of the girls had went,

"Honest, sir, I couldnae believe it.

"I was pure aghast." Right?

So the use of those words together.

I thought, that's great.

Oh, but it was pure dead brilliant while it lasted. So it was.

It was on the side of buses in Glasgow, it was everywhere.

It drove me crazy in the end.

Everybody that passed you,

"Pure dead brilliant." Aye, very funny, you know.

I wish I'd a pound for every time somebody had said that.

I'll have a wee Bezique with a lot of lemonade.

Bezique?!

I don't mind paying for the round, Willie,

but I object when I cannae even spell it.

City Lights ran from 1984 until 1991.

By the time it had finished,

Scotland was a more confident and aspirational place.

And many of us, well, we were living the high life.

of tedious

The High Life was about two air stewards who were on a failing

Scottish airline called Air Scotia.

You're late, you're late!

no time to say hello, goodbye

They had a rapport with each other, but there was this chief air

stewardess called... Their nemesis.

..Shona Spurtle, who hated them. Shona Spurtle.

And a rather surreal captain

who sometimes didn't know where he was flying to and sometimes

forgot he was flying the plane. So it was silly japes on a plane.

Can you even begin to imagine how I am feeling at the moment?

Rough!

Shut up or I'll sniff your bum! Oh! Oh!

Sebastian's like this kind of flaming, but nice, flaming queen

who lives alone with his mother.

So basically, it's sort of a sexless gay man, I suppose.

Forbes' character was this horny straight boy. Yeah.

Since when have you taken to wearing 12 carat amethyst

cluster engagement rings?

Oh, I get it.

You've been having another one of your whirlwind romances

during my recreational absence, haven't you?

If you mean, have I become romantically involved

with a beautiful specimen of the opposite sex,

then the answer would have to be a resounding yes.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No again.

I've had it with you and your phantom betrothals.

We had one episode where there was some turbulence and a lot

of old people on the plane. That's not... Oh, dear.

I don't think we've ever make this now, but we had to go

round and take people's teeth out.

Why...that? I don't know.

But the whole premise of that was I thought it would be really funny

or we both thought it'd be really funny if, you know how

they hand out hot towels at the end of the flight,

we'd hand back the hot teeth. The teeth. Yes. Because we'd

accidentally put them in the freezer. And then we defrosted

them in the microwave.

What's that smell?

THEY SCREAM

Hiya.

LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

Also like Piff Paff Poff... Oh!

..the song that we enter the Song for Europe competition with.

my heart goes Piff Paff Poff

People said if Scotland becomes independent, will you both come

back and do Piff Paff Poff for Sco... And we both said yes.

And so it's the only thing I dread about Scottish independence...

..is the fact that we might have to get into those Lycra shorts. Into those shorts!

my heart goes Piff Paff Poff

Nul points.

The '90s had The High Life and the noughties

had Gary Tank Commander,

who was just as fabulous and workshy as Steve and Sebastian.

There was something about Gary being in a kind of military setting,

the character's very flamboyant and very out there.

And I think for me back then, watching that, I was like, "Oh!

"Can there be a gay person in the Army?"

I was always going to join the Army.

Ever since I seen that film Escape to Victory.

You seen that? Well, I seen that and I was like that...

I want to be just like Pele.

You know, part of the humour came from him being very effeminate

and the way he said things.

See this? See this, boys.

This is what makes him a good soldier.

Because he just got all that. And the way he acted.

There was a lot of physical comedy in there.

MUSIC PLAYS

we finally tout it

Hiya! Hiya, Julie, I hardly seen you there.

Oh, my actual very God.

Look, it's you.

The very same.

Gary's sidekick, Julie,

was often the one distracting him from his job.

Oh, my God. I used to say, oh, my God, all the time.

Oh, my God. So like that.

And Greg was like, so, oh, my very actual God became her catchphrase.

And then from the first meeting when I first ever met Greg,

"I'm sorry I'm late." Explain, explain, explain, explain.

That's what she does. She explains her lateness and makes herself even

more late in the process of explaining.

Gary, Gary, I'm so actually, actually, actually, actually sorry.

Honestly, I thought I'd a watch on, but I didnae. I thought I'd see

enough clocks to know what time it was but I've no' seen a clock for ages.

Like, I love her because she just opens her mouth and she says

what she's thinking.

And sometimes she's thinking really bizarre things.

Can folk go to Mars? Like, I know people can go to the Moon. Well, no' just anybody can go to the Moon.

But maybe if it's like, you know what you dae for a living, I mean.

I don't know... Julie. Julie. Julie. Deep breaths. Deep breaths,

Julie, calm doon.

Scotland's cities are now vibrant, diverse places full of goat's

cheese, artisanal coffee, beards and people wearing trousers

that don't quite cover their ankles.

And I like it.

But I do sometimes miss the old scary Scotland.

You know, when men were men,

and they breakfasted on booze and fags

and molten lard, and then they stripped to the waist and

went to work cloying coal from the belly of the Earth,

riveting ships with their teeth!

Different times.

McCafferty.

Your tea's oot!

Come ahead, McQuillan.

There's nothing like seeing two tough men having a tussle to get

the blood pumping.

And Scotland's hard cases are always good for a laugh.

I must have been still really young, but starting to see

Peter McDougall on TV.

Just a Boys' Game. And you'd go into school the next day and everybody

was walking about, trying to be somebody out of a

Peter McDougall play.

You know, it was all, "Your tea's oot, McCafferty," and all that.

But from a seven-year-old.

"Your tea's oot, McCafferty!"

And you thought you were really cool and really gallus and really hard.

Boys! What?

He's ready. A minute.

That mullet must be tired lugging around Alex Norton.

Let's do it. Right!

Scott's dead, wahae!

This is Bad Boys, a wonderfully daft action comedy

from the '90s. I think in a word, freshness.

I'd never seen anything like that before.

And Malky Mulherron, is, you know, is a real criminal psychopath.

I mean, he's completely off his head.

I'll gie ye steed.

You're a bad loser, Mulherron.

You'd better believe it.

You can see the relish with Alex.

He'd this fantastic wig,

sort of long, flowing locks and tache.

And he wore a cape and things like that, almost

like a theatre cape and a cane.

And got up to all sorts of antics.

Right. Break the guns oot the biscuit tin,

draw the swords oot the wine rack, we're on a war footing!

Scottish comedy is full of radge characters.

But thankfully there's one group of people we can always rely

on to keep the peace, fight the bams.

That's right. The Polis.

And the Polis can always rely on the public

for their support and respect.

Suck intae this. Suck?

Do I not blow?

You suck these new ones.

Hurry up.

Now, what did your name was again?

Johnny McMonagle.

That's no' funny.

I'll be putting a complaint in about this!

Quality polis, man!

Right, now, name?

Taggart. Tag...

..gart.

I'd forgotten about this.

First name? Chief Inspector.

Chief...

..Inspector?

You mean like on the buses?

Chief Commissioner Fartalot McPhartso.

I mean, look... FARTING

He's been. Oh, oh.

Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha.

Now, this guy, this guy's good, look at him.

This is so good.

You could be using the internet to spread love and peace.

You know, but no. Let's do some juvenile game,

where a figure of authority farts.

I don't know why police are so funny in particular.

I think it's just any time figures of authority are the subject of fun,

it is funny.

Yep. That's right.

We're a rebel country and we laugh in the face of authority.

Excuse me.

Excuse me. I need your help.

I'd like to report a theft.

Which is exactly what Scot Squad is all about.

What appears to have been stolen, Miss McGurk?

My knickers aff my washing line.

My pants! I was in a scene with Gail,

as an angry next door neighbour because she was having wild parties.

What is your problem? You're my bloody problem.

I can hear that rattling right through my BLEEP wall.

The irony is that in life it's the other way about.

I've got a disability! You need... Shut up!

I'm telling you...

Oh, well, hello.

I played the very northeast farmer.

Played a farmer dressed up as a cat.

Oh, shite!

I'm going to have to take you down the station. You're joking?

I have to arrest you. I'm not getting caged up like one of my chickens.

Can I get a glass of milk before I go? No, you can't have a glass of milk.

We love winding up the powers that be, whether it's the law

or the Lord.

That's blasphemous talk, Rab.

You could go to the bad fire

with talk like that.

A bad fire? Away.

A lot of superstitious crap, that's what that is.

We had this kind of, like, hardcore Protestantism, particularly

on the east coast, where all the theatres would get shut down.

Any books that are even vaguely profane would be shut down.

So the only way that you could express kind of dissenting thought

or radical thought or risky thought was through the spoken word.

Because if you wrote anything done, you'd get nailed

and you'd be up in front of the Kirk service on a Sunday.

Having to justify yourself.

That is Moses reading the Ten Commandments.

That is big Chuck Heston with a duff perm

and a pair of Scholl sandals.

We were much more religious back then, and about half ten at night,

quarter to 11, when the television shut down,

there was no more programmes.

The last thing on was a wee spiritual message

from a member of whatever church,

mainly Church of Scotland, and they would come

on and they would do a wee two minute homily about, you know,

religion, basically, how we, you know, you better do this, better do that.

Self-sacrifice is my theme tonight.

Cutting down on those little luxuries that all of us enjoy,

like a light bulb in the lavatory,

cheese in the mousetrap.

He said, I've written this thing about a minister.

I'd like to do it and do it for you all and see what you think.

It's one of these guys that turn up at night

and they try and convert you.

Yes, it'll maybe surprise you to know that I'm not always

the chirpy, happy-go-lucky chap I make myself out to be.

So this is my message to all of you.

Keep smiling.

We used to think, "Oh, can you do that?" You know?

He's taking the mickey out of this established thing,

this Late Call or the epilogue of whatever it was.

And he nailed it brilliantly.

What a year I've had.

Honestly, as, as...

..eh, what's his name? God!

As God is my judge,

I've had a hell of a year.

From holy ministers to Holyrood ministers,

we love to laugh at the institutions that govern our lives.

Politicians, don't you just hate them?

Paddy Harvey with his windmills and beavers

and Dougie Ross with his tight shorts and whistles.

Nicky Sturgeon with her referendums and...

..referendums. We're needing another one to decide it once and for all.

The last one was meant to decide it once and for all.

You cannae have another one just because you don't like the result.

It's no' a...it's no' like... A boob job.

When the Parliament was first being mooted,

before we had a parliament here and all of that, and then remember

I'd come out saying I was in support of it or something.

And one of the Daily Mail headlines was something like, "Oh, God,

"imagine Mary Doll on the front benches."

And you just saw it, and I thought, actually a few Mary Dolls

on the front benches would be quite good as far as I'm concerned.

Might shake things up a wee bit, you know.

Rab.

LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

..the Secretary of State for work.

What the hell have you done to him? I hit him with the frying pan.

Ah, politics!

In Scotland, it's just an excuse for a rally.

Well, now.

Well, now.

It looks like Mr Coughlan has run out of patter, much like his

government has run out of ideas!

Order, order!

I refer the honourable gentleman to the slaggings I handed out earlier.

We do love a good slagging.

There's nothing quite so quintessentially Caledonian

as an elaborate admonishment.

Ooh, "quintessentially Caledonian".

LAUGHTER

Whoa! Hey, nice panties, Joe Exotic.

The Scotts is about a family who express their love for each other

through verbal abuse. A slagging is oor family's

way of showing affection.

Like when they told me that you were out of my league. So I must be a

right wee dirty in the bedroom to have kept a hold of you.

Colette's got a cheek saying that.

I was your mum that said it.

Slagging is a big part of Scottish humour.

But I'll tell you what...

I've been to therapy.

Hurt people hurt people!

Look, you know where you are in life when you've taken a good slagging.

Yeah. Sitting in your mum's couch usually.

We love taking the mickey, we love

taking the piss, and if you can joke back with someone in Scotland,

then you can joke back with anyone.

You know that I can take you.

You can barely take a shite without greeting.

I can't fight to save myself.

But I did learn a couple of lessons growing up,

which is that if you slag people off, they will leave you alone.

I saw an ambulance outside your ma and da's hoose on the way here.

People were talking about a sex game gone wrang.

I get Ronnie Corbett a lot of the time.

You know? New Age Ronnie Corbett.

I mean, this chair isn't helping.

Now, hah, I knew you wouldn't take that seriously.

You will tend to slag people off.

It's almost like getting the equaliser in first and there's

an element of that in Still Game, especially when Jack and Victor come

into the pub and they have the insult trade-off with Bobby.

Here we go.

Rod Hall and Emu.

Oh, that's a cracker, aye.

Except I think we've got more chance of sticking our hand

up a bird than you have.

It's a familiarity, and it's a kind of love.

It means a lot. If you can turn round and,

you know, extract the Michael from people,

it shows you really care about somebody, actually. Two pints,

Totalius Prickamus.

Make it snappy, Baw Bagamus.

Excellent.

Still Game is one of our favourite noughties sitcoms

because it's about a bunch of tight-knit pals who also love

to slag each other rotten.

Oh, look who it is, Phyllis and Diller.

That's got to be the worst yet, ya tosspot.

How? Cos Phyllis Diller is one person, no' two.

Aye, knock yersel' oot, son, eh?

Look, Jack, it's Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

Two pints, ya prick.

I get called a prick every day.

Constantly.

I've been called a prick all over the world.

Two pints, prick.

What did you say to me?

Two pints.

After that?

Prick. In the '70s,

if a ned comes in and steals something, you can set

about him with a baseball bat. It was fashionable then.

Can't do that any more. So you've got to develop banter

and sarcasm and humour. And that's what all these guys do.

And there's so many shopkeepers like that.

They've got this beautiful hybrid accent and they're firing insults

at you because that's the banter.

Oh, gie it a rest, Isa.

He couldn't get his hole in a barrel of fannies.

Let me guess. Tuesday lunchtime.

You've done all your shopping on Monday. All your tins and whatnot.

So I'm reasoning that what's in that pot is

half a tin of Heinz's tomato soup.

There you are. You happy?

Now piss off, Mrs Poirot.

The town gossip, Isa Drennan, also took her fair share of abuse.

Jesus, Navid, what are you doing?

It's OK, I've seen this before, it's gossip overload.

I grew up with an older generation, and in those days,

people looked older.

None of them dyed their hair.

Everybody wore, like, a wee skirt and a wee cardigan.

aSo they were dressing like Isa.

This just in. Naw!

And they were witty, and they would all entertain each other.

You know, so you picked up so much from that.

And d'you know what they're gonna gie us?

Do you know, dae ye? What's that?

Wan o' they big, yellow plastic things that says,

"Caution - Wet Floor."

So's you don't fall on your arse.

One of them big yellow things that you can move aboot? Aye.

And you just leave it there till that bit's dry and then you move

it to the next bit till that bit's dry? Aye.

Like a triangle sort of pyramid shape?

Yous are taking the piss now, in't yous?

Bobby. Kiss my aaaa...!

THUDDING

Comedy is all about failure, whether it's a clown falling

over a bucket or a stuck-up numpty getting his comeuppance,

we all like to laugh at the misfortune

of those who deserve it.

WHISTLE BLOWS

CHEERING

Perhaps that's why we Scots find football so funny.

It combines slapstick, farce, tragedy,

with plenty of opportunities to prick the pomposity of fragile egos.

Keep it on the BLEEP carpet, you useless BLEEP.

Ya BLEEP half-witted BLEEP.

Passing it back to Docherty.

Pass to Docherty. He's through, surely?!

Oh!

There now follows an appeal on behalf

of the National Catastrophe Association.

This one looks serious.

..calling our integrity...

The glorious Glasgow Rangers.

Oh! Ohhhh.

We didn't have a big showbiz base.

We didn't have a Hollywood here,

but we had football that was never

off the back pages or sometimes the front pages.

See me and fitba?

Fitba was good to me, by the way.

Loads of dosh, loads of bevvy.

Mucho druggo and...

..hunners of birds.

Thousands of them.

Frank McAvennie is up there as being the favourite,

along with Denis Law though, they're

the two that we've had most fun with.

Did you see Ajax play Rangers over in Ajax...

Because he's from Aberdeen but spent time in Huddersfield and Manchester,

he's got this strange accent which is, you know, "it's unbelievable, you know, and he talks

"like this", you know. It's a good voice, you know, if you get sketches

to do and you try to say funny things and all that.

I mean, take the Falkirk area, I mean.

No, you've got Falkirk,

Stenhousemuir, East Stirling...

..Kilmarnock, you know.

LAUGHTER

Now.

Why not just get them all together, right?

And chuck them in the bin?

What team do you support?

I was a Celtic fan and I would have obviously have a certain amount

of disdain for Rangers fans, and Johnny would be the same

as a Rangers fan for Celtic fans.

So Philip cast us the other way about.

And that's my son, James Simpson

Craig Gemmell Murdoch McNeill Clark Jo...

I tried to make the Rangers fan as ugly as I possibly

could with no saving graces.

A thug, all the rest of it.

Johnny tried to make the Celtic one as dumb as two posts stuck together.

With his eyebrows joined up here.

So we had a good, good go at that.

John Greig gave me that.

See this?

John Brown gave me that.

And see this?

Duncan Ferguson gave me that.

If there's one thing we Scots excel at then, it's failure,

whether it's on the pitch or in the bedroom.

Sex is a lot like football because Scottish people are better

at talking about it than actually doing it.

He's going to various fruit shops.

Ha! You're meant to think he's testing them all to test the ripeness.

He's going to eat something.

And it's a different motivation in

Jamesie's head all the time.

And he's choosing the juiciest, ripest

melon he can get to have an affair with.

He's such a romantic, isn't he?

It's the Glasgow version of American Pie.

That's shite, they took it fae him.

Well, American Pie bumped it off James, eh? Aye.

Bumped the melon, yeah. I remember that, yeah. I do remember it.

Miss? Yes.

What's a vagina?

You can ask those type of questions,

Kenneth, when you start bringing a decent bag to school.

Ridiculous.

That was my old biology teacher, at Ayr Academy. You...you.

Because... You can say that when you bring a proper bag to school.

I can't do that, that's really bad.

Is it true that you can't get pregnant if you have sex standing up? Tracey Sneddon...

The day you stop coming into this classroom looking

like you're dressed to...turn tricks in a Turkish bordello,

that's the day I'll be prepared

to answer your so-called serious questions about se...

..about, about standing up.

She was a heady mix.

She was really strict in some ways,

but it was also really easy to catch her out.

So you can imagine I had an awful lot of fun with that.

Miss?

Are you a virgin?

I... You...

Are you chewing gum?

I think the stuff that Karen did in Chewin' the Fat was brilliant,

so, so funny.

The old woman that's in the home and talks about riding

in the bomb shelters.

That is so, for me, because it's like it's, it's right on the bone.

There was my Charlie away in Tobruk, fighting for King and country.

And there's me and Rose roon the back of the Barrowlands

with our skirts roon our necks, getting pumped rotten.

Karen Dunbar's sketches from Chewin' the Fat are just as full-on today

as they were when they first broadcast.

The Americans were hung like d... That's enough, thank you.

And she's part of a great Scottish tradition of outrageously

funny women.

Shite.

I used to mimic Karen all the time.

I used to do like, remember,

she used to do, like, "just anybody's Boaby."

53 year and it's the same the day as it was then.

I still love Boaby.

Who's Boaby?

Och, just anybody's boaby.

Karen is a great supporter of other people and other women.

And I love that when you've got somebody who genuinely wants other

people to do well, and other woman to do well, and that's

what we should all be doing.

All supporting each other, all pushing each other forward.

If I'd've known that, I'd've put something fresh in my bottom half.

I was brought up to believe that, you know, it was men who got

to be funny. And I was surrounded by women who were hilarious.

Do you not bother, Christine?

No, I do not.

Oh, God.

Not even a wee tidy up?

Nope.

It's yes to the eyebrows, yes to the top lip.

But downstairs is its own boss.

I love the fact that in Two Doors Down I'm able to sort of celebrate

that type of woman. Christine is that woman who I grew up with,

who always would undercut folk, and go, "I don't think that."

And, you know, just be really, really funny.

And yet that was never acknowledged.

Women had to be the feed of the guy.

I cannae really take spirits on an empty stomach,

Beth. Would you like... A wee packet of crisps to go along with it, aye.

I suppose my fight was, could I get a tag as well?

Who's there?

Christine.

Aaaaah!

I'm not caring about the men.

I'm sorry. I'm going to say it on camera. I'm not caring about them.

There's enough.

We are caring about the women. It's about women.

Oh. This is the life, eh?

Damn tooting, hen.

We say things that you definitely

couldn't or wouldn't have said, like, ten years ago.

So it's not that you can't say anything any more.

It's just that you have to say better things.

Damn right!

The world has seen so many changes over the past 100 years.

When the BBC started, it's hard to believe there were no

shrink-wrapped sandwiches, hair straighteners.

And the extra puffy pillow, well, it was but a distant dream.

But perhaps the biggest change we've seen is the advent

of the internet.

Now, if you want to make strangers laugh, you don't have to write

a script, build a set, hire a film crew.

No.

You just need one of these.

buckle my shoe

Did you ever see the...

..the copy of the Broons, where Pa Broon is like,

"Do you want to go to a rave? You meet really interesting people."

I always think it's like the kind of dividing line between the two

generations of Scottish comedy.

A big fat hen.

HE CLUCKS TO MUSIC

The people like Limmy and Paul Black.

And then it's like the stuff that came before that, they seemed

less like they listened to like techno.

I...eh...

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with, eh, wallpaper.

Limmy's Show was born online before being picked

up by BBC Scotland in 2009.

It's the drunk guy walking down the street with just his jacket

and no shirt.

HE SHOUTS

Ssh, here he comes.

She turned the weans against us.

She's turned the weans against us.

She turned the weans against.

I love that.

And every now and again I still walk about saying that.

Normally coming home for the pub or something,

"She turned the weans against us."

She's turned the weans against us.

The internet has changed comedy all over the world, really, as well.

I think it's given more people in Scotland a voice to be creative

and a platform to demonstrate different forms and types of comedy.

For a long time, people only knew about my two highly successful sons.

They now know about my third son.

The other Murray brother, Duncan.

RECORD SCRATCHES TO A HALT

HE CRUNCHES CRISP

I think Limmy was really important in that to show what you could

create kind of on your own and with just bare minimal

sets and props.

But you can be just as inventive as long as the content is funny.

HARP MUSIC PLAYS

Aw, that is beautiful.

Thank you.

A'right, chadians.

Right, I'll just dae it again.

The internet has given a voice to funny folk up and down the land

and has made our comedy more democratic.

This sounds dignified.

DONKEY BRAYS

Whether it's from a music hall, a TV screen or a smartphone, the basic

ingredients that make up the Scottish sense of humour

have remained the same.

We're proud of our colourful language.

11.

11.

You're just saying it the same way.

I'm gonnae keep saying it till

it understands Scottish, all right?

We love to slag each other.

Sassenach sneering, ye big balloon! Oh!

We poke fun at authority...

This is incredibly inappropriate. Whit ye talkin' aboot?

..and laugh at our failures.

Right in the Davina McCalls, boof!

So there you have it.

Almost a century's worth of top-notch Scottish banter

from the BBC.

Join us again next century, when I'll be bringing you more clips

and more laughs from my underground bunker in what was once Antarctica.