Gregor Fisher on his career: ‘I’ve done my fair share of absolutely bloody awful sitcoms’
With the likes of Rab C Nesbitt, Naked Video and now Only Child, Gregor Fisher has been a comedy staple on our tellys for decades. But in his debut one-man Fringe show, he’ll dig into a career that has encompassed plenty of film and stage success too. He chats to Eddie Harrison about tangents, sitcom gold and why he wants an early finish
‘I haven’t been in front of a live audience for years and I forgot that electricity. Even at 72, it puts a bolt right through you,’ says actor and comedian Gregor Fisher ahead of his debut solo Fringe show. The Scottish national treasure is heading to Edinburgh for An (Early) Evening With Gregor Fisher, spanning the highlights of his five-decade career, from playing local anti-hero Rab C Nesbitt to acting alongside Richard Burton in Michael Radford’s film of George Orwell’s 1984. ‘I’m not a stand-up but I’m full of admiration for those who can do it. Sometimes with an audience, you go down a side street and you’ve got to find your way back to the M8 because you’ve actually gone to Kirkintilloch and didn’t mean to. So every night is different.’
Fringe audiences are international, yet most are likely to be familiar with Fisher’s enduring comic creation Rab C Nesbitt, even a decade since he last played the role. Yet the specific details that might suggest Rab would have a Scots-only appeal also seem to make him a universal comedy figure. ‘One of the best lines Ian Pattison wrote was when Rab is in a hospital, annoyed at not getting the attention he wanted,’ recalls Fisher. ‘He’s standing there with an axe in his head and he whips out his kidney donor card, rips it up and says, “by the way, you can whistle for my kidneys!” There’s something quite west of Scotland about that, but also a real universality.’
On cue, Fisher embarks on one of his aforementioned digressions. ‘I was listening to an interview with Robin Williams, talking about his role in The Fisher King, a guy hallucinating, going through all sorts in his head. He was filming on location in New York, near the Port Authority bus station. It’s all cleaned up now but back then it was full of those Rab C Nesbitt types jumping out at you. Maybe Rab wasn’t ever quite that far gone, but he was always a sparky chap.’
Despite his many achievements, Fisher doesn’t hold back when it comes to assessing the failures (‘I’ve done my fair share of sitcoms in my time, some of which have been absolutely bloody awful,’ he admits), but his latest venture, Only Child with Greg McHugh, is a big success. ‘You can have a great idea but sometimes it just doesn’t come to fruition. If there was a formula for making sitcoms, you’d be away; it’s the absolute holy grail. It’s all about the people. It could be about ego, casting, all of that, but from the get-go, the great thing about Only Child was Greg McHugh, and with him involved, I just thought, “this is going to work”.’
The title of Fisher’s Fringe show comes from the star’s reluctance to stray too far from home. ‘I like my own bed,’ he says. If nothing else, the intimate hour gives Fisher the chance to take a few scenic routes through his life story. ‘The last show I did in Edinburgh was at the official festival with Tom Fleming directing The Servant Of Two Masters. I’d just done a show at Dundee Rep called The Recruiting Officer and the director there thought it would be a good idea if my character had bad breath. Cordelia Oliver, the critic for The Guardian wrote: “We have seen Mr Fisher’s version of the country bumpkin before, with and without halitosis.” But after seeing Two Masters, she said I was ‘a comic genius’. I’ve never believed a critic from that day forward; it was the same bloody performance she saw four weeks before! Now THIS is us heading to Kirkintilloch... ’
An (Early) Evening With Gregor Fisher, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 15–30 August, 4pm.