Scots on the Box

Limmy's Show, BBC2 Scotland, 10pm, 17th February

I think you'd better sit down. Have the smelling salts to hand because I've got something to tell you. Ready? OK, brace yourself, here it comes : someone said "fuck" on BBC Scotland last night and the sky didn't fall in!

In fact, I think on Limmy's Show people swear quite a bit. They also say "dae" rather than "do" and they make few dialect concessions. If Rab C was a bit of a hill to climb for our Southern neighbours then LS is Kilaman-fuckin'- jaro big-man- so- it- is. But that's OK, because LS reaches our tellies as a slice of life from the universe created by "internet phenomeon" Brian Limond and this is a demanding, difficult world to get a handle on.

First off, I'm not sure if I'd call this comedy. Bits of LS are very funny but equally bits are unsettling, disturbing and just freaky. Are paranoia and delusion funny, are they fit subjects for comedy?


A non-using junkie, physically clean but psychologically rattlin' like a collecting tin on a flag day. A compulsive shoplifter, trapped by the fixation, miserably rehearsing over and over his excuses yet to be made to polismen born of his guilty imagination.
I found these characters interesting, I really appreciated the work that went into their creation, but there was nothing remotely funny about their suffering.


The rants to camera about rhyming road-signs and the cultural practice of calling everyone, regardless of gender, "guys" didn't work, the performances seemed forced, the outrage too obviously confected. A discourse on why big people aren't allowed on swings elided into a meditation on the promise of youth and the disappointments of adulthood. Not funny, but beautiful and strange.

Other stuff might have benefitted from being left out.

A cartoon ( God, I hate cartoons) pissed about with the elderly " what if someone's at the controls inside oor heid?" idea. As an exempler of stoner coversational profoundity it was right up there with "what if we're aw just part of a butterfly's dream?" and "If a tree falls in the forest and nae cunt's aboot does it still make a noise?"

Don't know, don't care.

Being an astute sort of reader, you'll have noticed by this stage in the review that I'm a bit conflicted by LS. I'm not really sure of what to make of it. I'm also not at all sure that this was a pilot that it would stretch to a series. TV absolutely devours comedy. 30 minutes is an eternity to fill, I don't know if Limmy's world is big enough.

LS apart, Limond is clearly a gifted performer and I'm sure we'll be seeing him again in something, sometime. And if it does all go tits up, he can make a good living as a lookalikey of Tom Yorke out of Radiohead.

I'm telling ye, maun, he's his fuckin' spit, so he is.