When comic performers embark on “audience with” tours, they usually have a different interviewer in every city, affording the chat a semblance of freshness.
Gregor Fisher and theatre director Nigel West go back a few years and have shorthand, no doubt cemented after the Rab C Nesbitt star appeared in West’s musical version of The Wizard of Oz.
But the pair have been reminiscing about Fisher’s life for eight years, even as Covid delayed the majority of their live dates. And here, at the final show for a good while, until a one-hour version arrives at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, they can’t quite sustain the illusion that West is all that interested in answers to questions he’s posed so many times before.
To Fisher’s credit, he occasionally highlights the artifice, jokingly accusing the perfectly amiable and urbane director of being in an odd mood, of trying to throw him off. Still, there’s a sense that they’re over-familiar by this point. And rather demob happy to be parking the format for now.
Which isn’t to say that this is all dusty retrospective. Far from it. Post-diabetes diagnosis and considerably more svelte than in Rab C’s heyday, Fisher is still fine value for springing out of his chair and delivering an act out. Whether delightfully impersonating Al Pacino, with whom he and John Sessions appeared in a cinematic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Or recreating the rippling flesh of his movement teacher at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. A larger lady, he appreciates that he’s being less than gallant and rather un-PC about her. But on such rare occasions, fore-warning of the transgression and a roguish twinkle in his eye offsets any possible offence.
More immediately, he shares a morbidly funny clip from the imminent second series of Only Child, the BBC sitcom written by Bryce Hart, in which Fisher stars with Greg McHugh as an eccentric father and his despairing son. And he lets slip that it will be returning on May 5th, despite supposed entreaties from the corporation’s press office that he keep schtum.
Unbeknownst to me, he’s also been enjoying a second career as an Instagram food blogger. And he discloses that he’s reuniting with journalist Melanie Reid, who ghost wrote his 2015 memoir, to pen a gastronomic tome. Which should be compelling given his weight journey from self-described “fat kid”.
Moreover, he also offers yet another of his recent teases that he may not be completely finished with Rab, cryptically reiterating “watch this space”.
Fans of Glasgow’s favourite wayward son had to wait until the second half to hear most of Fisher’s fondest memories of the role that made his name. But it was worth it to be reminded of the string vested rascal in his scurrilous pomp, to hear the actor praise the difficult subject matter that writer Ian Pattison fed into the scripts and to argue why, despite modern sensitivities, the show would still succeed today.
Interesting to learn as well that Lenny Henry and the oft-mocked Alan Yentob were staunch defenders of the sitcom against snobbery and English bewilderment within the BBC. Regardless, I’d have liked to hear more about the character’s beginnings on Naked Video, with both that series and its Naked Radio predecessor rather glossed over.
Despite never being conventional leading man material, Fisher clearly had something, evidenced by him ultimately charming his wife, Vicki Burton, into marriage after they appeared together at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. And from having enjoyed his first flush of fame from a childhood brush with death, when he almost perished in a sewage works.
A single, bitter reference to his father raises a number of unanswered questions, which Fisher airily dismisses for another show. And after affording an insight into his religious, working-class upbringing in Neilston and the unceremonious way he learned he was adopted at 13, he’s eager to stress that the rest of the show is not a miserable outpouring, the repressed tears of a clown.
His career hasn’t been without missteps. He takes a grumbling swipe at film critic Mark Kermode for his opinion of the Whisky Galore! remake that Fisher starred in with Eddie Izzard, but then grudgingly concedes that Kermode may have had a point. And while Love Actually actually received a lot of love from the Pavilion audience, he’s noticeably underwhelmed by the picture and gently, not unkindly, demolishes its central conceit.
Towards the end of their conversation, West lets the show drift into a summary of Fisher’s stage and screen CV, perfunctorily ticking off role after role. In and amongst this though, there are some warm anecdotes about Izzard and the peerless Rikki Fulton, who was pivotal in making his co-star a television fixture. Plus, the account of Fisher being as bewitched as everyone else was by Richard Burton on the set of 1984.
He perpetually, endearingly directs apologies to the deceased by gesturing heavenwards, to an almost ludicrous extent after the first half dozen or so times. And he mouths “theatrical” as a deliberate self-deprecation of his art and its pretentiousness, aiming to be resolutely un-luvvieish, marrying dry cheek with a spry readiness to get up and act the goat.
Given his not-so-distant health issues, more power to him. Because in Rab and characters like The Baldy Man he’s brought to life some enduring comic creations, with Pattison having acknowledged the humanity and heart he brought to Nesbitt.
Runs until 30 August 2026 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Image: Contributed
