Thursday 19 February 2009

Limmy's Show – Behind the Scenes

I hope you all watched Limmy's Show. If you didn't you can now by watching it on the BBC iPlayer. As I didn't write anything about the recording of the show when I was doing it I thought I would write a wee bit now that the show has went out. However, there's no scandal or crazy antics that would really make interesting reading. Everyone who worked on it was lovely and dead professional.

Unsurprisingly doing Limmy's Show was about the best week of work I've done in my life. The whole production started off with the John Paul sketch where I play a hapless passer-by who gets hounded. Brian filmed this with me in March last year for his Comedy Festival show. That time it was only me, him and a video camera. This time round we went back to the same spots in the Botanic Gardens with a crew of about 20 folk. Handy, since when I fell flat on my face running too fast when I was out of shot anyway, I could change into clean clothes and have the dirt wiped off my face by April, the kindly costume lady.

Brian has told me more than once that he's worried if I go through the Botanics again in the next few months I'll get chased about by neds. I'll let youse all know if that happens.

From reading the script the two sketches that made me laugh out loud on the page were the one with the wee boy on the bus and the Mr. Mulvaney sketch. I think they both turned out to be two of the show's highlights. The wee boy was as cute and happy on the set as he looked in the programme.

As well as Limmy, the other actors on the show were great fun to work with. Debbie Welsh has been in several shows and you may have recognised her from her recent appearances in No Holds Bard or the Rab C. Nesbitt Christmas special. Raymond Mearns probably had the best wee bit of acting out of the three of us with his 'Bed' scene. The way he held his expression and kept it all quite small was great. Raymond is of course a well kent face around the comedy circuit and his patter on the way to the set in the morning kept us all amused.

Ironically the sketch I had the most fun filming was the only one where Brian wasn't in the room. He was off in make up while Debbie, Raymond and I filmed the boardroom part of the Twenty's Plenty sketch. Everyone simply made each other laugh throughout the filming, the three of us, the crew and the art department. One of those moments where you realise you're really quite lucky getting to do something like that for a job.

Everyone who worked on the show was really nice and a pleasure to be around. Here's hoping we all get to work together again.

I realise this is all a bit 'What I did in my summer holidays' but until I get cast in a David O. Russell film I'm afraid it'll be all this folk being nice to one another carry-on. Unless you want to hear about the short film I did a month or two later...

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Quality stuff, Tom. Enjoyed watching it...

Anonymous said...

I thought it was brilliant. And the sketches you were in had me laughing.

Was that a one off then? The TV listings had me thinking it was episode 1 of a series.

Tom said...

Thanks Mark. It is just a one off for now. Hopefully it'll get the nod for a series shortly. Time will tell.

Graham Hosie said...

It was very funny. The swing park rant was my favourite part and I loved the Shawshank Redemption concept.

I hope some people are employing that in there everyday activities.

Was very nice to see a Scottish comedy show that really made me laugh (its been a while since that happened) and Tom Brogan was aces in it.

Anonymous said...

Despite slagging you off on Limmy's blog (nothing serious), you put in a good performance. It didn't have that cringe factor that you sometimes get when you here a Scottish actor's voice on the telly. But you did manage to get that "I really do want to shoot him!" feeling in the "Guys" sketch.

Hopefully a series will be commissioned soon.