Comedy
`See me I'm scum'
Anne Smith on why Glasgow loves to hate Rab C Nesbitt
e takes hammers to the walls, the bairn.' A woman patted her son's head with affectionate sympathy as she explained his hyperactivity to a fellow traveller at a bus stop in Glasgow's Maryhill Road. 'I'm tak- ing this one to the Correction Unit and this one to the child psychiatrist,' Rab C Nes- bitt's wife Mary tells a neighbour, indicat- ing her two sons. 'It's the kinna Govan equivalent o' the family picnic, y' know.'
The latest series of Rab C Nesbitt, the immensely popular black comedy starring Gregor Fisher as the eponymous hero has just ended on BBC 2. Each series has been the signal for Glaswegians to bandy words in the letters columns of the local press about the authenticity of Ian Pattison's portrayal of life on the underside of the city. They are particularly anxious to disso- ciate themselves from Nesbitt after having spent millions on the yuppification of the city centre, and millions again on promot- ing Glasgow as a hive of artistic activity in 1990, Year of Culture.
`City of Culture?' a taxi driver was heard to laugh at the time, city of culture shock, more like.' In this context, Rab C Nesbitt is the revenge of art on pretension, 'a jolly wee jape from Giro valley'. The jolly wee jape came off, and a good thing too, for the vitality of Glasgow's culture comes from its Rab C Nesbitts, not from over-hyped, over-priced Pavarotti extrava- ganzas. 'Less Pavarotti and more for the poverati,' the graffito read at the time. Pat- tison provides more for the poverati, and the supreme irony is that his creation, the self-styled 'Winston Churchill of Wine Alley', has revived the old, potent image of No Mean City throughout the country.
Not that it needs much to revive it these days. During a horrific weekend of violepce recently there were 14 stabbings and a shooting. The Arthur Thompson Jr murder trial, with its incidental revelations of gang warfare, kneecappings and drug dealing, has shown that Nesbitt's nostalgia for the golden days of criminal violence' is rather premature.
The best-laid plans of councillors and PR men gang aft agley in Glasgow, because the essence of the Glaswegian character is anarchy and subversion. Pattison is spot-on in his observation, the first Glaswegian since Billy Connolly to represent the
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authentic voice of urban poverty without smothering it in sanctimonious socialism. He is much sharper than Connolly, though, and more in touch with the present.
Nesbitt represents a whole class that has turned failure into a way of life. His defiant See me — I'm scum' is echoed all over the Glasgow 'schemes'. He is the unholy fool of post-industrial Glasgow with its little, for- gotten men. The melancholy clown con- fronts the unpalatable truths and asks the unbearable questions. 'That's the trouble with life,' he says. 'Once you realise you're never going to be a somebody, you have to kid yourself on that being a nobody can still be interesting.' His answer, invariably, is to get `blootered', but better men have come up with no better response when the futility of the whole thing overwhelms them.
More solemn interpreters speak about the underclass and its humour, sired by despair out of hereditary poverty. Nothing of the kind. It might even be the other way round. The despair and the poverty seem to be the offspring of a subversive, sharp urban intelligence, of which humour is the most effective weapon, but one liable to turn against the man who wields it.
`Work, eh,' Nesbitt sneers. 'What a stupid way to earn a living. Christ, every buggar I know that's in work is up to the eyes in debt. So am I right enough, but at least my time's my ain to express myself.'
He and his cronies parody the aspira- tions of the middle class. Their nihilism reduces everything to absurdity. 'All thae fitness freaks,' says the man from the unhealthiest city in the UK, `skitting about the streets buff naked except for a diver's watch and a set of underwear. Getting all het up if they lose a milli-second through having to mark time at a red light.'
But they are equally apt to cut through their own poses. 'Govan climbing gear,' Nesbitt explains as his pal is carried freez- ing down from the hills above Loch Lomond, pair o' trainers, ten fags and a sarcastic expression.' Nesbitt, it must be recognised sooner or later, is a creation of comic genius on a par with Chaplin's tramp. He reassures us, in a time of recession, computer games and non-stop satellite television, of the incorri- gibility of the human spirit.
The third series of Rab C Nesbitt will be shown on BBC 2 next year. A show based on the series is now touring Britain.
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