Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson, creators of Kelvinside kings of comedy Victor and Barry, reunite tonight for the duo’s first television interview in 17 years.
In a dear diary/dearie me moment, Scotland Tonight presenter Rona Dougall met the pair at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow to talk comedy beginnings, cult BBC sitcom The High Life, and the chances of a Victor and Barry comeback.
Next year will be the 40th anniversary of Victor and Barry’s Edinburgh fringe debut. To mark the occasion there will be a new book about Kelvinside - “a meander down Memory Close” says Masson - and a musical version of The High Life, written by Cumming and Masson for the National Theatre of Scotland.
After Victor and Barry sang their last comedy ditty, Cumming went on to live the high life for real, establishing a career in the US on stage (Cabaret), in film (GoldenEye) and on television (The Good Wife). Masson continued to act and write and is an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
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The two met when they were students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, now The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Victor and Barry made their debut at a cabaret night to entertain fellow students.
It was the mid-1980s, Glasgow was being born again as a capital of culture. Victor and Barry found their way on to television - STV as it happened - and became an instant hit with audiences.
“They took us to their hearts,” says Masson.
“They did,” recalls Cumming. “It’s so fascinating – of all the things I’ve done over the last 75,000 years, it’s always Victor & Barry or The High Life that people connect with when I come back here, and actually all over the world."
But asked if they would ever bring the characters back, it's a no from Masson.
“I think we’re still on the fence about it,” adds Cummings. "Obviously people have been asking us for years, but now it seems more likely as we’re bringing them back in some form. But actually, I think part of their ‘thing’ is their youth. It’s the fact that they’re pretending to be older people – that’s part of the humour of it, these young people being all world-weary. Now it would be two world-weary old farts.”
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“Exactly,” says Masson. That’s my concern. We’d have to be filled with Botox."
Victor and Barry were reinvented as air stewards Steve and Sebastian in The High Life. The move to the BBC was not a happy one, however.
“It was quite fraught," says Masson. "All of us in that show – Patrick [Ryecart], Siobhan [Redmond], Alan and I – were going through various traumas in our lives. We were all a bit mad and it was a bit pressurised.’
Cumming adds: “It’s that funny thing where people hire you because you’re weird and quirky, then as soon as they get you, they want to iron you out and make you generic and we railed against that. We had such a laugh when we were actually shooting it, but we were all a bit bonkers."
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Come the 1990s the two had parted ways with the BBC and each other. “There were lots of other things going on at the time. Life moves on and sometimes you have to let things go in order for other things to happen,” says Masson.
“We’d spent a lot of time together and went through a lot together," says Cumming. "When we killed Victor & Barry off, it was a very symbolic [moment]. It was at the London Palladium – Victor & Barry would have died to have died at the London Palladium, and so they did.
“We never fell out. I think we just needed a break from each other.”
“We just needed a bit of time,” agrees Masson.
Scotland Tonight: What Ever Happened to Victor & Barry? airs on STV and STV Player at 8:30pm on Thursday 7 September
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