The directors of Billy Connolly's latest movie, which was shot in Scotland last year, have said the ­country would benefit from having its own film studio in Glasgow.

The comedy drama What We Did On Our Holiday was shot largely on location last summer, in locations such as Blair Drummond Safari Park, Brenachoile Pier in Loch Katrine and at Red Point Beach, Gairloch.

The movie, released tomorrow, also stars David Tennant, Ben Miller and Rosamund Pike. It was written and directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the team behind the popular BBC series Outnumbered.

Scottish Enterprise is currently considering several bids to build a film studio in Scotland, near or in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Hamilton said yesterday: "Scotland is a very good place to film, particularly if like ours you are filming on location. It has wonderful landscapes and wonderful light and a lot of it in the summer. It would work in Glasgow, because you are only 40 minutes away from Loch Katrine there, for example.

"Very often what dictates a lot of cost is how far away you are from your base, so I would have thought it could be a really interesting commercial proposition for someone."

On Connolly, Hamilton said: "It was brilliant working with him. You spend time between take trading ­anecdotes, and he probably has the finest collection in the world.

"He is great with crew and cast, and especially with the kids he was like a wonderful, mischievous Father Christmas figure - the kids loved being around him and he around them. We had no idea at the times that he had problems with his health - he did not mention it, he was stoic."

The pair said the film - about a Scottish family with members living in London re-uniting - was written well before the ­independence referendum and any metaphorical readings of the plot were entirely accidental.

Jenkin stressed: "We did not write it as an allegory about a family splitting apart, or as someone who has chosen to go away."

The film was always set in Scotland, said Hamilton, adding: "We wanted a landscape which could be a character, kind of like they have in a Western, and the Highlands were the nearest we could get to that."