Gary Goes to Hollywood

BBC1 Scotland, 10pm

****

Only An Excuse

BBC1 Scotland, 11pm

**

Lulu’s Hogmanay Hooley

STV, 11.30

**

SECURING a spot in the crowded Hogmanay schedule is tough. It takes a special kind of shameless, attention-seeking diva to squeeze their televisual bahookie between those old familiars Only an Excuse and Jackie Bird, and last night a man called Gary showed he has the twin cheeks for the job.

A cross between Liberace, Orville the Duck, and a sulky Fife teenager with a serious chip habit, Gary is the alter ego of actor Greg McHugh. The tank commander turned TV presenter is already Nicola Sturgeon’s favourite comedian, having reduced the First Minister and other political leaders to helpless giggling in his 2017 election interviews (“Donald Trump, deal wi him or dingy him?”), and now he’s out to conquer the rest of us.

In Gary Goes to Hollywood, he set off like some Caledonian Ruby Wax to discover why some Scots had swapped Tinseltown and other cities in the rain for the sunny uplands of LA. We all knew the answers (sun, money, opportunity) but that was not the point. The point was to give McHugh a playground and see if he could hack it on the jungle gym. He could.

His first stop was an interview with Stuart Macleod, the Peterhead half of the magic duo Barry and Stuart. In an early sign of the sly subversion running through the programme, his director Rod Tamime asked Greg if he was disappointed Barry was not around. “I don’t know either of them,” said Gary, “so no”. Later, he asked Stuart if he had in fact killed Barry.

His next more than willing “victim” was Karen Gillan, or “Karen Jumanji” as Greg called her, who was a good sport, laughing away as her fellow Scot’s atrocious driving nearly got them involved in several accidents. His interview with a yoga guru was a hoot (“From the get-go Mark was more than happy to show off his pointless moves … And it wisnae long before he was wasting my time an’ all”), but it was his meeting with Ross King that brought the big laughs home.

Showbiz reporter for Lorraine and “a man of indeterminate age”, King kindly gave Gary a tour of his fairly modest home. “He’s had a lot of work done, eh?” said Gary to camera later, a mischievous smile spreading across those chipmunk jowls. “His hoose looks amazin’.” King, no-one’s daftie, had the last laugh. Well worth a watch on catch-up.

Only An Excuse had two half decent laughs in it this year, which was two more than usual. The test of Jonathan Watson’s comedy is whether the sketches work even if you don’t have a clue who he is impersonating. It is not enough just to put in a pair of false teeth (Frank McAvennie) or adopt a Scouse accent (Steven Gerrard); there has to be a gag, otherwise it is simply a not terribly good impressions show.

Although just 30 minutes long this was no Fast Show. Some ideas started well, such as the Sportscene skit with “three, middle aged men wearing clothes far too tight for them”, only to be flogged to death. Elsewhere, other supposedly killer punchlines arrived dead on arrival, and no amount of canned laughter could revive them. Some of the supposed humour, including a monobrowed Celtic fan character with barely a tooth in his head, left a sour taste in the mouth.

Every now and then, however, a line would find the back of the net, and it was usually when the subject was not Scottish football related. Let’s face it, even the writers of Friends would struggle to mine zingers from the transfer window. Speaking of writers, it was notable that a whole football squad of them were listed in the end credits. Unless there are women on the team called Chris and Noddy, every one was male. Anyone think there’s a connection between a programme with increasingly limited appeal and a writing team straight outta the 1970s?

Lulu’s Hogmanay Hooley was a trip back to New Year’s Eve of old, when the only purpose of TV was to be so bad it finally sent you off to bed before alcohol poisoning set in. The venue looked like a school hall (it was Partick Burgh Hall, the credits revealed) that had made up to look like a nightclub. As you can imagine, it had all the atmosphere of a doctor’s waiting room during a norovirus outbreak. I wouldn’t say the audience looked bussed in, but if you looked closely you could probably see some of the dresses and dinner jackets still had the price tags on.

Give the audience their due, though. When the time came to pretend the bells were ringing (“3-2-1, Happy New Year!”) they played along with gusto. Either it was the real stuff in the many bottles littering tables, or we’ll be seeing a few of these faces at the Academy Awards next year.

Lulu, dressed in a black coat and white fedora, took us through songs old and new, mostly new. Wearing heels almost as tall as she was, she cantered across the too small stage like a Shetland pony who could have run the Derby if she had the room. Why such a tiny venue? This was the woman once cool enough to record with Bowie.

Her between songs patter was only of interest to anyone wondering which Lulu would turn up this evening. Was it wee Scots Lulu, or the London one, or the Stateside star? She went a whole 20 minutes before she unwrapped her Glesga twang. “You’ve come here tonight thinking, ‘We better go see hur cos she’s probably gaunny pop her clogs in a minute’, but no way!” Hilarious.

KT Tunstall did a rocking good turn in the guest slot, and the duet between the two women was the best thing in the programme. The singer of the global hit, Suddenly I See, graciously paid tribute to Lulu for “paving the way for people like me”. Quite. She deserved better.

After 50 minutes, it was mercifully time to go. Lulu had kept the best to last, a lusty rendition of Shout, and the crowd finally got to their feet. In Partick, on Planet Football, and on Hollywood Boulevard, it was time to say goodnight.