The comedy series that helped make Gerard Kelly a household name is to be screened this Christmas as part of BBC's Scotland's festive line-up.
The Glasgow set City Lights followed the life of hapless bank clerk Willie Melvin and his dreams of becoming a successful writer. It ran from 1984 to 1991 and also starred Elaine C Smith, Jonathan Watson, Dave Anderson and Andy Gray.
In 2013, writer Bob Black, who also worked on Scotch & Wry and Naked Video, said in an interview: “It seemed to find a place in the national psyche…as one of the first Scottish-based comedies with Scottish accents and very visible Scottish actors, it made an impression."
The series featured a Christmas special starring Billy Connolly as an angel in a spoof of the seasonal classic, It's A Wonderful Life.
It is also credited with coining the catchphrase, "pure dead brilliant" which was later adopted by Prestwick Airport in its brand advertising.
The sitcom ran for six series until 1991, and led to two successful stage shows featuring the original cast that toured Scotland.
Gerard Kelly died in October 2010 at the age of 51 after a career that also took on more serious roles including PC David Gallagher in Juliet Bravo and soap villains Jimmy in EastEnders and Callum Finnegan in Brookside.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel