Judy Murray is calling from Melbourne, where son Andy is competing in the Australian Open. Outside of family commitments, she says the last ten years have been about “doing things that are fun, stepping into other people's world and getting away from tennis for a bit.”
What started as a single sketch for BBC Scotland, written by comedian Chris Forbes, grew into an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. Now, The Duncan and Judy Show follows a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival with a Mother’s Day date at the Glasgow Comedy Festival.
Judy plays an exaggerated version of herself alongside Forbes as a hapless imagined third Murray brother: “It’s become this persona on social media, I think he attracts a lot of Andy and Jamie tennis fans. Jamie has met Chris as Duncan, Andy hasn’t yet but they think it’s good fun and if I’m happy, they’re happy.”
“The show is a variety performance that Duncan is putting on to impress me, we’ve a number of special guests coming to join us. I’ve just got to sit there and look disappointed. Chris is a fantastic writer, what he has put together is absolutely hilarious.
“Des Clarke is our host, who I know well. What makes it funnier in a live setting is we don’t know all the things Chris is going to do. A lot of the time I am genuinely shocked by what he says and I have to try to keep a straight-face.”
Judy is following the twin trajectories of taking new opportunities while cutting back on work, which means she is finding more time to travel around Scotland. “I probably know my way by the tennis clubs after so many years of trekking around the country”, she says. “I love Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, which is not far from where I live. I enjoy spending time around there. I go to the Isle of Eriska, close to Oban, if I want complete peace and quiet.
“I’ve just started playing golf and I think, now that I have more time for myself, I want to go up to Royal Dornach and I want to go to Skye. I’m going to really enjoy exploring Scotland’s great golf courses. There’s a lot of places on my list.”
The Duncan and Judy Murray Show is at The King’s Theatre on Sunday 19 March. This feature was first published in the February edition of Best of Scotland magazine.
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 here