00:00I'm part of the Alistair Gray Project, which is celebrating, I think, probably one of Scotland's
00:05greatest artists, if not the world's. He captured a time and place in Glasgow and
00:11Anbar in his art and his writing and it's really exciting to get to celebrate that.
00:17I kind of want to honour him, his work and the stories within it and at the same time
00:24honour where I come from, so I might be doing some form of a voiceover with his paintings,
00:30maybe giving some voices to some of his murals. I grew up in the east end of Glasgow but I went
00:35to school in the west end and my parents, when I was very little, were super conscious that I was
00:40coming from this place of... I lived in a cupboards in a flat above a pub, like Harry Potter, but then
00:47they sent me to this private school in the west end. They used to take me to the breakfast chip
00:51and the staff there would teach me how to eat with knife and fork, silver service style,
00:56and they taught me about forks, knives and butter knives and crab tongs and stuff like that and I
01:02would always see Alistair Gray's paintings on the wall in the chip of the patrons and I was always
01:08so curious about it and then when Oranmore opened and I got to see his paintings there and then I
01:13would see them all over the place and I didn't know who he was and when I saw a picture of him
01:17I was like, oh I know that guy! I used to see him when I would walk about the west end by myself
01:23as a child. I remember that man, he was really nice to me. He's had a huge influence on me but
01:28also he's just like, he's very real, he's very approachable, not as a person but just as an
01:36idea, he's approachable. A lot of artists you kind of don't understand where they're coming from but
01:39him you can completely see his point of view. The school I went to has been closed down,
01:44the only remnants of it is a mural that he painted on Hillhead Underground. It's always exciting to
01:51be part of Glasgow Comedy Festival. This was a huge thing for my mum, the Glasgow Comedy Festival
01:58and I knew even though I wasn't going to be doing stand-up at it, I wanted to. I wanted to be
02:03involved somehow to honour her as well as Alistair. So I love the Glasgow Comedy Festival, it's super
02:11important to support it. It supports us, there's not a lot of places for people with our voices
02:16and this comedy festival has always supported our voices so yeah, I love it.
02:22Were you here when your mum got the award? Yeah, I was outside, I didn't come in, I was so nervous.
02:28I was like, this is going to be really awkward if she doesn't win.
02:30She didn't know in advance? No, no, it was a big secret. I was really anxious for her
02:36but I waited outside and then we had a lovely night that night celebrating her and it's one
02:42of my favourite clips of footage of her is when she got that award because she got recognition
02:48and that was really nice for her. I think she'd just be glad that I've kept working,
02:52that seemed to be her big main drive at the end of her life was don't you stop working.
02:56It's like right, okay, mum. Scottish Baftas were a blur, I honestly don't remember most of it.
03:03I remember I met a guy at the Game of Thrones, got so excited, forgot I'd won a Bafta,
03:07anything, I was like, it's Podrick Payne and everybody was like you need to calm down,
03:11actually that's awfully weird and that's basically what I remember about that night.
03:16Also I had to keep secret that we had a second season commissioned for Dinosaur and you know,
03:22because it's a co-production between Hulu and BBC, there's a lot of people in charge that I'm
03:28scared of doing something wrong so it's very anxiety riddled but also super exciting and
03:36it was very special and then getting to tell everybody that we're getting a second series,
03:40that we're bringing, it's not just like oh I'm getting to make another bit of telly,
03:45it's I'm getting to make a bit of telly where people who make telly in Glasgow can have jobs
03:51and actors can have jobs and everybody can get a bit of work and I always think that's a nice
03:57knowing that you're bringing a bit of industry. And it's not easy to make TV these days or even
04:01to make new Scottish comedies. Yeah I'm definitely pleased we've got a new series but it is
04:06incredibly hard to get anything put on Scottish telling. I studied filmmaking and I'm in my 30s
04:14and this is the first thing I've ever made properly that's scripted, that's got any money
04:19behind it and that's been more pitching every year since I was 18, pitching radio shows,
04:25pitching telly shows, pitching constantly, just throwing anything at a lawn being like oh here's
04:30a thing set in an island about fishermen, no do you know like that, here's a thing set in a farm
04:33about farmers, do you know like that, here's a paleontologist. So just throwing everything
04:38and constantly trying. Have you got any other ideas or are you really focused on this for the
04:43time being? No I've got hundreds of things in my head. I'm working on a crime drama which is
04:49dead exciting because I love crime, it's my favourite genre of television. I want to bring
04:53back the bell at some point, that's my dream. Hopefully I can convince somebody to say it's
04:58not a bell. I want to hear it again. I've got hundreds of ideas in my head and I'm just constantly
05:06flying them at you, would you like that? So you'd be very much taking it home with you to keep
05:09working? Yeah definitely. I can feel a ghost dipping at my nose whenever I slow down slightly.
05:15Do you think comedy is valued as it should be in Scotland these days or is it a bit undervalued?
05:20I think comedy is definitely valued. I think the internet helped immensely. I think for a
05:25really long time the media told us, oh nobody understands you, nobody knows what you're saying
05:32and then we put videos on the internet of people in America, like that's hilarious. I'm like he
05:37understood what I said, maybe you don't but he did and he lives in Louisiana so it does work
05:44and I think that that's proof of the amount of online creators who come from Scotland
05:49who are killing it on the internet and are getting like 40 million views on videos when
05:55it can't just all be Scotch people, there's only like 6 million of us so it must be other folk
06:00as well. If anyone has not been to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival before,
06:05somehow, what would you advise to them? If you're coming to the Glasgow International Comedy
06:10Festival, see some local comedy, see Christopher MacArthur Boyd, see Roscoe, see Rachel Jackson,
06:16there's nobody like them, they're different, they're funny, they're weird. See something weird,
06:22don't see something off the telly, see something that you've not seen on the telly and then it'll
06:26get put on the telly and then it'll get ruined by the telly because that's the telly. You'll like it!
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