No, not him

In which I reluctantly admit I wasn't that impressed by the TV debut of Glasgow's greatest. If you don't have the time or the inclination to read this lukewarm review, the summary is as follows: It was by no means shite but he's not really made for TV. Enlightening, I know. Hit iPlayer and see for yourself - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hk9bb/Limmys_Show_Episode_1/

Published in The Student, February 2009.

The internet is a wondrous thing. Where else would you see a haggard Glaswegian man terrorising little girls over the phone, bleeding from the face and making violent threats against Davina McCall while dressed in drag? Well, Glasgow, but now you can also find such horrors on BBC2 Scotland, thanks to the TV debut of online comedy head case, Brian Limond (aka Limmy).

Over the years, Limmy’s sporadic output of bizarre, disturbing and hilarious three-minute clips has earned him a fiercely loyal online fan base, turning him into something of a Central Belt local hero. He’s always been one to get involved with his audience, often wading into petty bitching wars on his comments boards, so when it was announced last year that he was to dip his toe into the rather stagnant pool of Scottish television comedy, the weight of expectation from his online admirers was enormous. Counting myself among them, I reluctantly admit I was a little disappointed.

For the most part, the sketches in Limmy’s Show are lifted directly from his immensely successful 2008 Fringe show of the same imaginative name, so while this means the quality is generally fairly high, they lack the unpolished spontaneity of both the live spectacle and the appealingly scrappy web videos. The programme often finds itself in danger of coming across as one big in-joke, and when Limmy addresses the camera, you know it’s that formidable online audience he’s talking to. While there’s nothing wrong with the odd bout of crowd-pleasing, the show has a tendency to lapse into nonsensical self-indulgence that may rouse a fond, unquestioning laugh from the cult of Limmy but when you consider this is a pilot, some crucial new viewers could easily lose patience. What’s more, the usually authentic tone of his bitter, indignant rants is occasionally lost in the filter of BBC production and instead we get a visibly strained attempt to seem genuinely pissed off.

By no means does all this mean it’s a bad show. It’s certainly no criticism to say that it’s reminiscent of a more twisted version of The Armando Iannucci Shows; there’s a similar blend of observational grumbling and off the wall surrealism, except rather than subtlety and social awkwardness, it’s apparently driven by Limmy’s numerous psychopathic fixations. It’s when the creator displays his talent for comedy and morbidity that the show comes into its own; there’s a brilliantly harrowing series of nightmares involving domestic accidents, some spontaneous toddler-punching and I can think of no other comedian able to get such great results simply from sobbing at the camera, ‘it’s mum, she’s had her head kicked in’. The end result resembles the worst tourist video Glasgow’s ever had and it’s undoubtedly worth your time, if a little off target.