Mr Scotland

by David McVey

My Grandad always said that the Phoney War was worse than the real thing. And he should have known, if anyone did. After it all kicked off, he was whisked from the beach at Dunkirk at the last minute and went on to serve in North Africa, Italy and France before his arm stopped a bullet in the Ardennes.

‘Aye,’ he’d say as he showed us the bullet-wound scar, ‘that was nothing. Sitting on the Maginot Line, that was the worst. No knowing when the Nazis were gonnae come storming through. And that fear at the back o yer mind that the top brass might send George Formby tae entertain us.’

The toothsome banjolele-meister was one of Grandad’s besetting demons, along with Hitler, Thatcher and referees who caved in to the Old Firm. ‘Bloody lang streak o pish he wis. No a funny bone in his body. He was jist the officer class’s idea o what the other ranks liked. They should have sent Margaret Lockwood or Vivien Leigh. We’d’ve been happy to see them.’

I re-used a lot of Grandad’s splenetic put-downs as I scraped a living doing gig reviews for papers and mags, enduring a succession of dire comedians - or stand-up artists as they styled themselves. Stand-up: yes, I’d have willingly stood up each one before a firing squad and given the order myself. Then no longer would they spout the swear words they’d learned from the poorer kids at school as if they were badges of coolness. Silenced would be their withering criticism of other people’s fashion sense, their corpsing as they described their bodily functions and their endless witterings about how SEXIST! everyone was in the 1970s (before they were born).

A few months back, in the hope of something better, I visited the Arts Editor of a Glasgow daily. With the air of trying to get rid of me, he casually passed me a review ticket to a show. The ticket simply gave a date, time and venue, and the heading: