Comedy review: Vladimir McTavish

Published on Wednesday 22 April 2009 20:02

*** THE STAND, EDINBURGH

IN OUR list-obsessed cultural landscape, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of staging a comedic rundown of hot Scots. And if Vladimir McTavish's Top 50 Greatest Scots of All Time… Ever! is a true indication of the Jock scene, then we're all a bunch of drunk inventors who can't stop setting fire to things.

The neat link between David Byrne (the Dumbarton-born Talking Head who made Burning Down the House) and Kenny Richey (the Scot who was put on Death Row in the US for doing just that) was one of too few cunning segues in the show, while ironic observations about the number of legendary medics born or educated on these shores clashing against Scotland's status as a health hellhole were disappointingly thin on the ground.

Paul Sneddon is the man behind both McTavish (a blonde-spiked cross between Rod Stewart and Oor Wullie) and booze-sodden football pundit Bob Doolally, and the latter was recalled during the impressive lager and spirit-fuelled reconstruction of Scotland's interpretation of "going for just the one drink".

Even when confronted by such a deliberately mischievous list (Barack Obama? Elvis Presley?), there were those who might have picked holes in the selection: Smeato got in there, but the Big Yin didn't; Mary Queen of Scots featured, but there was no place for Lorraine Kelly.

Yet McTavish's finale, in which he hails his No 1 Scot, hinted that he's not simply playing the game for laughs.