Chic Murray, by his daughter

TO BE honest, I'm in a Chic Murray frame of mind right from the off. Making an arrangement to meet the late comic's daughter had been trickier than expected, especially after she'd given me a phone number that was actually two numbers jumbled together. When I eventually track her down, she suggests a nursing home as a venue. "Probably you think I should be living here," says Annabelle Meredith. "Actually, it's my work."

So when my taxi is bumping along Edinburgh's new tramlines, it's easy to recall that classic Murray gag – Billy Connolly's all-time favourite – about the woman with the extraordinarily long nose. "I've nothing against long noses – they run in our family," remarked the great bunneted surrealist. When the woman hung her hooter in the air, she was able to say, with absolute certainty: "There's someone cooking cabbage in Manchester." But when she got it stuck in tramtracks, Murray had to come to the rescue: "I picked her up by the legs and wheeled her along to the depot."

Gratifyingly, Meredith, who meets me at the nursing home's entrance, has a standard-issue nose. Equally pleasingly, there's a strong facial resemblance to her father, something in her smile, the one Murray would use to evoke mild befuddlement while all around him were falling about laughing. Her badge says she's in charge of "social and leisure development". That means keeping the old folks entertained, and here her dad comes in useful. "We analyse humour," she says, and, of course, where Murray was concerned, timing – brilliant comic timing, the best in the business, according to some – was everything.

The timing is good right now for the Murray heritage industry. In the year just ending, he would have been 90. Next year will be the 25th anniversary of his death. A small industry but with potential for growth, it's also surprisingly competitive. On the Christmas shelves there are rival DVDs. Just Daft – The Comic Genius of Chic Murray is labelled "official edition" by the family – Murray's widow Maidie, now 87, Meredith and her elder brother Douglas – but the other one has upset them.

The Chic Murray Collection is an STV production, which has spun off from a telly tribute screened last Hogmanay, and the family complain that it's not worthy of him. Part of the problem, Meredith admits, is that the family weren't properly consulted about the STV tape. "As a comedian, we regarded Dad as having true class and we want anything bearing his name to have it, too," says Meredith. "And if you're asking if we're very protective of him, then yes we are, because as a father he was very protective of us."

What would Murray think, looking down on this battle for comedy fans' affection (and loot), with his gags serving as the ammo? He'd probably have been surprised that "I knocked and the woman opened the door in her night-dress – I thought to myself at the time, 'What a strange place to have a door'" had endured so long.

Chic Murray Enterprises – that's the family – have more jokes where that one came from. To mark the 25th anniversary of his passing, they're hoping to make available original Murray scripts, a CD and – completing this bumper pack for the aficionados of possibly the only man to come out of Greenock whose worldview has been likened to that of Salvador Dal – a commemorative bunnet.

The family have also given their blessing to a planned movie of his life and, although Robert Carlyle and Gregor Fisher have been touted for the role, Meredith says the leading contender is Still Game's Greg Hemphill. "He'd by very good as Dad, I think," she says. Hemphill is just about tall enough – Murray was 6ft 3in – but will have to perfect his ginger gait, very flat-footed, which Meredith has just demonstrated in the nursing home's cafeteria.

So what was it like having Chic Murray for a father? "Oh, I loved it. Chic and Maidie – a double-act in the variety days – were wonderful parents to Douglas and me. As a dad, he was very nurturing and loving and normal in that way but, yes, with his own brand of lunacy. I grew up being told I was Dale Evans – Roy Rogers's wife – and Douglas wasn't my brother but my sister.

"Christmases were always fantastic. Because my parents were often in panto right up until the last minute, they made them extra special. One of Dad's rituals involved the whole family flicking a balloon across the table, keeping it in the air for the duration of the meal." Did she ever get self-conscious about her father's odd profession? "Well, we were certainly classed as different. When we moved through to Edinburgh – this would be the 1950s – Dad's loan application to buy a flat was rejected because he was classed as a 'vagrant'. That really tickled him. Eventually we got a place, but I got rejected from one school in the city because I was from showbusiness people."

Meredith says life in that tenement with Murray wasn't a gag-a-minute. "As the old agent Johnnie Riscoe used to put it, Dad didn't say funny lines, he said lines funny. And the only time I remember him working on a routine at home was one Sunday morning when he was about to leave for Blackpool and he was still writing the one about the woman with the big nose at the breakfast table."

But of course the children could still be treated to exclusive performances of eccentricity and silliness, especially when their father encountered authority figures or bores.

"He loved lighting fires, especially with demands from the bank. Once, he phoned the manager to tell him what he was doing with the letter," says Meredith. "If he got collared by an 'eejit', he'd always make a sharp exit. In a hotel, he did this by saying he had to spend a penny, then climbing out the bathroom window. But our favourite of Dad's routines was when we were in the car and he'd pick the wrong eejit to ask for directions. We'd be in the back waiting for him to say, 'Do you know or don't you?' If the fool leaned on the car window, that was fatal. Dad would drive off and he'd tumble to the ground."

Although Murray suffered bad luck in his career – he won a spot on the 1956 Royal Variety Performance only for the show to be cancelled because of the Suez crisis – Meredith says he was philosophical about most things. "He was sensitive and could hurt deeply, but I never saw him depressed. He liked a drink, of course, but he was a funny drunk, especially when trying to fry an egg. And although he and Mum had technically divorced, he never stopped coming round and had been with her the night before he died."

With the rest of the family, Meredith is dedicated to keeping alive the comedy that so many of the greats rated so highly. Murray is of the generation of Scots entertainers – Stanley Baxter and Lex McLean are others – with gaping holes in their archives because TV performances were lost or wiped, but the new DVD has uncovered some footage feared gone for good, including Murray's nonsense song about "two lovers strolling down a coal-mine", and this has encouraged Meredith to step up the search.

She says: "We want to find the edition of The Good Old Days where Dad plays the violin: he carefully places a hankie on his right shoulder then the instrument on his left. There should hopefully be footage of him as a stuttering bus conductor, before the BBC stopped showing the sketch on PC grounds. And we'd love to track down his old routine about the firm of solicitors: Lunt, Hunt & … Cunningham."

&149 Just Daft: The Comic Genius of Chic Murray 14.99; Just Daft: The Chic Murray Story, 14.99; and Chic Murray's Funnyosities, 6.99.

IT'S THE WAY HE TOLD 'EM

"I got up this morning. I like to get up in the morning; it gives me the rest of the day to myself."

"This chap started talking to me about this and that, about which I know very little."

"I believe the minister's going to give a sermon today on the milk of human kindness. Well, I hope it's condensed."

"My next-door neighbour said, 'Is it OK if I use your lawnmower?' I replied, 'Certainly, just don't take it out of my garden.'

"My father was an Aberdonian and a more generous man you couldn't wish to meet. I have a gold watch that belonged to him. He sold it to me on his deathbed, so I wrote him a cheque – post-dated of course."

"I met this cowboy with a brown paper hat, paper waistcoat and paper trousers. He was wanted for rustling."

"I took up the bagpipes. There I was merrily marching round the room when my wife came upstairs. 'You'll have to do something about that noise,' she said. So I threw me shoes off and marched around in my stocking feet. Oh, you have to come and go in life."