The Scotsman Festival Sessions: Gregor Fisher's Fringe memories

Performing at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in almost half a century, Gregor Fisher recalls his previous run being “kick, bollock and scramble. We were in a church hall, badly lit and the sound was awful. But you know, it was exciting. And silly old bugger, [this year] I imagined I could relive my youth.”

The 72-year-old actor is somewhat critical of the 1980 sketch revue Play It Again, Tam, suggesting “Juliet Cadzow and I weren't very good at the tap dancing. We were in yellow sou'westers and oilskins and I think rather conceited at the time. We thought it was quite funny. And I suppose if you'd no confidence, you'd never get on stage. But I feel some of it was a little ropey.”

However, The Scotsman, and other publications, disagreed. This newspaper hailed the Borderline Theatre Company production from Morag Fullerton as “one of the funniest things I have seen on the Fringe”, awarding it a Fringe First. Invited to a lunch that the paper held for artists, a starstruck Fisher found himself sitting next to Dame Peggy Ashcroft, “a doyenne of the British theatre, the crème de la crème!”

He approximates her cut-glass, RP vowels to recall her generously fibbing: “Oh yes, I think I've heard of that” when he told her what he was in. And when he asked about her preparation for Watch on the Rhine at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, she said: “It doesn't get any better does it? I still have a bucket on each side of the stage and before my first entrance, I will always ... you know ...”

“And I was thinking, 'God, is she saying she has bladder trouble or something?'”

“But no: ‘I still vomit!’”

“And I thought ‘Jesus, what this woman has achieved in the theatre! Is this my future?’”

Happily for him though, the stories he shares in his 2026 Fringe show An (Early) Evening With Gregor Fisher, from working with the likes of Richard Burton, Al Pacino and Rikki Fulton, not to mention meeting his wife Vicki Burton in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, are testimony to a career well lived. His onstage interlocutor, theatre director Nigel West, likes to throw him “the odd, unexpected curveball”. But “if you don't get slightly nervous in this game, you're in the wrong job.”

Fisher’s widely admired BBC sitcom Only Child will not be returning for a third series, but he's in six episodes of Shetland, “so I'll let you guess if I'm the corpse”.

He’s enjoyed a recent online reinvention as a celebrity cook, making potato scones and Basque cheesecake: (“it’s been great fun doing it with my daughter Cissie, rather than some bossy bloody director”) and he's discussing a culinary tome with journalist Melanie Reid, who ghost wrote his 2015 memoir about his troubled Glasgow childhood: “I've survived, despite all the obstacles” he grins.

But what of his most famous character, Rab C Nesbitt, whom he recently resurrected to wish the Scottish football team good luck at the World Cup? Lately, Fisher's been coyly teasing “never say never” for a bigger return for the scurrilous, string-vested sage. He offers an “exclusive”.

“Never. Not going to happen. It was good fun. And it's gratifying that he hasn't been forgotten. But it was of its time. I certainly don't miss filming in November, when it was snowing, leaving my nipples poking through that vest at a 45-degree angle!”

Gregor Fisher: An (Early) Evening with Gregor Fisher is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot (Debating Hall), Edinburgh, until 30 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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