Jonathan Trew: Brave can record their comic performance

WHEN PG Wodehouse quipped that it wasn’t difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine, he was simply adding to an already vast pile of slurs which cast the Scots as dour and more inclined to crack a tooth than a smile.

The evidence for the case against is convincingly made by Tickling Jocks, a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery featuring many of Scotland’s funniest comics.

The portraits of such luminaries as Rikki Fulton, Sir Stanley Baxter, Una McLean, Billy Connolly and Ronnie Corbett may not have you holding your aching ribs but the comedy booths, in which visitors can watch clips of the comedians, should provoke chuckles. The brave can use the booths to record their own comedy performance. Launching the exhibition tomorrow in the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Johnny Beattie will be in conversation with his actor daughter Maureen Beattie about some of the greats he has worked with.

Dance fans can also have their fancy tickled this weekend. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo will be shaving their stubble and forcing their feet into ballet pumps to perform their all-male take on classic ballet at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre this evening. More mainstream dance entertainment can be had at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow tomorrow as Strictly’s Brendan Cole demonstrates his Licence to Thrill.

The Glasgow Film Festival has its closing gala party tomorrow but not before screening a remarkable array of films today and tomorrow. As well as a Glasgow-wide Cinema City Treasure Hunt, expect Indian gangster epics, a documentary on disco and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150AD. Showing at the CCA this afternoon, Treasure from the Far Fur Country compiles footage shot by an intrepid camera crew which made a coast-to-coast journey across Canada in 1919. Featuring trappers and Inuits, it offers a glimpse into a long-gone world.

• www.nationalgalleries.org; www.edtheatres.com; www.glasgowfilm.org