It's bams beware as Jack Docherty, Scot Squad's The Chief, takes charge of his own sitcom on BBC Scotland

What do you get if you cross Robbie Williams in his Better Man premier head to toe faux fur coat with Scot Squad’s Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson? Jack Docherty standing in the Barrowland bar in Glasgow, where the kind staff have given us shelter from the rain.

In the gloom of the empty venue with the neon lights casting a red glow, with his impressive coat 62-year-old Docherty looks like a gangster boss about to mete out another kind of justice. But shout ‘Bearing!’ as they do on set, and he shoots up to full height, back ramrod straight and shoulders back and he is The Chief, commanding attention while smiling benevolently and happy to apologise for whatever he may, or may not, have said. Absolutely.

So how would Miekelson react to having his own series, the new BBC Scotland sitcom, The Chief, a Scot Squad spin-off of four episodes produced by Rab Christie and directed by Iain Davidson which airs from Thursday.

Jack Docherty, writer, actor, presenter and producer, stars in sitcom The Chief, a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Scotland comedy, Scot Squad. With thanks to The Barrowland Ballroom. | BBC

“That’s the way he thinks things should be,” says Docherty, who first made his name with the sketch show Absolutely for Channel 4, wrote for Spitting Image, Alas Smith and Jones, The Lenny Henry Show and Vic Reeves Big Night Out, and at the end of the Nineties hosted a nightly chat show. Decades of writing and producing followed but since Scot Squad he’s acting too and now ‘numero uno’ in his own sitcom, so it’s bams beware.

Jack Docherty as Chief Commissioner Cameron Meikelson. The Scot Squad police chief now has his own spin-off series. | Jamie Simpson

Written by and starring Docherty, The Chief focuses on Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson as he goes about his daily duties, steering a confident yet perilous course through his working life, dealing with colleagues (the cast of regulars including Carmen Pieraccini, Beruce Khan, Rhona Cameron, Lana Pheutan, Dylan Blore, Jamie MacDonald, Martin Docherty, Amy Conachan and Connie McLaughlin), office politics and bams, while striving to remain relevant. It also follows him home to his domestic domain where we meet his climate change daughter Ellie, played by Eilidh Loan, and ex-wife Barbara, played by Deacon Blue’s Lorraine McIntosh.

Jack Docherty dropped out of university to work in comedy, and is now starring in The Chief, a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Scotland comedy, Scot Squad. With thanks to The Barrowland Ballroom. | John Devlin

Docherty has been playing Miekelson in the BAFTA-winning Scot Squad since 2014 and the character has evolved over the years.

“He’s become more Trumpian I think,” says Docherty. “He’s become a little bit wilder. More secure in his own views. He kind of took over.”

Policing is in Docherty’s family as one of his grandfathers was a police officer, but the inspiration for Miekelson actually comes from his father.

“He’s like my father. His whole bearing. His whole way of speaking. His whole ‘it’s not the done thing, there’s only one way of doing a thing in the world, and it’s my way’. My dad was one of those guys.

“He was a bank manager at The Royal Bank in St Andrew Square, their head office in Edinburgh, so I used to have to ask for an overdraft from my dad, which was quite tricky.

Did Docherty senior agree to the loan?

“Yeah, he gave me a small one,” smiles Docherty. “But he used to follow my movements by wherever I was withdrawing money. ‘He’s taken £50 in St Andrews at three in the morning, what’s he doing in St Andrews?’ It was like he had a map, following me touring around, wasting my life away…”

Far from wasting his life away, Docherty was writing himself a new one after dropping out of law school in Aberdeen at 20 and heading to London to write comedy for the BBC with his friend and comedy partner Murray Hunter, having first performed at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with comedy sketch group The Bodgers which he formed with George Watson’s College schoolfriends Moray Hunter, Gordon Kennedy and Peter Baikie. Channel 4’s Absolutely and years of writing and producing followed before Docherty was enticed back into performing with Scot Squad.

“I hadn’t acted for 15 years before I came back to this. From the turn of the century to this I didn’t really act at all.”

Such is the success of the award-winning Scot Squad that The Chief and his team have entered the national consciousness - The Chief interviewed Scottish party leaders ahead of the 2019 General election - and Docherty was nominated for a Scottish Bafta for best actor in 2022.

“I know!” he laughs. “I didn’t even consider myself to be an actor.”

Once he’d put the uniform on, he realised how much he enjoyed performing again, and playing Miekelson in particular.

Jack Docherty as Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson in The Chief. | BBC

“I was literally on set thinking ‘why did I stop doing this? It’s a lot of fun’. Because it’s improvised, so loose, I think he just developed as a comic character. He’s got more sure. He thinks he’s the greatest leader of men - he really should be king - but in reality he shouldn’t even be in charge of buying the photocopier. He has an idea, the idea doesn’t work, he blames the idea. Which a lot of leaders do.”

He might have a tendency to put his foot in it but Miekelson is a wily old operator who is determined to cling onto his position, keeping on the right side of the Minister for Justice, an excellent Rhona Cameron, and embracing opportunities such as a new government scheme that offers ex-offenders a job in the police force - what could possibly go wrong?

Jack Docherty is leading The Chief into his own sitcom, a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Scotland comedy, Scot Squad. With thanks to The Barrowland Ballroom. | John Devlin

“He’s trying to be very PC and do the right thing because he wants to survive. It’s better if he’s supporting that, and it’s more inclusive, than the other comic path which is to take the p*** out of it and go ‘oh, pronouns’. Whereas he embraces it but gets it wrong. He’s not going ‘oh gender neutral toilets is ridiculous’, he says it’s a great thing - although you wouldn’t want to go in after big Steve from ballistics obviously.”

For all his pomposity and ridiculousness Miekelson does represent an older generation, willing but struggling to keep up with change.

“Change is a good thing,” says Docherty. “We have to adapt and it’s always better to go to the young people and listen to the people who are living whatever it is that they want to change, so it’s up to us to not go, ‘oh don’t be ridiculous’ but to go ‘right ok, I hadn’t thought of it like that’.

Following Miekelson home from the office allows The Chief to explore wider issues out of uniform, although Docherty admits he on occasion wore the uniform at home during lockdown when his kids were filming sketches of him playing The Chief. Going viral, these saw international police departments getting in touch “like the Seattle police force said we’d love you to be our chief of police, which is great”. He also gets the occasional discreet nod from police officers when he’s out and about.

“So for the sitcom we debated whether it should just be office life or home life as well, and I think it works well when they combine,” says Docherty. “And the cast are all brilliant. Lorraine McIntosh as his ex-wife Barbara, she’s so funny. And Eilidh who plays my daughter, a climate change activist and avenging angel, his conscience, she’s fabulous. I hope we get more series to explore his relationships.

For Docherty the best thing about The Chief is his certainty.

Jack Docherty as Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson and his ex-wife Barbara, played by Lorraine McIntosh. | Alan Peebles Photography

“There’s something great in comedy when you are just certain you’re right and you’re not. Again, that’s my dad.”

Was Docherty senior aware of his role in influencing his portrayal of The Chief?

“No, he died 16 years ago,” says Docherty, “but in Absolutely a lot of characters I played were kind of based on him. He used to phone me up after the show and say ‘I’m going to sue you, this is ridiculous, you’re taking my life! Expect to hear from my lawyer! - who happens to be your sister’. Docherty laughs.

His mum is a big fan of The Chief. “Well, she’s my mum,” says Docherty. “She’s 90 now, but a big supporter, although I think because it’s so like my dad it makes her miss him a bit. Because of that whole Jean thing with his assistant - my mum’s name is Joan, and I remember him shouting ‘Joan! Get me a biscuit!’”

“I like Miekelson’s mind as well,” he continues. “I think like him when we’re improvising - for example the ‘safe drug’ thing, he says, ‘that’s a good idea to have somewhere safe for wee jakies to shoot up’ and goes on a riff that ‘maybe there should be ‘safe burglary rooms. We’ve got all the seized goods, why don’t we put them in a big house and all the burglars can come and steal the stuff that’s already stolen?’ There’s part of me that goes actually that’s not a bad idea and the number of times we’ve done stuff then two years later it turns out that that’s what they’re doing, it’s amazing.”

So might we see Police Scotland going for some of his budget cutting ideas?

“Thinner horses, or smaller dogs, what’s the better option? Belts! Do we all need a belt? Hat sharing!”

Jack Docherty as Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson with Carmen Pieraccini as his loyal deputy, DCC Katriona Muldoon | Jamie Simpson

If Docherty were to describe The Chief in three words, what would they be?

Scotland’s Top Cop. Or World’s Top Cop. He might elevate it to that.”

And for himself?

“Very, very secretive.”

He may say he’s secretive but he’s a great raconteur and happy to talk about his upbringing and how he knows about Miekelson’s world of golf and rugby and influence.

“The world of golf and rugby, well I grew up in it, you know. Kinda.”

First there was his grandparents’ council flat in Edinburgh’s Warriston - his grandfather a cab driver - then he and his sister were sent to private school when they reached secondary age.

“I went to a public school in Edinburgh, George Watson’s, but obviously a local primary school, to give me some credibility. I’m not posh, I’m clever,” he jokes.

“So I was thrown into that world and I think that’s why I find it quite funny. You can slightly see it from the outside. You go from a local school that’s a football school and into this school that’s playing rugby it’s just a different world. I was in the same year as Gavin Hastings so they were really good players. But you're a bit distanced and can see what’s funny with it, people in the Murrayfield car park having a picnic. That’s The Chief’s world, and it’s sort of ridiculous. It still totally exists. Everybody knows that world even if they’re not part of it.”

Does Docherty get feedback from people in that world?

“Yeah, they do find it funny. People say about Scot Squad I love that show, that guy that speaks in that posh voice, and you go yeah….’ Regardez.”

Jack Docherty stars in the new sitcom The Chief, which follows him at work and home. With thanks to The Barrowland Ballroom. | John Devlin

“What we want to do in The Chief is get different worlds coming together. So Miekelson’s deputy Katrina (Carmen Pieraccini) has come up through the ranks and is from a council estate and is a proper cop. He’s paranoid she’s going to take his job, even though she doesn’t want it.”

Was he funny at school?

“I’d probably say I wasn’t. I was quite attention seeking. I wouldn’t like the person I was back then. No. I do an attention seeking job but I’m not like that,” he says.

What about his decision to leave Aberdeen University Law school at the end of his second year, does he ever regret it?

“Not in the slightest, no. There were four of us and we rented a house and it was like The Young Ones. We smashed up the chairs to burn and stuff - it was mayhem. Three of them were kicked out after one year and I managed to stay for another and I remember reading a case on the common ownership of tenement drainpipes and thinking I’m not entirely convinced this is my life. I walked out of the exam right in the middle, thinking ‘f*** this, I’m done’, and left.

“Fortunately that summer Murray [Hunter] and I were offered our first job in television and got a year’s scholarship at the BBC to write for radio. The fact that me and a bunch of school friends got a television show, Absolutely, was like being in a band and getting an album deal. It was an amazing time.”

However successful Docherty has turned out to be, being freelance comes with its own pressures.

“At time’s it’s been ‘oh shit, where’s the next gig coming from’ but fortunately I’ve been pretty lucky. I think it’s because I write as well and produce, so it’s not all in one basket.”

Looking back, is there anything he would have done differently?

“I could have worked a bit harder or chased things a bit more aggressively. I’m a bit like flotsam. Things sort of come to me rather than I’ve sought them out, like The Chief. I probably wouldn't have gone back to performing in Scot Squad had they not phoned me up to play The Chief. I kind of stumbled into it. I wasn’t looking to act but I thought, why not?”

Jack Docherty has been playing Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson in Scot Squad since 2014. With thanks to The Barrowland Ballroom. | John Devlin

Looking forward Docherty is heading to Australia for a five week run performing his show David Bowie and Me - Parallel Lives which he did at the Edinburgh Festival in 2022, inspired by his meeting the singer on his chat show in 1999.

“The show’s about that, that you actually should meet your heroes, because it was great. People you loved when you were younger, so I’ve met Monty Python, two of the Beatles, Bowie - there’s a little child inside going ‘it’s actually him’. The fun was meeting all of these people, but I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin doing that job. I prefer doing comedy, and writing it.”

Docherty is also working on a comedy drama TV script for Various Artists, run by Jesse Armstrong (creator and showrunner of the HBO series Succession) and Sam Bain, adapted from his 2021 Fringe show Nothing But, and is might tour The Chief live, including at the Edinburgh Festival.

“My life’s been one very long weekend. I just dropped out of uni and that was it. It was Friday. and it’s been Friday ever since, which is a great way to live a life. I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.”

The Chief starts on Thursday, 20 February on BBC Scotland at 10pm. All four episodes are available on BBC iPlayer from the 20th.

CREDIT: WITH THANKS TO EVERYONE AT THE BARROWLAND, GLASGOW.