Interview: Limmy on being a dad and his Overwatch addiction

Fresh off the commute from Glasgow, Brian Limond, aka Limmy gets in one question before we begin our interview.
Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John DevlinBrian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin
Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin

The TV, radio and internet personality is in Edinburgh to talk about his second book, That’s Your Lot.

Away from the swarming Edinburgh streets, we’ve sought refuge in the old Charlotte Chapel, now the Rose Theatre Edinburgh, operated by Gilded Balloon for the duration of the Festival.

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Given the spiritual undertones of the location for our chat, it should have come as no surprise when he asks, “When was the last time you went to confession.”

Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John DevlinBrian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin
Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin

With a full name like Anthony Joseph Patrick McGuire, there’s very little wiggle-room to weasel out of that confession. Let’s just say it’s been a while.

As for his own confession, you can hear all 12 minutes of it in the video above.

Limmy spills the beans on the stresses of being a dad, the importance of “self-imposed solitary confinement” and the lengths he would go to crack his Overwatch addiction.

“I’d have to split myself into two,” he says, “so one of me has to look after the other one.

Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John DevlinBrian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin
Brian "Limmy" Limond. Picture: John Devlin

“One of me has to be like the one that opens up the bottle of toddy and pours them down the sink and finds the bottles of booze planted about.”

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The Glaswegian doesn’t shed a tear for the loss of Twitter’s obsolete 6-second video app Vine, on which he shot more than 600 vines.

“I’m not bothered,” he says, “I’d already stopped.”

“By the time I’d got to the 600th vine - about the 1-hour mark - and I thought, ‘I think I’ll make a wee compilation on Youtube’.

“So I put them all together and that was an hour long and I thought, ‘the next video you do will be another 600 vines - what are the chances of you topping some of the things that went down really well?’”

The former web-developer pulled no punches talking about HTML five replacing Flash and went into meticulous detail explaining how he keeps up with Twitter - despite only following his girlfriend.

Limmy envisioned something a bit darker for the short stories of his second book, That’s Your Lot, akin to the obscurity of The Twilight Zone and Stranger Things.

“I was reading stories by Raymond Carver,” he explains, “and some of his stuff sort of ended abruptly here and there, where in other short stories that I’ve read have a bit of an ending, a climax, a twist or something like that.

Carver’s short stories relieved Limmy of the pressure to find a punchline or a big finale to all his stories.

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“A lot of them have got something along the lines of a punchline,” he clarifies, “or a twist, or… ‘that’s the end of that’.

“Whereas, with some of the other ones I just went, just make it THAT’.

“Just make it about the middle, rather than the end - about what’s happening in the middle, rather than ‘where’s this leading?’”

• That’s Your Lot is available in bookstores now

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