The old ones are still the best

STAND-UP comedy has finally come of age - pensionable age that is. Arnold Brown, the grandmaster of what we used to call ‘alternative comedy’ is now 65 and at a time in life when most ex-accountants would be making the most of their free bus pass he’s embarking on his first-ever tour of Scotland and acting alongside Ewan McGregor.

Perhaps it’s because he was a late starter. Brown didn’t take to the stage until he was the ripe old age of 42 - and by all accounts (his own included) wasn’t very good.

"I remember one of my first gigs someone threw a glass ashtray at me," deadpans Brown. "But I managed to dodge it just at the last minute." He leaves one of his famous pauses. "That’s a very important element of comedy." Another pause. "Timing."

It may be a joke, but there’s a great deal of truth behind it. It’s easy to see why Brown’s unique style proved so hard to take for some punters. He started his career in a strip club in Soho, Raymond’s Revue Bar, which started a cabaret evening in 1980.

In between the shouty socialism of Alexei Sayle and the frenzied splatstick of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson a wry, middle-aged accountant would come on and try to deliver his oblique one-liners. "Scottish and Jewish, two racial stereotypes for the price of one," Brown would note. "Probably the best value in the West End tonight."

Brown is still proud of being the odd man out of a very odd crowd. "Even though I was years older than any of them I was the breathing space between the OTT comedy of Alexei and Rik and Adrian’s Beckett-meets-Morecambe and Wise stuff," he recalls. "I was more slow burning and had more honed lines because they were very much into performance, whereas I had hardly performed before."

Brown honed his one-liners when he was still an accountant, dropping jokes into the BBC on his way to work hoping they would be used in Radio Four’s satirical Weekending show. "I wasn’t the funniest comedian around, but at least I was as idiosyncratic as anyone in the country," he says proudly.

He still is. While many of Brown’s contemporaries have become shrill parodies of themselves (Ben Elton anyone?) Old Grandfather Timing keeps on ticking. "I like chasing jokes," says Brown. "If I didn’t get the buzz I couldn’t do it anymore."

Brown’s sporadic film work is never likely to replace live comedy in his affections. Earlier this year he returned to Glasgow where he was grew up to make a cameo in Young Adam, the forthcoming movie of Alexander Trocchi’s cult existential thriller set on a barge in the canals between Edinburgh and Glasgow in the 1950s.

"It’s only a cameo - if you go to the washroom you’ll miss me - but it’s nice to be in the middle of something working with Peter Mullan and Ewan McGregor," he says. "It’s a terrific script and I think it’s going to be really high-profile film."

"I’ve done a few cameos over the years and they’re always good fun," says Brown, who has also appeared in Bill Forsythe’s Comfort and Joy and Personal Services. "The only one I do regret turning down is a Portishead video years ago. They asked me to be in the band but I was worried that maybe they would make a monkey of me, but in retrospect the video sold a lot of copies so maybe that was a career mistake." Brown and the Bristolian trip-hoppers together? The mind boggles, but it’s just some small measure of the esteem in which he’s held in certain circles.

Although he’s frequently compared to the late, great Chic Murray, Brown’s dry style is so unique that it defies imitators - yet his influence is pervasive.

For instance, without Brown, Barry Norman would be stuck for a title for his recent autobiography. Brown was using "And why not?" on the stage of the Raymond Revue bar when not dodging ashtrays.

"It’s my catchphrase," he huffs proprietorally. "What happened was one of Rory Bremner’s scriptwriters was a big fan of mine and was searching for a catchphrase for the Barry Norman sketch he was writing. The day after it was shown everyone kept going up to Norman and saying it to him!"

Now the venerable film critic has come to embrace the catchphrase (while still insisting that he’s never, ever said it) doesn’t that leave Brown without a title for his autobiography should he ever decide to pen one?

"No, it’ll be called And Why Not?" he says, sounding more than a little affronted.

Wouldn’t that be awfully confusing?

"Maybe but it’s my catchphrase - I started it! Barry Norman can make up his own catchphrase!"

And why not?

Arnold Brown, The Stand Comedy Club, York Place, Sunday, 8.30pm, 8 (6), 0131 558 7272