Daily Record article Nov 13 2004
STILL GAME FOR A FIGHT
Jack and Victor head off in a huff - but their wives patch things up
THE headlines would have written themselves. 'Jack and Victor in Punch-Up'. 'Still Game is Out the Game'.
'Comedy Pair are Spitting the Fat'. It happened a few weeks ago when Greg Hemphill stormed out on his partner Ford Kiernan after a script-writing bust-up.
But then two peacemakers stepped in and opened up diplomatic relations ... between one end of Glasgow's Great Western Road and the other.
'Aye,' smiles Greg. 'My wife Julie and Ford's wife Leslie were on the phone to each other, laughing at the pair of us.We were like kids taking the huff.'
Ford added: 'My granny always said you should never let the sun rise onan argument. After our wives got us talking, we were pals again before bedtime.'
It wasn't their first fall-out. But the good news for Still Game and Chewin' the Fat fans is that it certainly won't be their last.
'I think these wee things show how much we care about our work,' says Greg. Rather than parting, Scotland's favourite comedy duo have never been more committed to working together.
'We've almost finished writing the fourth Still Game series. And we're still game for writing a fifth and a sixth,' Greg added.
'And we're about to start filming the Hogmanay edition of Chewin' the Fat.We couldn't be busier or happier at the way things are going.' And they've also got a book coming out.
Titled Still Game, it's the pick of their previous series in original script form.
'Now, everybody can go to the pub and act out the scenes with their pals.Wait a minute ... is that a good thing or a bad thing?' laughs Ford.
Their success can be measured by the noise of car horns and the number of autograph hunters around their book launch photo-shoot in Glasgow's West End.
But the pair of jokers are single-minded about letting it go to their heads. Ford tells me how he recently stumbled on a couple of old invoices from their early days of stand-up.
'We appeared at The Comedy Club as separate acts within a week of each other. It must have been around 1989 and I think we got twenty quid.
'Those invoices are now stuck on the office wall - just to remind of us where we came from.'
THE 'office' is the Kiernan household in Glasgow's West End. And works starts at 10.00 am when Greg arrives.
'We have a computer each and sit side by side. Then we start firing lines from one screen to the other.The storylines build from there,' says Ford. 'I don't know how any comedy writer can work alone. How Ian Pattison produced the quality of the Rab C. Nesbitt scripts, by himself, is beyond me.
'But we bounce things around. Sometimes we say the lines in Jack and Victor's voices to get a 'feel' for how it's working. And if one of us is off form, the other guy will gee him up. It's a team effort.
'It takes us about two weeks to write one episode.We're usually slow to start, but once we get going, there's no stopping us.'
Greg reckons that changing from the demanding Still Game scripts to the quickfire Chewin' the Fat sketches makes the latter seem like a holiday.
He said: 'We have a team of writers for Chewin' the Fat which is a huge help. And writing the sketches come to us fairly easily, there's so much material to pick from. Plus we're now only doing one Hogmanay show.
'Recording it is great fun. It's a pleasant change not to go through Jack and Victor's two hours in make-up at 6am each morning'.
The other news from Ford's House of Fun is that BBC 2 will be networking the 2005 Still Game series.
'We're anxious to see how it is received. But it's exciting to think of our wee show going up against the big boys,' says Greg.
And finally, Ford has fallen for Greg's lifetime passion - playing poker. 'The b*****d has got me hooked,' he moans.
Stand by for those wives patching things up again when Greg starts drawing aces to Ford's kings.
# Still Game, by Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill (Black and White Publishing) £9.99.
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