Gregor Fisher at 70: 'I've learnt not to get so bloody wound up about things'

Gregor Fisher leans back in his chair in a room at the BBC’s Pacific Quay HQ, stretches out his legs and smiles, then takes a bite of his cheese and ham toastie. 

Zoom’s loss is my gain because Fisher’s a great storyteller with much of it done through gesture, facial expression, mimicry and timing. He’s possessed of a spark and humour that twinkles face to face and I’m glad he suggested doing this interview in person. It’s much more fun.  

We’re here to talk about his new comedy series, Only Child, which debuts on BBC Scotland this month and stars Fisher and Greg McHugh (Guilt, Gary Tank Commander, The A Word) as father and son, Ken and Richard Pritchard. Fisher plays Ken, a 71-year-old, strong-willed technophobe living in Forres on the north-east coast of Scotland, who has recently lost his wife, welcoming his concerned bit-part actor son home from London for an overdue visit and a chance to check up on his dad. 

“It’s about family, a father and son, rediscovering that they actually have some affection for each other. I think that’s at the heart of things. And somebody who’s going upwards,” he says raising one arm up, “and somebody who’s going downwards,” the other arm falls. “Dealing with somebody who was a bit of a superhero, as fathers are, who becomes somebody that you think, what’s happened to him? So it’s about rediscovery.” 

It’s fair to say Ken’s memory isn’t what it was, but viewers of all ages will sympathise with the hurdles the modern world throws up along with everyday situations arising with neighbours and the bins, scammers and snobbery. 

“A lot of people are going to recognise what’s going on. He’s not as sharp as he was and finds the modern world quite difficult to cope with,” says Fisher. “We’ve just moved back here from France and trying to get onto our bank account here was just a bloody nightmare. So off I popped to the bank in Byres Road, but it’s closed, I went to the bank in the middle of Glasgow and they’re selling cheese sandwiches and coffee. That’s not a bank, that’s a cafe! There are no banks! What’s an old bugger supposed to do, when you’re trying to sort your tech out? They make you do it online and I haven’t a bloody clue what my password is… But you have got to keep up with it,” he says, resigned.

The comedy, which spans six half hour episodes written by Bryce Hart and directed by Al Campbell for Happy Tramp Productions arises from Richard’s attempts to get his dad to be more techno-friendly and avoid scammers, accept help, declutter his home and get out more, or as Ken sees it, throw out his memories and generally disrupt his life.

As well as Fisher and McHugh, Only Child is packed with Scottish and Irish actors including Amy Lennox, Stuart Bowman, Clare Barrett, Robin Laing and Paul Rattray, with Jennifer Saunders as the voice of Richard’s acting agent.

An imaginative child who first acted at school when a teacher told him to take part in a production of The Mikado and Fisher complied to get out of classes, he studied at the RSAMD  after ‘leaving Barrhead High School with ‘an O-Level in art and embroidery’. He made his name in the 1978 sketch show Scotch and Wry then Naked Video in 1986, in which the character Rab C Nesbitt was born, leading to a BBC2 series from 1988 to 2014. He was a hit in Love Actually (2003), as Bill Nighy’s sidekick, and in the remake of the Ealing Comedy classic Whisky Galore (2016), as well as on stage in National Theatre of Scotland’s Yer Granny in 2015. 

His autobiography with journalist Melanie Reid, The Boy From Nowhere, covers the fascinating story of his early life and how he came to be adopted, and his later search for his birth family. Born in 1953 in the village of Menstrie, near Stirling, he was one of three illegitimate children of Kit McKenzie, who died aged 38, and Fisher was adopted into a loving family and raised in Neilston, which is where his love of acting was nurtured by his mother Cis. 

Now 70 and as ‘life kicks on’ as he puts it, he and wife Vicki relocated back to Scotland recently, settling in Ayrshire where the logistics of seeing their three grown up children are easier.

“I want to see more of them before I slip away. It was time, and France is still there, as is the rest of the world.”

“So that plays out in the onion of this sitcom, if we’re calling it a sitcom. There comes a time where you look at a parent and think, hmmm, time is limited. Ken knows things are finite and his son’t twigged that as well. It’s about life, about Ken coming to the end of something. As to when that’s going to happen, nobody knows.” 

“Everybody’s going to see something in the show that they know about. It’s recognition isn’t it?”

Today Fisher is chipper and enjoying life, so what does he think are the good things about getting older? 

“I don’t think there’s anything particularly bad about getting older, apart from things like heart attacks and you’ve got to wire yourself for sound in the morning and get the hearing aids in, all that sort of sh**. 

“I suppose, peacefulness has descended. I don’t get too overworked about things. I just think ‘oh well, there’s not much I can do about that’.”

It was the quality of the script that first drew Fisher to Only Child. 

“I’ve read quite a lot of scripts in my time, and most of them end up in the bin, but young Bryce Hart writes stuff with a heartbeat. It’s a good script. I didn’t have to argue. I’m usually quite narky, saying no, that doesn’t scan and why would he say that? I will argue my corner should it be required, but I didn’t say very much in this, I just did it. 

“And because, hey, I was asked,” he laughs. “Which is especially nice when you’re an old boy and somebody thinks you’re still interesting enough to be involved. There are a lot of people my age who are sitting, I was going to say eating cheese sandwiches, but I’m doing that as well,” he says taking a bite of his toastie.

“And you’ve to watch what you say nowadays. You can’t make assumptions and you’ve to watch what you call people because some people arenae what they purport, so it does, as an older person, make you think ‘I’ll just sit here [he puts his hands under his hunkers], ‘and say nothing, don’t say the wrong thing.’ I’m not arguing about it, I’m just saying it’s different. If there’s one thing about being old, it’s everything is different.” 

So what does he have in common with Ken?

“I look like him. I understand the tech sh** that goes on. I understand father and son things. I suspect if you spoke to my children they’d say ‘that’s dad, OMG, that’s embarrassing’. But I’m not conscious of it. I think I’m much younger than Ken. I’m smarter.”

How did Fisher find working with Greg McHugh, in what is a very believable father son relationship?

“Hellish, he’s a pain in the ar**,” he jokes. “No, he’s a very nice chap and a wee bit more conscientious than me. He’s a very hard worker is Mr McHugh. He wants to get it right. Spurs me on a bit. There are some you work with and it’s a plug in and there are a lot of people you work with and it’s not, and he’s one of the former. It’s just easy. You know you’re working with somebody good when he sends one down the line and you’ve got to reach for it and that livens the whole thing that’s going on. It gives a life, that pulse, a zzzzzzzzzzzztttttttt. It was a very pleasant experience. 

“Apart from the bloody early calls! The buggers are up at half past five and you think ‘is this necessary? I’m a pensioner for Christ’s sake!” Can’t we start at half ten and finish at two after lunch?”

Does he think there are any similarities in his way of acting and doing comedy and McHugh’s?

“All I know is it works. There’s no huge soul searching. He’s an instinctive performer and feels for what you’re doing and I’d like to think I was reciprocating.” 

For Fisher, comedy is not something you should analyse. 

“Back in the day working with Tony Roper. [Jamesie Cotter in Rab C Nesbitt] you knew it was going to be a good day because you had a scene with Tony. Why? I don’t know. Because it worked. Why? I don’t know. The more you thought about it the more you could bugger it up.So it’s funny or it ain’t funny. 

“This show was aided and abetted by Al Campbell, the director, who had a sensitivity and a great eye for everything. And I don’t like directors. They usually get in the bloody way because they’re trying to superimpose their idea as opposed to joining in with the team and whoever is playing the scene.”  

While Only Child deals with some heavier issues, they are always in the background and it is very much a comedy. 

“We avoided mawkish. We’re not making a documentary. It’s a half-hour amusement so we held back on that and played the reality of it. 

“There’s a fabulous actress called June Watson who works for the National Theatre, and I’ve done a sitcom with her, Brotherly Love [1999], dreadful thing but I had a very large tax bill, and anyway I saw an article with her recently and there was one of these daft questions journalists ask, [What are the qualities that make a professional actor?] and the answer was ‘it’s truth’, as simple as that. Play the truth, don’t play anything else. 

“And I hope in these scenes where life and death get talked about, or whatever it is being talked about, we play the truth and move on.”

We go back to his book, The Boy From Nowhere, in which he said his childhood story made him look for stability in life. Does he still think that’s true?

“Yes. It’s not a conscious thing, but family is important to me. I suppose you always attract the things you need,” he says, then laughs. “Sometimes the things you get are maybe no the things you want but you probably need them, in a lesson from the universe. You think why does this keep happening? Maybe you haven’t progressed Gregor, maybe because you haven’t learnt the bloody lesson boy!”  

So what lessons has he learnt over the years? 

“Ahhhhh, I knew that was coming. I think acceptance and to not take things too seriously, not get so bloody wound up about things, and accept there are things you can do very little about. It’s a buggeration but there’s nothing you can do about it. And to be grateful, because there’s a lot to be grateful for.”

Despite early childhood experiences making him reserved and private, he chose the very public-facing career of an actor. Why?

“I suppose because it lets you be something you ain’t. That’s all acting is. Let’s pretend to be somebody else. I find that increasingly interesting now I’m an old boy. I just find it great fun and very engaging. I can remember as a child getting dressed up in bed sheets, and building a camp underneath the kitchen table and inviting my mother into my tent in the middle of the desert.” 

His love of pretence was informed by weekly trips to the cinema in Barrhead, on which he’d spend his pocket money. 

“That was the highlight of my week. I’d sit and watch any old tosh. I loved it.” 

Any favourite actors?

“I was quite big on that rabid Tory, Charlton Heston in Ben Hur. They did a lot of remakes of Greek stuff - Jason and The Argonauts was a favourite, and I did a show with the actor John Cairney who was in that. I couldn’t believe it!”

What’s it like when you meet people you watched on screen? 

“It’s great. I was in Los Angeles, walking down Wilshire Boulevard, and this guy was walking up, a little old guy, with the chin dimple. 

Kirk Douglas?

“Uh-huh and I thought I’m bloody sure that’s Kirk Douglas, don’t look Gregor, don’t look, and obviously he knew I was looking and he said [adopts a deep-voiced American accent] ‘how are you today?’ and I said ‘very well Mr Douglas, nice to see you’, he laughs, pleased.

He also worked with Al Pacino in a big budget adaptation of The Merchant Of Venice (2004).

“Yeah. He’s a nice fella. Small, Italian. He’s a nice man.”

Out of all of the people he’s worked with, who has impressed him most? 

“I did a huge amount of work with Tony Roper and working with him is like putting on an old jacket that’s full of fun and memories of him pulling you out of the sh*** metaphorically speaking, and you he. That was great. It was the sum of its parts, that relationship. But close on the heels, I’ve got to say I am enjoying being with young Greg McHugh. To be an old boy and work with somebody who’s a youngster who you like working with. How lucky am I? If the BBC would up their fees a bit it would help.” 

Is Rab C Nesbitt something the public still ask about, given that it’s ten years since any spin-off featuring the character was aired?

“Living in France it was quiet, but coming back here I have had a taxi driver say ‘I thought you were deid’. You say ‘no, I’m sitting in the back of the taxi’. ‘Is that right, aye? Naebdy watches yer programmes any mair, I thought you were deid.’ He laughs. “People can be very forthright. But they usually stay away because they think I’m going to be violent, because you know, I am the character. No, it’s no real! And other people are pleasant - a lot say, ‘my granny used to love your shows’. Thank you very much.”

And finally, we can’t end without asking the ‘stupid question that journalists ask’:  what advice would he give to young actors? 

“You cannot top ‘be honest’. Always play it as honestly as you can. That’s the way to do it. You’ve got to be honest.”

Only Child debuts on the BBC Scotland channel on Thursday 21 November, 10pm and BBC One on Friday 22 November, 9pm. All six episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer from Thursday 21 November. Only Child is a Happy Tramp North production for BBC Scotland and BBC One.