Greg McHugh

Review: Meanwhile, It's Will and Greg

Will Andrews and Greg McHugh revive their Ugly Kid sketch talents for radio.

Interview: Greg McHugh

He may have made his name playing naïve objects of ridicule, but Greg McHugh is having the last laugh...

Will is William Andrews and Greg is Greg McHugh and here's their new late-night comedy show, exploring the surreal and absurd through characters and sketches. Some sketches are recorded in front of an audience in Glasgow, some are done just for the studio microphone but, as the aim is to get us to recognise Will and Greg as the centre of their own offbeat universe where the familiar suddenly becomes bizarre, we ought to feel at home wherever they lead us. Gavin Mitchell and Kirsten McLean are the supporting cast. First episode of three.

The hot 100 2011 - Greg McHugh interview

Interview with the man behind Fresh Meat and Gary: Tank Commander.

Greg McHugh on losing Gary Tank Commander actor

Gary: Tank Commander is gearing up for a new series with one of its crack team of squaddies AWOL in River City.

Greg McHugh: filming first scene was worst day of life

Fresh Meat's Greg McHugh has revealed that the show's opening scene was the worst day of his filming life.

As introductory scenes go, Fresh Meat's was unforgettable. "Sorry, I've just got used to wearing trousers of the mind" was the opening line of the year (and no shilly-shallying). To be honest, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's new comedy was going to need both, being (a), on Channel 4and (b), about students. And in the first episode at least, the Peep Show creators' latest managed to re-arrange the hallowed Pot Noodle and bodily fluid-stained duvet of mingin' cowp undergraduatedom and make it look new and bold.

I caution that this was only episode one because I liked the first of Campus, too, and remember how badly that series unravelled. Campus was mainly about the bored, vain, thwarted, cruel lecturers, though, and so far Fresh Meat has only given us one of those.

Long may it concentrate on the students: secretive Oregon, sweet Kingsley, scary Vod, Welshies-are-hot Josie, poshos-are-hotter-thanks-to-Downton-Factor JP, and not forgetting Howard, the token Scot with the obligatory inter-personal issues, played by Greg McHugh, who's managed to erase all memory of Gary Tank Commander with a brushed-forward barnet, one of Sarah Lund's cast-off jumpers from The Killing (The Real TV Event of the Year) and his fondness for a mixing bowl-sized helping of Coco Pops, his "one-er" of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I root for Howard, obviously, but my favourite character is probably JP. Well, when you take his George Osborne-esque certainty, Bullingdon Club japery, monogrammed dressing gown, daddy's money, chronic chat-up technique and idiotic prefacing of the mundane (baked potato, high thread-count sheets) with gangsta rap crudeness, adding them to his sense of absolute entitlement over the best or least grotty room in the student house, he's simply irresistible.

"Yaa, boo, hiss!" This is how we're supposed to respond to JP.

Peep Show and The ­Inbetweeners fans, listen up. Fresh Meat stars Joe Thomas and was written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, so deserves your attention.

It's a great sitcom about freshers in a university house-share - a sit so ripe with possibilities you might wonder why it hasn't been strip-mined for com before.

Actually it has; of course there was the classic The Young Ones, and some of you might have seen a short-lived BBC3 comedy a couple of years ago with much the same premise called Off The Hook, starring another Inbetweener, James Buckley.

But Fresh Meat is much more assured and has wonderfully subtle ­characters.

Joe Thomas is the token normal one as Kingsley, and Kimberley Nixon plays nice, sweet Josie, his female ­counterpart.

More intriguing are Vod (Zawe Ashton) who's like a younger, female, sexually ­ambiguous version of Peep Show's Super Hans and Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie) who tries too hard to be tough and play down her swottiness - and fails at both.

There's also Greg McHugh as Howard (think a young, Scottish Nick Frost).

But it's stand-up and panel-show regular Jack Whitehall who steals the show as cocky public schoolboy JP.

We first meet him in the men's toilet waving a wrap of cocaine at a total stranger. We've never seen Jack acting before but he turns out to be surprisingly good at it. Unless - of course - this is what he's like in real life.

There's nothing particularly, ah, fresh about Fresh Meat, but this new teen comedy drama has an inbuilt likability which ensures that it's instantly preferable to the likes of Skins.

Created by Peep Show overlords Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, it stars Joe Thomas from The Inbetweeners as a hapless first-year student sharing a house in Manchester with a gaggle of contrasting characters, including a quietly scene-stealing Greg McHugh (star of BBC Scotland's Gary: Tank Commander) and - this will take some swallowing, I know - hitherto useless comedian Jack Whitehall proving perfectly acceptable in his first acting role. Mind you, he's playing an objectionable posh twit, so it's hardly a stretch.

The distinctive fingerprints of Armstrong and Bain are all over the opening episode, which leans more towards comedy than drama, as the various misfits get to know each other while desperately trying to reinvent themselves.

Rather sweet at heart, it should be applauded for generally eschewing the puerility, moralising and self-conscious "edge" which usually blights this genre. And if all it achieves is in some way vaguely justifying the existence of Jack Whitehall, then that has to count for something. Doesn't it?

Tank Commander creator on plans for movie version

Tank Commander could be set to ride on to the big screen, after Greg McHugh revealed he's working on an idea for a movie version of the hit BBC Scotland comedy.