Gregor Fisher

My TV hero: Gregor Fisher on Spike Milligan

The former Goon may have been unpredictable and even sometimes embarrassing beyond belief, but that was part of his inimitable comic genius.

25 years of Rab C Nesbitt

Those seeking some light relief from the grim news in 1986 might have unleashed a guffaw or three at the BBC Scotland sketch show, Naked Video, in which Gregor Fisher wore a grubby string vest and glottal-stopped his way through a series of Buckfast-soaked stream-of-consciousness philosophy lectures. Later, when the character spun off into his own series, Rab C Nesbitt's mockit headband, disintegrating trainers and wino wisdom took the underclass into everyone's living room.

A starring vehicle for venerable Scottish comedy scribes Iain Connell and Robert Florence (whose credits include the unfairly overlooked Gregor Fisher sitcom Empty), Burnistoun is an amiable yet decidedly unremarkable sketch show. This is disappointing as they are clearly talented.

But at least they have the courage to produce sketches dependent on verbal playfulness and ideas rather than repeated catchphrases or lazy cruelty.

Their hit rate may be scarce (although I liked the parochial Scottish MP unwittingly elevated to the role of PM), but I cautiously welcome any sketch show in the approximate tradition of, say, Absolutely over the abysmal Little Britain. Maybe it will improve, although the idea is normally that you put some of your best material in the first episode...

I know, I know, television institution and that. But did he really need to make a comeback? It's not Rab himself that's the problem. Gregor Fisher, still in string vest and suit, is just as beguiling as the lazy, lovable drunken Rab. But it's like watching Robert Lindsay in My Family. Yes, he's good. But what about the rest of them?

Last night saw Rab and Mary welcome (if that's the word) their son Gash back to the home after a prolonged stint in a mental institution. Gash, meanwhile, gets to know his daughter, the foul-mouthed, chocolate-pizza-munching Peaches. Aside from that, not much happened, though Rab did manage to leave us with a rather wonderful little truism on romance: "The dreaded R Word! That's the worst thing a woman can give a man - respect!" he told his bemused wife. "You respect Vince Cable, you respect Alex Salmond... but you'd drop your draws for Daniel Craig."

Rab C Nesbitt, who has been played by Gregor Fisher for the past two decades, has retained much of its grungy, cooncil-hoose ambience - the men wavering between fantasy and uselessness, the women unillusioned and razor-tongued. Some of the sting has been drawn, though: Rab, an unemployed drunk for the past 20 years, is now off the booze, his son off drugs. Scotland, still the place to go for these prompters of illusion and hasteners of death, is striving to be proper but can, in this show, still provide soil for good wit.

It is no disrespect to the show and its star, nor to its writer and creator Ian Pattison, to say it rests on and draws from the comic traditions of Glasgow, a city that saw, in a long postwar glory, the maturing of the talents of Stanley Baxter, Rikki Fulton, Jimmy Logan and the master, Chic Murray - as well as the later blaze that was and is Billy Connolly. They were acid, fantastic and in hateful love with their city and its culture, which they helped create. Fisher recalls them at their best when, in a moment of park bench amorousness towards his inevitably long-suffering wife, Mary Doll, Rab C suggests that they "nick intae the lavvie and gi'e ye a belt up the knickers fur auld times sake ... we cud gae intae the disabled, it's roomier noo we've filled oot a bit". When he waxes romantic about his own past, she reminds him that he had become a "psychotically disabled alcoholic". "Ah'm frae Govan," he snaps back. "It wudda happened onywey."

Rab (Gregor Fisher) returns for his first new series in 10 years, in the superb Scottish sitcom about the lovable, string-vested philosopher of Govan. Not only is Rab off the sauce, his son Gash (now played by Iain Robertson) is recovering from drug addiction in the psychiatric wing of the hospital, having lost his job, wife and home in the credit crunch. Rab fails to stop Gash moving back in with him and Mary Doll (Elaine C Smith), despite his plea that here in hospital he's got "rubber cutlery, dolphin tapes, the whole nine yards". Fisher's inimitable performance and Ian Pattison's impeccable writing have lost none of their shine.

Video interview: Same old string vest

He may rarely have left the sofa but that didn't stop Rab C. Nesbitt from becoming a major comedy hit through the nineties. Millions tuned in to see the string vest-wearing, armchair philosopher's take on life.

Now Rab is back for his first full series in more than ten years on BBC Two and breakfast speaks to Gregor Fisher about putting back on that vest.

Gregor Fisher on Rab C Nesbitt

After more than ten years away from the screen Rab C Nesbitt is back. Its star Gregor Fisher on the comedy he thought he'd hate.

Almost 10 years after the broadcast of their last episode together, the cast of the Glaswegian comedy series reunites for a Christmas special. Attempts at reviving old comedy magic can so easily disappoint. But not Rab and co. The Cotter and Nesbitt families feel as fresh as ever. Though it's Gregor Fisher's impeccable, tragicomic incarnation of Rab himself that lifts the show to such grubby, miserable heights.