Robert Florence

Burnistoun's Florence & Connell may switch to Channel 4

Burnistoun comedy duo Robert Florence and Iain Connell may move to Channel 4 after BBC chiefs dragged their heels over a decision to put out their show UK-wide.

If you've not seen Burnistoun don't worry - most people haven't, primarily because it's only broadcast on BBC Scotland and thus if you live anywhere else in the UK you have to watch it on iPlayer.

It's a shame, really, because Burnistoun is a very good show. To give you a quick summary of what it's about, the show features a range of different characters played by Robert Florence and Iain Connell in the fictional town of Burnistoun. The most famous characters are Paul and Walter, the owners of the town's ice cream van who always share a moment of high tension.

This week, idiotic Walter got petrified from watching a horror film which turned out to be Jools Holland's TV show, had to deal with a women who wanted to buy tampons and Paul tried to break up Walter's relationship with his best friend - a Breville sandwich toaster. The sketch was just bonkers but utterly brilliant. Bizarre ideas kept building on top of the other until the point that all you can do is drive your van away.

The best way to describe this show is simply 'daft'. Sketches featuring two Kenny Rodgers impersonators falling in love, a rap about shoes being left on top of bus stops, and a trailer for a horror film about a terrifying wee wardrobe are amongst some of the oddities that are on offer.

As said before, it seems baffling that such a show is not being shown nationwide, because it clearly is a hit over the border. For me, it's rather like one of those situations where they try out a TV show on a digital station before moving it over to a terrestrial channel. If it's successful, then it'll no doubt be given more public exposure. I say that, but it already is successful really, so if the BBC wouldn't mind sticking it on in England now I think we'd all be glad.

Audio slideshow: The Burnistoun Boys

Iain Connell and Robert Florence, the writers and performers of Burnistoun, take us behind the scenes of the second series.

Burnistoun comedy lads have their eye on Hogmanay slot

Burnistoun comedy writers Robert Florence and Iain Connell have admitted they don't care if they are never picked up by BBC chiefs in London - because they've got their eyes on a prize much closer to home.

Thank God for Burnistoun, a comedy that's actually funny. This BBC Scotland sketch show - which I've warmed to after initial uncertainty - is infused with the kind of invention and sheer likeability. Its writers/stars Iain Connell and Robert Florence are a font of agreeably daft ideas, my favourite this week being the guys trying to outdo each other with tales of their old gangster drinking buddies. More please.

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...

Connell and Florence interview

Meet comics Robert Florence and Iain Connell, the duo who are set to take over from Scottish comedy kings Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill...

There was much crazed comedy to savour in Burnistoun, a scabrous and diamond-sharp new sketch show which should propel its Glaswegian creators and lead performers, Robert Florence and Iain Connell, to the best kind of overnight stardom: the sort which is justly deserved by those who've served years-long apprenticeships.

Having toiled for more than a decade as scriptwriters on such TV hits as Chewin' The Fat, Legit and Empty, Florence and Connell know how to craft singular characters, bizarrely-believable situations and pithy real-life dialogue that will induce helpless laughter.

My personal favourite from F&C's long-overdue solo show amounted to a searing expose of the authentic workings of the Scottish tabloid newspaper industry, as exemplified in The Burnistoun Herald's day-to-day operations. This fictional organ was edited, you see, by a pint-sized monomaniac who insisted on every news story being re-written according to his personal definition of "news" and "story".

We thus saw the gradual evolution of an accurate but mundane report of three masked men walking into a bar into something that would substantiate a ridiculous and attention-grabbing headline: one man in a top hat rolling into a granny's verandah, opening a packet of crisps, thereby prompting a woman to receive a spanking.

As the Burnistoun Herald's witless editor jubilantly exclaimed: "Now we're selling newspapers."

Elsewhere in F&C's contemporary urban Scots dystopia, two street-wise priests strutted, their gallus demeanour echoing that of Charlie Nicholas as they staged a free-market exercise in Roman Catholicism ("Who's got a sin? Anybody out there wi' a sin?"). Burnistoun Tourist Board worked hard to devise a slogan for the town: "It's better than people are makin' it out to be."

Burnistoun's ice-cream van was meanwhile being operated by a sinister fraternal variant on camp interior designers Colin and Justin: Walter and Paul. Walter and Paul are brothers who squabble sibilantly over every item their van has on sale. Walter kept insisting each bar of chocolate belonged to him. Paul wore a beret and wound up having his nether regions brutally exposed. It was all very, very funny - if a trifle too laddish at times. Burnistoun: you wouldn't want to live there, but if you're a lover of comedy, you'd love to see the place again. Pray there'll be a series.