Stanley Baxter

10 greatest Scottish comedians - and their best gags

Cast your vote for Scotland's best comedian in our online poll.

Paul Merton on Stanley Baxter

As he prepares to bring tour to Scotland, Merton recalls how he needed help from the comedy great when he was doing panto with Ronnie Corbett.

Scotland's funniest 60 people

As the Glasgow International Comedy Festival prepares to launch with a gaggle of giggles later this month, we count down Scotland's funniest 60 people.

Stanley Baxter shows no sign of ending love of radio

How much does Stanley Baxter love radio? Well, the fact he recorded his latest Stanley Baxter Playhouse series on his 90th birthday is a clue.

Stanley Baxter has kept busy despite retiring

For a man who retired in 1991, Stanley Baxter has been fairly busy in recent years.

Stanley Baxter interview

He's famous for mimicking the Queen, but where does Stanley Baxter stand on Scottish independence?

Comedy legend Stanley Baxter relishing return to radio

There are only two serious faces in Stanley Livingstone Baxter's living room today - and they both belong to the Bafta masks sitting on top of the sideboard.

Stanley Baxter was a gifted mimic whose lavish shows were legends of opulence. During the 1970s and 80s Christmas wasn't complete without Baxter dressed as a woman to play anyone from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Mrs Bridges from Upstairs, Downstairs, or an entire Busby Berkeley dance troupe.

In this fond tribute Baxter himself (looking very good for 86) talks us through his career, from early days on stage in Glasgow to his heyday at LWT, where his indulgent boss Michael Grade wrote the cheques. Baxter was brilliant but his shows, apart from becoming too expensive for TV, had an in-built obsolescence and dated immediately.

Forget all that hubble, bubble toil and trouble business, Stanley Baxter has a very different version of events at Dunsinane to tell. He plays Macbeth's porter, sorry, "personal servant", who has polished his rat-stomping, wolf-wrestling master over the years to make him fit for kingship. But all that civilising went for a burton when Macbeth introduces his bride... a strapping lass whose ability to punch out an ox with one blow swept Macbeth off his cloddish feet. The wiles of the would-be kingmaker-porter and the real fate of Duncan play out seamlessly in Rona Munro's clever piece, knowingly spiced with the odd Bard quote. I'm not going to spoil the plotline, but it is nigh on brilliant, with the veteran Baxter still hitting all the notes faultlessly. Almost perfect listening.

There's no holding Stanley Baxter, now in his mid-eighties and apparently becoming as indestructible as Macbeth claimed to be in Shakespeare's play. A new series of The Stanley Baxter Playhouse starts with a comedy written by Scottish playwright Rona Munro which retells the saga from the viewpoint of the clownish Porter. Gordon Kennedy plays Macbeth and Siobhan Redmond as Lady Macbeth consolidates her CV of wicked females, while Baxter himself takes the Porter's role, assuring us that he had great plans for his master, before everything went pear-shaped.