“I’ve toured in Aberdeen since back in the day,” says Mark Cox, aka Tam Mullen, the most miserable resident (which is saying something) of Still Game’s fictional Glasgow suburb of Craiglang. “I remember touring a show in Aberdeen in the 1990s, in fact, and we went to a nightclub that had a hamburger stall in it.
“It was like a dream come true when you were steamin’, I’ve often wondered about that. We’ve worked in some good theatres there, though, like His Majesty’s…”
“The Lemon Tree, the Music Hall, there’s loads in Aberdeen we’ve done,” takes up his co-star Jane McCarry, otherwise known as Still Game’s local gossip Isa Drennan. “We love it there. I just took my wee puppet show Misty’s Magical Adventure to Aberdeen before Christmas, it was good fun. We had a night out on the town, went for some food, had a few drinks, it was a great atmosphere.”
The pair are promoting Auld Pals: An Evening with the Stars of Still Game, which arrives in the city this weekend, and demonstrates just how hungry the people still are for anything connected to the hit Scottish sitcom, which came to an end in 2019.
Interest in Still Game has never waned
In the absence of anything Still Game-related on telly, this show – in which the five major cast members who aren’t Ford Kiernan or Greg Hemphill reminisce – is a hot ticket, especially when you recall that the first stage adaptation of the show at the Hydro in Glasgow did 21 nights in front of nearly a quarter of a million people a decade ago.
“Every show is very different,” explains McCarry about Auld Pals. “We don’t tell the same stories every night, we talk about things that have happened in our lives, we tell stories that make each other laugh. It’s very organic, and when the audience asks questions in the second half, anything can happen.
“It really is frightening for us. You think, oh god, can I be truthful? I don’t know if I can! But inevitably we do, and we get such a warm reception. We’ve had every question you could imagine. ‘What’s your favourite karaoke song?’ ‘Who does Isa fancy most, who does she want to have a fling with?’”
“’Who would Sam like to kill most, which character?’” says Cox. To find out the answers to these, you’ll have to ask the questions yourself at the show, where the pair are onstage with their friends and sometime acting colleagues Sanjeev Kohli, Gavin Mitchell and Paul Riley (aka Navid, Boaby the Barman and Winston).
‘Everybody recognises the character’
“The five of us have always been quite tight as friends, even since we stopped filming,” says Cox. “We had the idea to take this show to different places, and it’s now transferred to our English audiences down south, with people coming to sold-out shows down there. Interest has never died down, it continues to thrive. People are still very keen on Still Game.”
It’s no surprise that a Still Game-related show would go down well in Aberdeen, with its very Scottish dialects and sense of humour needing little translation, but it’s interesting to hear how popular the series is in England and further afield.
“It’s no surprise, if you’ve ever heard a Geordie speak or somebody from Barnsley,” says Cox. “Funny’s funny, is the truth of the matter. The accent is now welcome worldwide, and if the writing’s good people will enjoy the show, and that seems to be okay.”
“I was telling Mark that I was in Bangkok a few weeks ago, and somebody stood up at the table behind me and said, ‘Isa Drennan?!’” says McCarry. “There’s a lot of pathos in Still Game, everybody recognises the characters, whether you’re in Barnsley or South London or Orkney, it doesn’t really matter. Everybody knows a Tam or an Isa, these characters are so recognisable that they feel like they’re part of the family.”
When is Auld Pals in Aberdeen?
The Still Game cast, it’s clear, also feel like a family of their own. “It’s not just in acting jobs, but in most jobs you wouldn’t work with the same people as long as we’ve worked with each other,” says Cox. “It’s extraordinary, for decades we’ve worked on the one thing.”
“We’ve all known each other even longer,” says McCarry. “Mark knew Paul since their early twenties, I knew Mark from my teens, when we met at drama school, I’ve worked with Gavin and Paul from my twenties as well. I think I met Greg in 1992, so it’s 30-odd years of doing not just Still Game, but lots of different jobs together.”
As much as they might revel in those other roles – McCarry is in the midst of filming a show for Amazon Prime in London, while Cox has been filming a new Netflix series in Edinburgh – they’ll never quite escape Still Game. Yet why would they want to?
“People forget we only worked on Still Game for six weeks a year, one episode a week, but we’ve been in the business for all those years,” says Cox. “You need to ask yourself what you want to be. Do you want to be an actor in the most popular programme ever made in Scotland? It’s a nice thing to be associated with.”
Auld Pals: An Evening With The Stars Of Still Game is at Aberdeen Music Hall, on Sunday, March 24. For more information go to aberdeenperformingarts.com
