Laughing stock of the North-East
February 2006
by JUDY MACKIE
Comedy is a serious business for the Hardie family. Buff is best known for his characterful contribution to Scotland the What?, which he co-scripted and performed in for 26 years. Now 75, he insists that he has retired (although fans of Leopard’s Councillor Swick strip cartoon may beg to disagree). However, he still takes a keen interest in the local comedy scene, to which John is making a talented contribution as a lyricist, director and performer with Flying Pig Productions.
The pair meet up for a chat following Flying Pig’s highly-acclaimed debut at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen. John, softly-spoken, quick to smile and strikingly like his dad around the eyes, is thrilled with the show’s success, which has secured a five-night follow-up performance in March 2007.
Flying Pig has already built up a loyal audience, following performances at Aberdeen’s HMT Hilton, the Lemon Tree and the Arts Centre. Described by one enthusiast as a “punk Scotland the What?”, the seven-year-old group brings slick-delivery local comedy to the ‘fast forward’ generation, while striking a chord of couthiness with older members of the audience. Like Scotland the What? it has its roots in the University of Aberdeen Student Show, reflected in wonderful show titles such as Last Tango in Powis, The Madness of Kingswells, The Hunchback of Walker Dam and (most recently) The Seagull Has Landed.
Buff, sharing in his son’s post-performance delight, agrees that in Flying Pig there are shades of Scotland the What? and repeats a joke from an Archie and Davie sketch that tickled him enough to send it halfway round the world to career-long comedy partner Steve Robertson, holidaying in Australia at the time of the performance:
“Archie says: ‘I’ve been on a specialised diet.’ ‘Oh aye?’ says Davie. ‘Aye’, says Archie – ‘three months eatin’ nithin but butteries. It’s the Aitken’s diet.’ That’s just the kind of thing Steve and I used to enjoy doing,” he says.
On the other hand, Buff adds, there are whole areas of Flying Pig’s performances that are entirely different from those of Scotland the What?and he is quick to praise the scriptwriting skills of co-founder Greg Gordon, for whom he predicts a highly successful future in comedy writing.
“Another difference is that the language is a little fruitier than we would ever have got away with. Our director, the late James Logan, used to say: ‘Only one bloody in each half – and nothing stronger’,” he laughs.
With a 19-year track record that dates from an illicit schoolboy performance in the Student Show at age 17, John is living, grinning proof that comedy runs in the family. Amid the banter in the Hardie family’s comfy sitting room in Gray Street, Aberdeen, Buff explains that their witty way with words could well have been inherited from his paternal grandfather: “John Hardie penned a weekly column in the Brechin Advertiser called Screeds Fae Willie Wiseman. He would write little stories and poems about life in Brechin, which were quite amusing.”
He produces a small, carefully-preserved book of poetry, Sprays From the Garden, which his grandfather had published in 1898. “These poems were more serious and reflective, and there’s an anti-war poem in there that’s very powerful,” he says.
Buff’s own father, William, (after whom he is named) he describes as a “fairly humourless man, who never saw me perform, either on the stage or the cricket field. I think he was scared of disappointment! When as a student, I told him I was going to see my first Gilbert & Sullivan production, he said: ‘Are you sure you want to see that? It’s just a lot o’ folk singin!’– which was an accurate if rather sparse description.”
His mother, Bella, he recalls as “a real character, with quite a sharp wit. She disliked the name Bella, but was grudgingly prepared to tolerate it to humour her maiden Great-Aunt Bella, of whom she had expectations, sadly unfulfilled when the will was read.”
John has the advantage of having both parents in ‘the business’. During the 1960s, his mother, Margaret, made a sparkling contribution to both the Student Show and the Aberdeen Revue Group, of which Buff was a founding member. Their shared interest in comedy brought the couple together and they married in 1963. Katharine, their daughter, was born in 1967 and John followed in 1970, just after the birth of Scotland the What?.
The famous comedy trio was formed in 1969 on the back of the Aberdeen Revue Group, whose annual performances in the Music Hall and Arts Centre (1958-1967) attracted a strong local following. Directed by James Logan, with George Donald as musical director, the talented group usually numbered between eight and 10. The line-up for the final performance included Quentin Cramb, Buff Hardie, Margaret Hardie (née Simpson), Steve Robertson, George Reid, Rose McBain, Douglas Kynoch and Anne Logan (née Brand). As a supposed swansong, Steve persuaded Buff, George and director James Logan to take a pared-down show called for the first time Scotland the What?, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was an instant hit – although Buff is modest as to why this was the case.
“After our first night, we were lucky enough to receive a very flattering review from Daily Express critic Neville Garden, who had come straight from an interminable recital of Wagner and frankly was ready to laugh at anything. As a result, we got great audiences all week. Our popularity cost us, though. Other shows were giving away freebies, so we’d stocked up on a supply of 40 packets of oatcakes as our giveaway gimmick, thinking there would be plenty to go round. But we very quickly had to acquire a whole lot more, a feat of initiative and enterprise with which our trusty and well-beloved business manager Graham Hunter won his spurs.”
Scotland the What? returned to the festival the following year and such was their popularity that they were asked by Jimmy Donald, manager of His Majesty’s Theatre, to put the two Edinburgh shows together and stage a two-night performance in Aberdeen. So successful were these Friday and Saturday shows that an ad hoc performance was quickly arranged for the Sunday. Over the next 13 years, the trio’s original brand of North-East comedy had theatre audiences in stitches the length and breadth of Scotland.
“We never compromised on the dialect. We changed local references, but we always kept in the Doric,” Buff says.
In 1983, Scotland the What? decided to take the plunge and turn professional, which Buff says was a difficult decision to make at 50-something. They needn’t have worried – right up until their Final Fling tour, in 1995, their popularity never waned. Indeed, that same year they were honoured in the Queen’s Birthday List, as Members of the British Empire, the citation “for services to entertainment in Scotland,” acknowledging that their popularity spread furth of the North-East. Indeed one North-East exile based in the Central Belt maintained that the award was really for bringing culture to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
A curious thing happened during the last tour, Buff remembers. “Steve introduced the Doric Parrot very late in our career and it attracted so much hilarity that it was promoted to prime position in the second half of the show. During the Final Fling, we resurrected Bruce’s Spider, which always got good laughs in the early days. Well, the spider went down such a storm that a zoological battle ensued, with the parrot finally being toppled from its perch and demoted to the first half.” A true example of ‘if at first you don’t succeed’.
With show business such a prominent backdrop to his childhood, John says his upbringing was surprisingly normal: “Mum and Dad didn’t sit around the dining table cracking jokes all the time, and they both had serious day jobs – Dad as secretary of Grampian Health Board and Mum as an English teacher at the then College of Commerce,” he explains.
“One thing that sticks in my mind, though, is when I had to fill in a form in my first year at Robert Gordon’s College. It asked for my father’s profession. Dad had just turned professional with Scotland The What?, but I was too self-conscious to say ‘comedian’, so I put down ‘writer’, which sounded much less embarrassing.”
After retiring from Scotland the What?, Buff continued his Dod ‘n Bunty local newspaper column, which for 20 years had faithful readers asking “Far’s the paper?”. John wrote the Gary ‘n Michelle stand-in when his parents were on holiday.
Thankfully for Leopard readers, Councillor Swick, which Buff co-scripts with Steve Robertson and is drawn by Sandy Cheyne, remains larger than life, the gallus local member still finding new and creative ways to freeload on the public purse.
Looking back on his comedy career, Buff says that lyric-writing has probably given him greatest satisfaction. He is delighted that he and John share the gift of finding witty words to fit tunes in a true and satisfying rhyme – something John sees as akin to solving a puzzle. Not surprisingly, then, father and son are great fans of Ronnie Barker.
Performing has also had a powerful pull on them. “We both like getting the big laugh. It has a kind of druggy effect – it leaves you wanting more,” says Buff.
But the big laugh is by no means guaranteed, John says. “As you approach the payoff there’s a great fear that what you’re about to say or do is totally unfunny and that you’re going to die on your feet. You’re never one hundred per cent sure it’s going to be good until the audience tells you.”
One member of the audience who always ‘tells it straight’ is Buff and John’s most respected critic, Margaret. Her perceptive and unflinchingly honest opinion has provided a reliable quality control barometer from the earliest days, when Buff, Steve and George would hold a private ‘Loved Ones’ show to test out new material, right up to the present, when tentatively asked for her feedback by the Flying Pig performers.
“I’m always keen to hear what both Mum and Dad think of our shows, because it’s the only sure way of reaffirming, or readjusting, your own judgement,” says John.
Interestingly, John, at 35, is now at the stage Buff found himself at in the early Seventies, having achieved his ambition of taking a non-student show to HMT. Like his dad in those days, he, too, has a demanding day job. He is a criminal defence solicitor with Aberdeen firm Gray & Kellas, and has to fit his Flying Pig commitments into evenings and weekends. Luckily, his wife, Gayle, shares his love of drama and comedy: they met in amateur panto – she was Dick Whittington while he had the slightly less glamorous role of ‘front end of the Monster’. Gayle also has a Student Show background, having directed the 2003 production, and John is pleased that he and the group can call upon her skills.
Although turning professional is not at the forefront of John’s mind, he is canny enough to say “Never say never”. Certainly, the roaring success of the HMT show has given him something to think about and he and his fellow ‘Flying Pigs’ – Greg Gordon, Susan Gordon, Craig Pike, Steve Rance, Elaine Johnston, Moray Barber and Andrew Brebner – are hard at work on creating an even more exhilarating rollercoaster ride for their North-East followers next March.
Meantime, knowing they’ll be looking for a title with a strong local tie-in, Buff has a challenge for them: “Try making something catchy out of Western Peripheral Route!”
JUDY MACKIE is a copywriter and newsletter editor and runs Aberdeen-based communication business M&M Media with her husband. Born and brought up in the Granite City, she enjoys reading, creative writing and walking with Westies.
This is an article from the February 2006 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.