Limmy’s Homemade Show ****

BBC2, 10pm

FUNNY thing, comedy. On one side is the stuff that is funny by reputation, but not in reality. Most of Monty Python. Spike Milligan. Lenny Bruce (there, I’ve said it). Every one of them about as amusing as standing on a nail.

Then there is the comedy that is out there in the badlands. Edgy. Uncompromising. More miss than hit. It might make it into the mainstream one day, or it could end up as roadkill.

On which side is Brian Limond, aka Limmy, aka the wee nervy guy you would walk into the next train carriage to avoid? Is he genius or chancer?

BBC2 Scotland gave us the chance to find out last night in Limmy’s Homemade Show, a one-off special.

Produced, directed, filmed, edited and starring Limond, it probably cost half the Director-General’s sandwich bill for the week.

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It ranged in subject from a broken bathroom tile to whether a pair of trainers were adult or child’s size. In between the skits, our man in a rather nice flat (West End, luv?) put nursery rhymes to ear-bleeding techno music. All things considered, it would probably help to be off your embonpoint on drugs, as they almost say in Glesga, to get a kick out of this.

Yet half an hour later, I left Limmy’s world thinking his name should be top of the waiting list for the the hall of fame that starts with Chic Murray, takes in Billy Connolly and runs all the way to Kevin Bridges. Possessed of funny bones, ricocheting between daft and deranged, Limmy is a godsent original.

In a comedy landscape strewn with tired sitcoms and testosterone-fuelled panel shows, stumbling on him is like going through the coats in the wardrobe into Narnia. Technically, he can do it all. Do not let the hand-held camera phone and homemade label fool you. At one point he did a three way sketch, switching from character to character, all played by himself, that would have impressed Soderbergh.

Sure, for every inspired moment there are three that fall on their backside. He is like Glasgow, more often in the gutter than staring at the stars.

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But when he hits the mark, as in the routine where he plays a bloke surreptitiously trying his wife’s nail file and finding his inner drag queen, you forgive and forget the half-baked material in favour of seeing where in heaven or hell he will go next.

Love him, hate him, but try him. Limmy is for comedy keeps.