Greg McHugh Explains Scotland

The Country

‘I’m not sure whether Scotland would like its independence from England. Given that we overspent on our little Parliament by £400 million, I don’t think giving us our own economy would be a particularly good idea. At least we can’t be accused of being tight! Incompetent, yes. But not mean. They probably over-spent deliberately to get rid of the myth that us Scots are mean with our money. I’ll give you an example of the Scottish Parliament’s proposed legislations: to combat binge drinking, they suggested banning Happy Hours. But the same bit of legislation said that if a bar is going to lower its prices, it has to do so for a minimum of 48 hours. It’s a great piece of logic – ban happy hours and introduce Happy Days! The building itself is 70s council chic with bamboo. They obviously finished and thought, “This looks a bit shit. Let’s get the bamboo out. People will think they’re in Hawaii.”

‘Living in Scotland means I get to see the Loch Ness Monster daily. You’d be unlucky not to see him. He sits on the end of the Loch going, “This is shit, it’s so boring”. He’s three hundred feet long with big jaws, eats haggis, and he’s definitely a he – I’ve checked. He actually works for the Scottish tourist board. People in Scotland go out wearing a T-Shirt even when it’s freezing to convince the rest of the nation that Scotland is warmer than it really is. It also means we don’t have to take our coats off when we get into fights. Plus, there’s the element of begrudging £1 to put your jacket in at the cloakroom, which I can appreciate.’

National Identity

‘People don’t paint their faces blue every day: we’re busy people in Scotland. If you go to Glasgow, you’ll see girls with eye make-up that makes them look like they’re going into battle. You wouldn’t want to fight them, either. People often think Scotland is exactly like Trainspotting: there is a minority of people in Scotland who take drugs. Of course, some of these people also like to shoot dogs in the park with air rifles whilst doing impressions of Sean Connery, then picking up girls in nightclubs who turn out to be schoolgirls. But that’s nothing like a real Ned. A ‘Ned’ is a Scottish Chav: it stands for Non-educated Delinquent. Or they might be referring to one really scummy guy called Ned. I’m not sure.

‘I can’t play the bagpipes, but being a true Scot, I could identify the sound of bagpipes if I heard them being played nearby. Only us Scots can do this. As for kilts, the last time I wore one was to the annual New Year’s Eve Street Party in Oban. Oban is a beautiful coastal town on the west of Scotland. I remember thinking, “This street party will be nice.” It turned out it was hosted in Tesco’s car park, which, when you think about it, is not really a street. They should have called it the “The Oban branch of Tesco’s car park party.”’

Food and drink

‘Haggis is a sheep’s stomach filled with oats, heart and liver that’s boiled, baked or deep-fried. It’s as delicious as it sounds. There’s the assumption that the only other thing we eat is deep-fried Mars Bars. I’ve never eaten one: I have eaten deep-fried pizza, which is actually more alarming. We deep-fry fish, we deep fry sausages and we deep fry burgers. We also deep-fry vegetables, but we don’t call them “tempura” like you do down south. We call them “chips”.

‘Irn-Bru outsells Coke in Scotland. It’s the ultimate hangover cure. I read in the British Medical Journal that Irn-Bru is more beneficial to you than water, and they’re talking about filling the baths of Lourdes with it. I also read that they’re about to launch a new brand of Irn-Bru flavoured sausages at a butcher in Fife. That’s actually true. I expect they’ll be deep-fried. ‘Whisky is something you usually save until you can savour it…say, after about eight pints. The lager of choice in Scotland is Tennents, which also comes in super strength for the real connoisseurs. The Scots are generally big drinkers: we’ll go out, have a really heavy night, wake up the next day and go, “I feel shit, do you want to go to the pub?” That’s how we deal with it. People also associate shortbread with Scotland, but it’s mainly eaten by old Scottish women. But if it’s offered, say yes, it’s a good biscuit.’

Culture

‘The Edinburgh festival is full of English media types talking shite, promising acts the world in order to con them into meetings to steal their ideas and claim them as their own for TV formats. But I’m not bitter… The Festival also gives the locals an opportunity to bitch about all the jobs and business that is brought to the area, and how busy the busses suddenly become.

‘I agreed to do three shows a day for the whole month of the Edinburgh Festival in 2007. I had two days off, so that was 84 shows in all. I did a sketch show, a character show and a stand up show, and I started to cry a lot between shows by myself for no particular reason. I became very hormonal, like an irrational old woman. The Festival is a time for paranoia and anxiety and thinking the world’s against you. It’s great!

‘Burns night is our opportunity to celebrate the work of Pete Burns. On Pete Burns night, we get the decomposing carcass of a sheep, and the head haggis man climb inside dressed as a transvestite and bursts out singing “You Spin Me Right Round Baby, Right Round.” And then he shouts, “It’s haggis time” and we all get plastered on Irn-Bru, Whisky and Tennents Super and we deep-fry and eat the remains of the sheep’s carcass. It’s easily my favourite day of the year.

‘People enjoy singing Auld Lang Syne to celebrate the fact that they know the first four lines - the perfect sense of being Scottish. The line that goes, “Auld acquaintances be forgot,” means you should forget all your acquaintances in celebration of the New Year. It’s the Scottish approach: these people have supported you, now ditch them, it’s time for a new year and a new bitterness. How can you do that if you’re surrounded by friends?’

Sport

‘Association football is where someone thinks that they play football, because they know people who do play football so it’s playing football by association. It’s based in a pub and it’s just loads of people chatting and getting drunk. The huge number of golf courses in Scotland is a marketing strategy by the Scottish Tourist Board to get American tourists to buy Scottish Cashmere jumpers. We lure them over by saying it’s not that cold, stick them on the coast with a wind-chill factor of minus 150 and crank up the prices of the jumpers. We had to find that £400 million that we overspent on the Scottish Parliament from somewhere…

‘The Highland Games features what is termed, “Heavy Athletics,” and includes the hammer throw, tossing the caber and the sheaf toss. They are all manly invents, mostly involving throwing things. I used to go out with a girl who competed - she was massive. She won it five years in a row. There is nothing funnier than a massive injustice against England in terms of football. The English media big up the England like they should be amazing. They’ve only ever had one year of success. There is a twisted glory in watching England being beaten.’

Why come to Scotland?

‘I’m very proud to be Scottish. I did a gig in Edinburgh when I was first starting out, and found out the next day that just after I’d left, the pub had been firebombed. Someone had chucked a petrol bomb into the bar. No one was seriously hurt, but it wasn’t my best review. I don’t know what’s worse: a one-star review or a petrol bomb!  But you have to admire the honesty of the feedback.’