Limmy interview: 'I’m into free speech but not the consequences'

Despite never being broadcast on television directly in England, Limmy is something of a star in the alternative comedy world. Through his podcasts, YouTube videos and blogs, he landed his own TV sketch show on BBC Scotland, Limmy’s Show, which ran for three seasons, won two Scottish BAFTAs and brought him a regular slot on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe for one series. Last year he released his first book, Daft Wee Stories, which was, as the title suggests, a book of short, absurd stories in which Limmy’s (real name Brian Limond) imagination is let loose to both hilarious and mildly troubling degrees.

Those who encounter his quintessentially Scottish style of humour are left either in adoration or baffled, some of his sketches are strange, dark and oozing in a weird melancholy, some are colourful and daft to the extreme, whilst others escape simple description altogether. The end result is one of the most idiosyncratic and original comics working today. After playing four nights in Glasgow at the beginning of this year, Limmy is wrapping up his live Limmy Show with two UK dates, one in Salford and one in London, in September (13th, 16th). Putting some of his most-loved characters on stage, and to bed, for the last time.

DDW: This week you’re wrapping up your Daft Wee Stories tour at the Edinburgh Fringe. How have these reading, Q&A and signing events gone?

L: I've not been getting asked anything too weird but it's been really good meeting everybody. I joked about signing anything for people at the end, books, tickets even arses. There have been a couple of guys that came up and said "are you serious about signing arses?" and they pulled down their trousers and pants in front of everyone in the whole queue and I signed their arse.

No stalker as yet, then?

No, I don't think I’ll ever get any stalkers, as I’m the stalker type myself. That happens when people come up to me to say 'hello' or whatever when I’m out and about, It's not me who has to say "oh, it's been really nice talking to you but I’ve really got to go" it's them saying that. I don't get out much so I’m grateful to be jabbing away at somebody, just talking a load of shite.

I understand these two upcoming Limmy Live shows in Salford and London will be the end of those characters and Limmy's Show for good?

Aye, that's right. I'm not doing the Limmy Show again on the telly because when I was writing the third series I could pick up on finding it being quite difficult to write. They offered me a fourth one but I said no. I want to do other things; likewise I don't want to be doing a Limmy Live show year in year out.

How has the writing process changed writing for stage and for a live audience? Some of the TV stuff relies on silence, awkward pauses, sadness etc – things that are presumably hard to translate live?

Everything I’ve done I’ve just remembered that there's no room for any fucking sadness of any kind, or thoughtfulness, maybe a wee bit but this is a night out for folk who are potentially having a drink. Especially when I was doing it in Glasgow on a Friday and Saturday night. I knew people would be getting fucking steaming. I've just tried to give everyone a big fucking laugh, whereas sometimes the Limmy Show just gets a bit weird.

How were the Glasgow audience? They generally have a reputation of being quite wild.

It's hard to tell because I’ve got nowhere to compare them to yet. London and Salford will be the test. Although there is this one sketch I’ve got called 'Kill Jester' that joins Falconhoof [TV host of a fantasy adventure channel] and the caller just wants to get her to fuck. There's one bit in which the audience can shout that bit out and the crowd were going mental, one guy was jumping out of his seat, pointing in the aisle screaming "kill jester!" and people were shouting and there was one lass down the front row just shouting "kill the fucking wee boot!" and I was like, fuck me, is she talking about the jester, or Kirstin who plays her? She came off the stage fucking shaking, she was like "fucking hell", everyone was shouting and pointing at her and hating her, it was like the line between what's real and what’s not disintegrated. When she came off she sat with a thousand yard stare, Vietnam sort of thing. She was alright but she'd never experienced anything like it, everybody looking at her going "fucking kill her!". So I don't know if Salford and London will be the same. I hope everybody goes mental.

How's the transition been for you, going from one man in one room all those years ago to performing to thousands of people on stage?

The biggest transition for me was doing stand-up for the first time. The telly stuff was a big thing but I kind of knew what I was doing because I was already interested in doing sketches and videos but the live stuff, doing that for the first time was fucking terrifying. I've never been so scared of doing anything in my fucking life. Everything else has felt natural since then, it was that initial transition into stand-up for the first time that was the scariest thing. Also, doing these shows in massive theatres is good because the bigger the place, the less percentage of people is needed to laugh to make it sound like lots of people are laughing!

By some people’s standards, you’ve said things or made jokes deemed “too far”. Do you believe there should be restrictions in comedy or should nothing be off-limits?

For me, in my mind personally and privately, there are no limits to comedy. In terms of it being on stage, or on telly or making a video, or tweeting, there's limits I’ve got because although I’m into free speech and everything, you have to take the consequences of that - it's also other people's right to free speech to criticise you and say they don't like you and that you've said something horrible and offensive. Sometimes I forget about that, sometimes I think I should be able to say what I want without criticism and I have to remind myself that that's not the case.

You’re an avid social media user, so I guess this being a clear example of the aforementioned?

I've said before I think the best thing about social media is that it brings people together and the worst thing about social media is that it brings people together. You're assuming that the people following you know what type of person you are and what type of humour you have. Some people don't seem to be able to distinguish between humour and what you really feel. They forget that there's a difference between what's real and what's a fantasy or joke. And I say forget because these might be the sort of people who say "I’m sorry, I don't see what's so funny about that" are the same people who will sit and watch a horror film with a guy who runs around a house with a knife chasing somebody and they're sitting there watching that with their popcorn for entertainment, knowing fine and well that people get chased around houses by a guy with a knife in real life.

It's like, look at someone like Stan Laurel or Dougal from Father Ted, one of these characters that are a bit daft and people laugh at how stupid they are. You could go ‘wait a minute; in real life has that guy not maybe got some sort of condition? Or a disorder or syndrome, and we're laughing?' The same with Stan Laurel, you could ask what's Oliver doing? Why’s Oliver kicking this poor guy up the arse when he makes mistakes? The point is, at some point when people criticise others for laughing at something, there'll be something they are laughing at that could equally draw criticism from other people asking, "I’m sorry, why are you laughing at that?" Do you think it's funny a guy falling off a roof when he's putting his ariel up? That happened to Rod Hull, I loved Rod Hull! You think that's funny?’

Where did you pick up your ability to turn horrifying situations into funny ones, do you think? In the wrong hands some of your material could be handled really badly.

People say that's the Glaswegian sense of humour, this dark sense of humour, maybe that's why. When I grew up I didn't try and discover a dark sense of humour, it was just everywhere. I grew up in a council estate and I don't know if it's because there's lots of people that are fucked up but everyone was sort of joking about people maybe getting stabbed or someone getting battered, bad things were happening to people and you're not sitting about going "god, god, that's terrible" with your mates. With anything, you plonk anyone in a situation and they get used to it and they'll start finding it funny.

When you've grown up around junkies and people on jellies and people dealing and stabbings and a general threat of violence - not total fucking deprivation but stories of people's lives fucking up - eventually it becomes normal and you can joke about it, it doesn't feel dark to you. It feels dark to other people. It was hardly going to lead to knock knock jokes and maybe I’ve just got a knack for delivering that sort of sense of humour. I think I’ve always had a bit of a screw loose when it comes to what I find funny. Maybe it's a survival thing, a gallows sense of humour, maybe this Glaswegian sense of humour comes from all the fucking deprivation, especially the old days when it was all disease and wee 'uns playing with rats and shite like that. All fucked up and people dying, dying, dying; there isn't really any room for sensitivity there or maybe it just helps to be able to laugh at things. I don't know if that happened to me or if I’m just naturally like that or if I just have a screw loose…although I’m not a psychopath, in fact I’ve looked it up.

Is Glasgow still an on-going inspiration for source material for you or do most of your creations and ideas come internally these days?

I think a lot of my favourite characters come from my past. Jacqueline [reformed heroin addict] or Dee Dee [unemployed chronic weed smoker with wild paranoia] have come from my past when things have gone wrong with people, people with long-term unemployment, drug addiction, violent tendencies, things like that. They are my favourites; they come from people back then and are based on the sorts of things I used to do myself. But I’ve also got these other characters that aren't really rough or violent and when I did Daft Wee Stories that is a bit more inward, as I’m thinking about feelings and stuff. I like what if scenarios now, almost placing myself in a certain scenario and just asking 'what if'. My ideas 25 years ago were coming from living on this council estate, being around people and having that sort of life myself. These days my life - I’m teetotal, I don't take any drugs either - I sit around the house and I meet up with people now and again but I’ve got a sort of hermit life, a kind of lonely life just wondering around thinking about things to myself and that's what I like to do now. So now it's about mad, strange thoughts and what if this and what if that, just imagining things. It's good for me to have somewhere to write these thoughts though because if I didn't you'd just be some sort of fucking loony.

It's now been 10 years since you did your Limmy's World of Glasgow podcast and next month you're playing to thousands of people on stage. What have you learnt in that process and what advice would you give to someone who might find themselves in a similar position to where you were 10 years ago?

I knew early on that what I wanted to do was do my own sketch show and I thought ‘fuck it, aim high’ because I just wanted to do it. The lesson I learned was that you can be a lot more than what you fucking think and that a lot of other people are not as good at what they do as what you think. You may think that people who are doing well for themselves are good at what they do and very confident but chances are they're not. Comedians and stand-ups are full of self-doubt. The reason I’m saying this is because you think there's this big fucking world full of people who are so much better than you - not as a person, but professionally, more capable - but everybody is still not as good as you fucking think and it's a good feeling to know. It's good to know that people don't really know what they're doing that much. So it changes that mind-set of 'oh I can't get into directing because of this or I can't do stand-up because of that'. All you need to do it just do it.

People think that some things are just for other people and that you don't belong there and then they don't even bother trying stuff because they think it only happens to other people. All you have to do is do it and you become that thing right away. So any advice I would give to someone would just be to fucking go for it. Doing stand-up was the biggest thing for me because I really, really thought I could never fucking do this in a million fucking years and yet here I am. Then you do something with that and something snaps in you. So just remember, people are shite.

What's next then? I understand you've written a new sitcom but the BBC passed on it?

Aye. There are two sitcoms that I took to people at Channel 4 and BBC and they got knock backs. The BBC invited me down after I pitched it and I thought they know it's a four and a half hour train journey each way - because they know I don't stay down there - they're not going to invite me all the way down just to say no but that's exactly what fucking happened. They went through the script, said they loved it, not to change a thing but they passed. It was a bit more comedy drama than comedy and they were looking for mainstream stuff and this was quite experimental. I was calling my girlfriend like "they fucking said no, why would they call me all the way down here to do that?" just fucking text me, text me ‘N O’, it's two fucking letters, you don't even need the full stop. That would have been it, 10 fucking hours there and back.

The other one I pitched to BBC Scotland and that was a Falconhoof spin-off, his own sitcom, and people know him, they know what he looks like, sounds like, they like him. I thought it would be easy to sell and they were like "what is it Falconh...?" I wrote a story around how much of his real life was a disaster outside of his screen life too but they said no as well. So that fucked up my sitcom writing stuff. Anyway, right now I’m finishing up a second book of short stories, then after Limmy Live possibly another sketch show, maybe, not like the Limmy Show but something that's a bit more homemade. Like this thing I did for BBC iPlayer for Valentine's Day, just me with a camcorder. I like that idea again, just like the old days when I first started making videos - something authentic, just me and my camera. I just need to work out whether I could make an entire series out of just that, so the plan is for something homemade and experimental but for the telly.