An Evening With Gregor Fisher, The Pavilion, Glasgow. Thursday 23rd April, 2026

 

Well, this is all very jolly. A packed Pavilion Theatre to see one of the nation's warmly respected comic actors. And a fine evening it was, so it was. 

The images from Gregor's life and career
scrolled across the screen in both directions.

Things I learned:

Gregor is adopted, grew up in a working-class family in Neilston and met his wife at RSAMD.

He had a heart attack and collapsed while living in France. He came round to see that he was surrounded by French firemen and thought he was done for; that his wife had phoned the wrong emergency service.

He first met Rikki Fulton at Dundee and does an excellent impression of the man with whom he worked on numerous occasions.

He took the part of Grandpa Potts in the West End version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang because he had a massive tax bill. He didn't enjoy the trudge of eight shows a week.

His Cowardly Lion costume in The Wizard of Oz couldn't be washed, so to mask the smell, the costume department used to spray it with Febreze.

While not exactly starstruck by Richard Burton himself, he did acknowledge how others reacted to him: the cast and crew applauded him the moment he appeared on set during the filming of 1984.  

Al Pacino is a great actor, but he does live in Pacino-world.

Gregor was amazed by the power of social media when, during the filming of Whiskey Galore! Eddie Izzard sold out a show in Banff in less than twenty minutes. In Banff!  

He knew that Rab C Nesbitt was class, the moment he read the script. Such funny, truthful and poetic writing. Alan Yentob fought hard to keep it on the air when others thought it was too regional.

The seventy-two-year-old Gregor would tell his twenty-year-old self to be more fearless with his career. He regrets turning down many offers, thinking "It's not for me", such as the RSC.

Spoilers: The next series of Only Child features a scene in which Ken (Gregor) is discovered in a coffin in his living room. Hopefully, not in the last episode.  

Nigel West provided excellent questions to keep the evening on track, wording them differently on occasion from other nights on the tour to keep Gregor on his toes, a detail Gregor was not slow to challenge. The relationship remained warm.

At the end of the evening, Gregor received a standing ovation from his home crowd. 

Ticket Price: £24.50 x 2 plus Service fee £3.95 = £52.95 from Trafalgar Tickets.

Selected Preshow music:

Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet

Rhythm of My Heart by Runrig

Real Gone Kid by Deacon Blue

Walking On The Waves by Skipinnish

Tinseltown in the Rain by The Blue Nile

 

Interval music:

Why Does It Always Rain On Me by Travis

Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel

Life With You by The Proclaimers

Roll To Me by Del Amitri

Take Her In Your Arms by Trail West

Far Side of the World by Tide Lines

An Audience with Mick Miller, The Pavilion, Glasgow. Tuesday 24rd March, 2026

 

When I purchased tickets for this show, I selected seats in the front row of the Circle. I then got confused when Trafalgar Tickets sent me a second email with a different set of tickets attached. The bit the email didn't make clear was that they'd decided to close the Circle, and as such, move everyone downstairs to the Stalls. 

As you can see from the screenshot, taken an hour before the show, ticket sales were disappointing (the light blue dots represent unsold tickets).  

When we arrive at the venue, Mick is outside at the stage door, lighting a cigarette as he chats to a couple of fans. I don't stop. Horrible, stinky habit.  

The audience inside is predominantly that age group who can travel for free with their bus pass (I'm not talking schoolies). Any younger ones present remind me of unpaid carers taking an elderly relative to see the comedian from the telly, half a century ago, when telly only had three channels. They remember Mick being the bald one with the long hair and the youngest (he's seventy-six now).

Ryan Gleeson opens the show with a funny set, short enough to let us adjust to his facial hair, accent and unusual clothing (brown trousers so wide they looked homemade). He then introduces Mick. 

Mick doesn't mention the audience size and instead delivers a professional set packed with gag after gag, many of which are just as clever as those of any modern comedian. Most are unthemed, though a few link together, such as working with a circus. "The incontinent trapeze artist got sent on first to warm up the audience; the apprentice lion tamer is offered advice on what to do if the lion doesn't behave as expected: "If all that fails, what you do is reach down into the sawdust and grab a turd to throw in its face." "What if there's no turd?" "Don't worry, son, there will be."  

I knew Mick could deliver modern-style material. I'd seen him do it twenty years ago on a reality TV show called Kings of Comedy, where older and younger comedians swapped venues to see if they could raise a laugh. The thing about Mick is that he understands how to be funny without resorting to inappropriate material (by today's standards). Tonight, only one gag stepped close to the line: "A Chinese man opened a crow's shop. He asked me if I wanted to buy anything. I said, "Okay, I'll have a rook." (You have to imagine the accent).

After the interval, two chairs and a table were added to the stage, with two pints of what looked like Guinness, one with a straw. Ryan obviously didn't want to get beerhead on his beard and moustache. 

This section of the show was more loose and less funny. He discussed his time as a youth footballer, before he moved into showbiz, working in Pontins as a bluecoat.  Some of Ryan's questions sounded like lobs for Mick to score a gag, while others led to anecdotes that didn't go anywhere. 

Mick does a fine Bernard Manning impression, capturing both the voice, the manner and the style of the seventies comedian. 

Somehow, Mick's microphone died twice during this section, despite being replaced after the first time. 

When a woman got up to go to the toilet, Ryan automatically kicked into MC mode, asking the audience if she was with someone, and discovering her name. He wanted to play a practical joke on her by having her partner swap seats with someone in another part of the theatre. He wouldn't, and she wasn't away long enough to push it further. When she returned, Mick commented about the short time she'd been away, asking if it was a pee or a poo. She replied it was nothing - she was constipated - to which Mick recommended she pop two Imodium and everyone stand right back. People laughed, but not me. The joke was incorrect. He should have said Senokot. Imodium would only make her more constipated. I can forgive him the gaffe, as it was off the cuff. At least he chose a product from the correct section of the pharmacy.     

Mick finished the night performing his Noddy gag. I'd forgotten how it went. I don't think he did it justice tonight. It seemed rushed. Maybe he was dying for a fag.

Overall, the night went better than I expected. I had been concerned that the small audience would kill the gig, the laughs disappearing into the Gods, but that didn't happen. The space felt more like a comedy club with everyone consistently laughing. 

Ticket Price 2 x £31.00 plus Service fee  £3.95 = £65.95 from Trafalgar Tickets

Blurb

His workload is as busy now as it has ever been, he never stops! His deadpan delivery and his unique hairstyle are what people remember, but he constantly works on his act and is forever adding new gags and stories to keep it fresh. He can’t leave a venue without performing his set piece, Noddy routine. The audience just wouldn’t let him!

In this show, Mick performs a full comedy set in the 1st half and in the 2nd half is interviewed by comedian and close friend, Ryan Gleeson. The interview is very funny and informative, and it’s never the same twice. Ryan is always trying to find out new things and Mick keeps trying to make Ryan laugh.

This show is a must for comedy fans.

Sara Pascoe, "I Am A Strange Gloop" Tour, Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow. Saturday 7th March, 2026

Sara loves her husband, but... he's very tall, like a whole foot taller than her. He wears size 13 shoes and leaves them on the floor like a trip hazard. If he puts two items of his clothes into the laundry basket, it becomes full, and they don't make bigger ones. She's checked. He's also blind to dirty towels. Fresh ones he can locate, no problem, but used ones can lie on the floor for weeks if she doesn't clean up after him. She tried it. She's thinking it would be better for him to get another wife. Not a replacement. An extra one. To share all the duties. 

She loves her kids, of course she does, but sometimes she doesn't. She is a late mother, having her first one via IVF in her forties. They are currently two and four and have turned her into a constant wiper. Every meal gets flung everywhere. She finds discarded baked beans in every crevice of her kitchen.

Her husband once did a helpful thing and used a tool to remove them all, but didn't do what any woman would do: throw them away. No, he sought credit for his accomplishment and left them for her in a small jar beside the sink. She thought he'd left her a lovely present of some peanuts and only realised they weren't after she popped them in her mouth. As she realised they weren't peanuts, she noticed the empty crevices, but swallowed them anyway because that would be one less thing to clean up. 

She decries how women will put poison in their face to avoid looking older, explaining she's done the research and found other horrendous examples, such as how scientists have sewn an old mouse to a young mouse, joining their blood systems and found the older mouse lived longer. Another example was an oddball billionaire who injects himself with his son's blood to extend his life. Now that gentleman only celebrates his birthday every nineteen months because of how much longer he thinks he's going to live. Sara, on the other hand, has started smoking again, so she now holds her birthday party every eight months.    

Sarah was fantastic tonight. No support act, just two 45-minute sets. Even the recycled material about loving Take That when she was sixteen was given a fresh spin in light of her current circumstances. (She had more screentime in the crowd scenes outside The Big Breakfast house than she did on Last One Laughing).

Our seats were in the fourth row of the stalls, but I never felt uncomfortable. Sara is not that kind of comedian. Pausing for crowdwork is not her style. She relies on the rhythm of her words to carry the comedy along. Indeed, latecomers and unexpected laughter distracted her, throwing her off her material. You could see her replaying the set in her head until she found the rhythm to jump back in.  

I asked my wife if she found any of Sara's material triggering (the husband scenarios sounded painfully familiar - I still don't know how to use our new washing machine, and I'm not allowed to touch the iron in case I break it). She laughed ruefully. She's also not buying into the idea of taking on an extra wife, though. Our super king-size bed may be comfortably big enough to sleep three, but she's not falling for that. She'd end up having to do all the work there, too.   

Ticket Price: £31 x 2 plus £3.95 Service Fee = £65.95 from Trafalgar Tickets

Blurb

Have you ever been awake in the middle of the night and thought something so smart and astute that you couldn’t wait for the world to wake up so you could tell them?

THIS SHOW IS THAT THOUGHT.

In that it doesn’t make much sense and is a bit weird on reflection.

Sara Pascoe is a comedian and her children don’t sleep and her kitchen won’t clean itself and her husband “doesn’t want to be in it”.

As seen and heard on Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo, The Great British Sewing Bee, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Mock the Week and co-host of Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club podcast.

Age restriction: 14+ (strong language)

Jason Manford: "A Manford All Seasons". The Pavilion Glasgow, Friday 20th June 2025

The air conditioning is noisily blasting out prior to the show, desperate to lower the temperature in the theatre. Outside, the heat has been incredible. Another warmest day of the year so far. I'm feeling sleepy but excited. I've never been to a Jason Manford show. The drive in was fine, except for the road closures coming off the motorway, with none of the sideroads off Bothwell Street open due to JJ Abrams' film Ghostwriter being filmed in those locations. My wife thought she saw Glen Powell, but it might have been his stunt double. I was too busy watching the crawl of traffic, realising too late that my lane was blocked off.

I didn't know who the support act would be and was delighted when Ray Bradshaw appeared on stage with his BSL interpreter. I've seen Ray many times and never failed to find him funny. He has a conversational charm that belies the sharpness of his jokes. I've heard most of the material before, but it still tickled me because it's so good. He's playing the Armadillo on April 11th next year. 

During the interval, a stage hand brings on a tall chair and a table draped in black cloth, upon which stand a glass and a jug of water, along with a paper folder. The music playing is eclectic, including one of Jason's own, "Assembly Bangers", according to Shazam. Nena's 99 Red Balloons and Hayseed Dixie's version of Ace of Spades also stand out.

The theatre isn't sold out. Sales have been respectable with downstairs and the Circle mostly full, but the Balcony isn't open as far as I can see. Not surprising given he toured the same show last year at the Armadillo. The audience skews to an older demographic.  

Jason's act is proper old-school storytelling. He talks about his family (six kids!) and his parents (his dad never comes to see his show - "I don't go and watch your brother doing his plumbing, do I?"). The chair, on which Jason is perched for most of the show, reminds us that he is a safe comedian, as he puts it—an entry-level comedian—and that description is fair. He knows how to craft a routine, stringing together sequences of jokes that persistently entertain. I don't nod off, despite the heat, though my eyes want to. It takes me a while to shift the idea that he's not Gary Barlow, half expecting him to break out 'Greatest Day,' their accents sounding identical. An hour and a half later, he's done, telling us he eschews the idea that comedy should end on a high note, then undercuts that with a verbally dextrous routine about whether comedy is art.    

After the show, we popped to McDonalds for milkshakes and sucked them down until the paper straws dissolved as we headed back towards Bothwell Street to see if we could catch some Hollywood action. Unfortunately not. They were filming inside one of the buildings, so all we had to show for it was this picture and an aftertaste of decaying paper straw.

Ticket Price: £79.00 (for two tickets) plus Transaction charge £3.95 = £82.95 from Trafalgar Tickets

Simon Brodkin "Screwed Up", The Pavilion, Glasgow. Tuesday 3rd December, 2024

 

Did Simon Brodkin screw up when he booked a second date at The Pavilion for his current tour?  Not as far as I was concerned, although I think he expected to sell a few more tickets than he did. The first show sold out but that had been for a Saturday night in September, not midweek in December. It was always going to be a difficult sell, especially for the same tour, not fresh material. The Pavilion had done its best to make the theatre appear full, moving the Balcony ticketholders down to the Stalls, but even then, the empty seats were noticeable. 

With no support act, Simon did both halves of the show himself. Opening with some crowd work, he struggled slightly with his picks, not initially finding comedy gold. Occasionally, he struggled with the local accent. He got better when he switched to asking if there were particular workers present, like teachers or those in the NHS, so he could use his prepared material. 

By chance, he did uncover one audience member who claimed to work as a Radiation Plate Operator (or something similar, I can't remember exactly) on a nuclear submarine. Probing deeper with lots of questions about the job, Simon started to doubt the man's sincerity and asked if anyone else worked in a nuclear submarine. 

One man further back  piped up, "I used to."

 "And what did you do there?" Simon asked,

 "I was a Radiation Plate Operator."

Big laughs from the crowd. 

The second half of the show was entirely prepared material, starting with his opinions on Harry and Meghan and then going all over the place from there. His writing is sharp, with lots of excellent lines. I had watched him perform some of the jokes online, but not many. He gets away with his inherent cheeky persona because he is from London; the joke is often on him, and we know he's only joking.

The pedant in me took issue with a couple of his jokes. His routine about half-price morning after pills in Boots didn't fly with me because, in Scotland, you can get them free at any pharmacy as part of the Emergency Contraception Service.  And I can't remember now what the second one was.

I especially enjoyed his finale, in which the wife of his best friend asked him to provide his eulogy. He began by apologising for not knowing her name (the joke being that men don't talk to one another about their lives), his ignorance escalating from there to a sublime "Would You Rather... Or" callback which almost didn't need telling, the laughing audience way ahead.

Simon's career has evolved from a chav character act to a global stage prankster to a confident stand-up performer. I'd say, in this respect, he hasn't screwed up, no matter the diagnosis from his doctor. I look forward to seeing what he does next.

After the show, I put my right arm into my jacket sleeve and discovered where the contents of the knocked-over can of Heineken I'd noticed under my seat at the interval had gone. I didn't realise the sleeve was so absorbent, so I ended up carrying the jacket back to the car instead of wearing it. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, and there was only a faint smell of alcohol. 

Ticket Price: £29.50 x 2 plus Service fee £3.95. Total £62.95 from Trafalgar Tickets (£1.50 more than he charged for his September gig, the chancer).

Photo taken with consent
from comedian

Milton Jones, "Ha!Milton", Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow. Saturday 9th November, 2024.

The Hot Damn! were playing in Audio tonight, but I'd already purchased tickets for this show, and my wife really wanted to go, so off we went. 

Front-row tickets for the Grand Circle gave us a fantastic, unimpeded view of the stage, which was dressed with large objects covered in white sheets. A large screen stood at the back.

The support act, Tom Houghton, announced himself for the first half, drawing consternation from the crowd. He's a posh boy, son of a retired top military official no less, which did little to wheedle him into the affection of this Glasgow crowd. He had to work hard to draw any laughs, and his crowd work generated little more than a single sentence from anyone. Indeed, the biggest laugh came from an audience response after he asked if anyone had a hairy body, and someone did a Chewbacca voice impression.

We were on safer ground with Milton. As always, he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, with his hair gelled to bouffant. This show had a lightly theatrical tone, as per the title, and vaguely revolved around a cease-and-desist letter he received from Cameron Mackintosh's production company about the tour title. The jokes were clever, with only a few drawing groans. I loved his Braveheart giant cue card joke and how he referred back to it later with another joke.  

This show used five large props, more than I remember from any of his previous tours, perhaps leaning more into the show's theatrical aspects. He used a crib, an overhead projector (I nearly shouted out the expected heckle to one joke, only for him to subvert the response when it did come), a rocking chair, which, when reversed, doubled as the front of a boat, a Punch-and-Judy-style TV theatre, and a giant snail that he crawled inside for his finale routine. 

There were callbacks aplenty, and the show was consistently funny, even with the few groaners. I can't knock his talent for joke creation. A lot of skill and quick thinking went into tonight's performance. I just wish it hadn't been on at the same time as The Hot Damn!  

Ticket Price: £38 x 2 plus £3.95 service fee from Trafalgar Tickets 

Sara Pascoe, "Success Story". The Pavilion, Glasgow. Friday 3rd February, 2023

No support act for Sara tonight. It was a proper stand-up tour show with two halves and an interval (so The Pavilion could sell us ice cream, sweets and alcohol). 

From the publicity leaflet: "Sara decided she wanted to be famous when she was 14 years old. since then, she had auditioned for Barrymore, scared Pete Burns and ruined Hugh Grant's birthday - but look at her now... (please look, she needs you to look. And clap. And laugh. And then clap again)."

This covered the first half. Some of this material I'd heard her perform previously, on chat shows and the like. The familiarity didn't make it less funny.

In the second half, she discussed her path to pregnancy, her lactating boobs ("maybe they'll attract more men to my show") and her feelings towards her son, Siegfried Sassoon (not his real name - that's Theodor) and her dog, Mouse, which confused the pest control person she'd called in when she had a rodent problem.

I do like Sara. She doesn't do big gags but instead races along, almost getting breathless at the speed she talks, casually throwing out funny line after funny line, often as the butt of her own jokes. She presents as warm and authentic and says what she believes. She puts a lot of craft into her routines while making them feel effortless. 

One thing that appeared strange was seeing so many spaces in the audience. We had tickets in the front-row Circle and there were four empty seats beside me (I've ceased taking it personally) with more gaps elsewhere. Did people forget about the show? Were they ill? Or were the tickets purchased by touts who couldn't resell them? I'll never know. Or need to know. 

What I do know is tonight was a success... a success story! 

(Ticket price: £15 plus fees)

An actual paper ticket!!