Limmy has created a show that’s perfect TV for our days in lockdown because of the coronavirus.
Limmy’s Homemade Show sees the 45-year-old from Glasgow, real name Brian Limond, play multiple parts in his sketches while filming, editing, adding music and visual effects – all by himself.
It’s a social distancing sketch show for people self distancing at home.
Games and life questions we could all be asking now are in the show, including seeing if you can throw a teabag into a cup, asking what the numbers on your toaster mean and offering a lockdown mantra: “Let’s all get fat together.”
Limmy was ahead of the curve and did the pilot for it two years ago.
The second episode in the three-part series will be shown on Friday, first on BBC Scotland and then across the UK on BBC2 this Sunday. As the world spends it's fourth week in lockdown the series feels exactly right for our times.
He said: “Limmy’s Homemade Show looks like something that’s been made for this whole time we are in.
“It’s the sort of thing you would make if you weren’t allowed to leave the house.
“There’s nobody else in the show. You don’t see me grabbing somebody else for a cuddle and these things you aren’t supposed to do.
“It looks like it’s been made in the last month after we’d gone lockdown.”
While other comics and entertainers are panicking and jumping on to social media to try to entertain fans while keeping up their profile and paying the bills, Limmy has long since realised the possibilities of connecting with an audience online.
He streams via Twitch, doing daft things such as simulated truck driving and playing video games. It’s not what he’s doing, it’s all his banter, live, and the interaction he has with his fans.
Limmy has already made a career out of living in his house – the rest of the world is running to catch him up.
And while he’s enjoying the funny social media videos people are posting, he puts his foot down at his son, Daniel, nine, joining in.
While long-term partner Lynn McGowan thought it might be nice, Limmy knows how nasty trolls can be and doesn’t want his boy feeling he has to live up to anything he has created or done. Limmy said: “He would like to do what I do someday and I’ve been tempted to make videos and stick them on YouTube.
“You do see some weans do that. But then I thought, ‘Don’t’, because I’m choosing for him if he’s going to have a private life or not.
“Lynn said, ‘It’s just a wee video to stick online’, but I said, ‘No, he’ll be connected to me’. When he goes to secondary school you’re building up a personality for him before he’s got one.
“Leave it to later. He could get to 12 or 16 and say, ‘Why did you let me do that, everyone knows my face and hates me?’”
Like Still Game and Burnistoun, Limmy is a modern Scots comedy treasure. While his comedy is often more surreal and out-there than some like, Limmy’s Show, which ran from 2010-2013, is well loved and its jokes often repeated.
Characters like over-thinker Dee Dee, ex-addict Jacqueline McCafferty and TV call-in show guide Falconhoof have seeped into the consciousness, as has the sketch “She’s turned the weans against us”. Limmy stopped doing Limmy’s Show after three series and a Christmas special because he felt he was repeating the characters.
He tried to do a Falconhoof sitcom which didn’t work, turned to writing books, did a live show and found an audience doing sketches on YouTube and live streaming on Twitch
playing games.
Limmy has always been known for questioning our reality in his sketch shows. And he’s carried it on to his online world – showing the absurdity of social media.
He became infamous for his “Had the pleasure of meeting...” obits on Twitter but it then got tricky when celebs took their own lives or it was someone Limmy had respect for and fans still wanted the tweet to be sent.
So he stopped. But he still tweets out the other tweet he’s known for about Daft Punk ’s Get Lucky. He said: “I’ve set that to automatic so that will continue tweeting even if I get hit by a bus.”
Despite fans’ love for characters like Jacqueline, Limmy won’t go back to them.
He said: “I want to do new things. If I do the characters again, you know something has gone wrong.
“And with live streaming I’ve found something I love doing so why would I do anything else?”
While fans watch as he drives around in a virtual lorry, Limmy can’t even drive. He said: “My girlfriend takes me for a wee drive but I panic and say I’ve got a feeling I’m going to scratch the motor.”
Fans give Limmy money subs and he sees streaming now as his job – it pays the bills. He thinks live streaming will be a good thing during lockdown and something those of us who haven’t discovered it yet will flock to.
He added: “Live streaming in the house, not just me, feels like there’s something going on. Some people are on their own or when they are by themselves really don’t like it.
“But if you watch live stuff you feel you are part of something that is happening in real time and not pre-recorded. You feel connected.”
Limmy has suffered from mental health problems in the past but has no problem with the new normal of self isolation.
He said: “Me, you could stick me in solitary confinement for 100 years and I’d be fine.”
Making Limmy’s Homemade Show wasn’t as easy as you’d think. He didn’t just think of a joke, switch on his camera and record himself. For a start, he had builders working in his house.
He said: “I thought it would be quite easy and I’d just be filming myself here and there when I had ideas, but the building work which was meant to last five weeks ended up three or four months so everything was interrupted.”
It was also a different experience to making the TV show. He added: “When my girlfriend asked me to come off the computer if I was doing the TV show, I could say, ‘I am doing editing for a deadline for a telly programme’, which sounds big and important.
“But it’s harder when I’m streaming and all she can hear is me having a laugh all day.”
● The second episode of Limmy’s Homemade Show is on this Friday, BBC Scotland at 11pm. Then on Sunday on BBC Two at 10.45pm. All three episodes are now on BBC iPlayer
