Victor and Barry (or Forbes Masson and myself) made a faux documentary That’s The Way It Is exploring Victor and Barry’s lives and loves for BBC Radio Scotland. It was hosted and produced by David Jackson Young.
Victor & Barry: That's the Way It Is
The New Year Show
Hogmanay, aka New Year's Eve, is a huge deal in Scotland and so is the TV show that rings in the bells each year.
In 1987, Victor and Barry took part in the Scottish Television spectacular. It was pretty terrifying. We had never done live television before and there was a lot to go wrong, as well as an audience of drunken Glaswegians to entertain.
Actually looking back on it now, that was the strangest part of the whole thing: finishing the show at about 1.30am on New Year's Day and everyone being so drunk and Forbes and I being totally sober.
We performed a few skits and sang a song medley that included a duet, or rather a quartet, with Moray Hunter and Jack Docherty as Don and George.
Babes in the Wood
Babes in the Wood was a pantomime I wrote with my partner Forbes Masson for the Tron theatre Glasgow in 1987. In it we incorporated out cabaret characters, Victor and Barry, into a narrative based on the traditional story. But letting Victor and Barry loose on anything changed the landscape somewhat. It was set in Glasgow's West End, with Victor and Barry playing themselves as baby brothers, in blue and pink (I think I may have been the pink one). The show also included an evil villain who hated animals called Vivy Section (geddit?) and the Good Fairy character was a seagull who also doubled as Victor and Barry's mother who had left the home after a messy divorce. She was played by Game of Thrones’ Michelle Fairley.
Here is an article that Forbes Masson and I wrote for some Scottish publication that I can't remember now about Babes in the Wood.
The collie and the Carnoustie question
How did we write the panto?
Well, we got a piece of paper and pen.
That’s not funny.
I know, but it used up another ten words.
Oh good.
Seriously though, in May of this year, Michael Boyd asked us to find a well-known panto and adapt it to suit the somewhat limited talents of Victor and Barry. (They’d very kingly agreed to star in it without seeing the script beforehand).
We eventually settled on Babes in the Wood, although it wasn’t really our first choice. We really wanted to do Jack and the Beanstalk, except Barry is afraid of heights, and Victor has a goose phobia (They also both felt it was a little height-ist).
To cut a long story short…
What we’ve gone for is a good old-fashioned adventure story, which I think will excite both children and adults alike.
We had a great time working out all the different characters. Apart from Victor and Barry, there’s a mad scientist, a principle collie, a magic seagull, a hippy chicken as well as Mummy, Daddy and home help. The whole thing is set in that magical, faraway place… Kelvinside, and the tale begins on Christmas Eve.
It’s a very Cosmopolitan panto. That’s not really due to its content, more with the exotic locations in which it was conceived. They include: the beach in Carnoustie, Falkirk, Glasgow, Shetland, London, a chalet in St Andrews (which incidentally was totally devoid of light, heat, and water), and lots of trains. The last few words were penned in an alcohol-induced haze in a kitchen in, wait for it, Carnoustie.
Why does Carnoustie feature so prominently in the creation of this epic, you may ask. Well it’s none of your business.
The first day of rehearsals was really scary. The whole staff of the Tron… directors, stage managers, designers… and worst of all, actors, all sitting round reading our script for the first time.
Normally, the only performers we write for are Victor and Barry, so we’re not really used to intelligent, artistic criticism of out work.
Anyway, there’s no going back now. The handouts are printed, the seats are selling fast, we open on December 9 and we’d like to crawl into a little corner and come out in January when it’s all over.
Never mind how we write the panto… why did we??
The end song, Dreams Can Come True was included in Victor and Barry's album Hear Victor and Barry and Faint released in 1998 on Jammy Records.
This video is of us promoting the show on Glen Michael's Cavalcade. Glen is a legend, btw.
Victor and Barry's Scottish Review of the Year!
At the end of the glorious and triumphant year for Victor and Barry, they hosted a show cataloguing the highlights of Scottish culture.
Terry Neason
Terry Neason is an amazing singer/actress who had worked extensively with 7:84 and Wildcat theatre companies in Scotland and was now given her own show by Scottish television.
Forbes and I were brought on to be script editors and to appear each week as Victor and Barry, bringing a bit of light relief to the proceedings. We had a bit of shtick with Terry about her not letting us sing and so on the last episode of the series the three of us did a rather surreal version of It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish!!
There were some amazing musical guests on the show including the bands Hue and Cry, Deacon Blue and Horse. The lovely Susie Maguire also appeared as her alter-ego Marina.
Victor and Barry: Are We Too Loud?
Forbes Masson and I took our latest Victor and Barry show to the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh for the duration of the festival. We had previously performed it at Glasgow's Mayfest and Cumbernauld Theatre.
Above you can see our appearance we made on STV's Acropolis Now and BBC’s Combing The Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. We also released a cassette album, also entitled Are We Too Loud?
Victor and Barry's Guide to Mayfest
Victor and Barry were darlings of the Scottish cabaret scene, but now television domination beckoned. Forbes and I were asked to wrte and host short magazine programmes about Mayfest, Glasgow's annual arts' festival. We jumped at the chance, and, as Victor and Barry would say, suddenly the sluice gates of television stardom opened.
Looking back at it, this was an incredible experience because we were having to write material on the hoof, and change it according to which guests were available at the last minute, all the while trying to convey the characteristics and world of Victor and Barry to an unsuspecting nation. Also at one point during the three weeks of the shows, I had to go away to Shetland to do some performances of It's Not The End of the World and so that is why Forbes is suddenly interviewing the artist George Wylie on his own!