Limmy interview: Daft Wee Stories
Paul Weedon chats to Brian Limond, aka Limmy, about comedy, gallows humour, and new book, Daft Wee Stories. Strong swearing ahead...
Warning: the following contains frequent strong swearing and content some readers may find er, offensive.
With a cult following that would make even the most mainstream of comedians jealous, Brian Limond, better known to his legion of fans as Limmy, has spent the past decade and a half building a reputation as one of the strangest, most bafflingly brilliant comedians currently working. With the release of his new book, Daft Wee Stories, we sat down for a lengthy chat with Glesgaâs favourite son.
âI love saying terrible things,â Limmy exclaims with a wry smile. âThings that I think are terrible and Iâve gotten in to trouble in the past â just hearing it come out of my mouth or seeing it typed and seeing it out there â something terrible that in real life isnât funny.â
Conventional probably isnât a word best used to describe Limmyâs comic outlook. Having spent the past decade dividing his time between creating one of the most criminally underappreciated sketch shows of recent times, Limmyâs Show (which Jake Laverde paid tribute to on this very site), and crafting deranged, whimsical and frequently observant Vines that conjure more laughs in seven seconds than many comedy series achieve in an entire seasonâs run, Limmyâs output is nothing short of prolific.
Chatting with him via Skype feels like a strangely familiar experience, not least because anyone whoâs spent any time following him on Twitter or Facebook will be aware of his webcam sessions in which he often spends hours gleefully berating popular music, creating his own dance music and adlibbing hilarious and often downright bizarre tales based on suggestions from others. Over the course of two hours on a rainy Friday evening, we cover the full spectrum of topics â dark humour, vloggers, depression and social media – all punctuated intermittently by apologies for his rambling, tangential and sweary patter.
ââBrian, you know this interviewâs 200 words long,ââ he jokes. âIâve got a habit of going on. I think Iâm doing interviewers a favour, but Iâm actually giving them more to sift through and try and find something they can use.â
He neednât apologise. After all, itâs Limmyâs perceptive, inquisitive nature that has won him leagues of fans – and his own fair share of detractors to boot – both through his work on television and his unmistakable social media presence where nothing is off limits. Heâs a man prepared to plumb the darkest depths of the human condition in search of gags, even if it rubs people up the wrong way in the process.
âYou can say stuff thatâs nice and fucking irresponsible,â he laughs. âUnfollow me if youâre not into it, but I want to talk about this guy going in to a fucking morgue and kicking the heads off the bodies. I want to talk about that. I find that funny… I just love fucking horrible things. Iâve just got a really sick sense of humour thatâs separate from reality. Itâs funny, but I also genuinely donât like it when anything like that happens. I donât even know if youâd call it coping. I donât want to cop out and say: âitâs just how I cope with life, by laughing at horrible thingsâ. Itâs just one of those things.â
Indeed, for the uninitiated, Limmy may seem like a peculiar sell â his contradictory brand of comedy defies any conventional definition, relying more on his unique perception of the world, brought to life through an array of characters, each seemingly more deranged than the last. Having begun his comedy career making viral videos in the early 2000s, the subsequent success of his live stand-up performances at The Fringe and the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, which was based heavily on his successful podcast, Limmy’s World Of Glasgow, soon paved the way for his own TV series, which ran on BBC Scotland for three series and a Christmas special, concluding in 2013.
âIâve got lots of things going on in my head, and theyâre not necessarily useful things,â he explains. âItâs almost like schizophrenia in a way – not in terms of voices or anything but in terms of ideas and getting ideas in your head, kind of like Dee Dee in Limmyâs Show⌠Mostly itâs shite and every now and again when youâre writing, if you wait long enough, youâll have an idea and youâll be like âwait, what was that? Go back!â I especially like violent things and weird things and mad things â stuff to do with madness and insanity. I just think itâs funny; making serious things funny or pretending to be serious about funny things.â
Itâs this creative approach that has informed his latest work, Daft Wee Stories, a compendium of curious short stories written in his own inimitable style. The project began life with a series of blog posts and developed from stories that he would spontaneously post on Facebook and Twitter. Inspired by the approach of the horror anthology series of yesteryear, the book covers the gamut of taboo subjects, ranging from benign tales of a man convinced that his colleague is a vampire, to absurdist tales of tragic accidents or acts of savage violence. To Limmy, itâs all part of the joke.
âI love The Twilight Zone, the original black and white ones with Rod Serlingâs wee bit at the beginning. I love him telling you about this story, or Roald Dahl at the beginning of Tales Of The Unexpected sitting in his seat by the fire… I love that. You get the person who wrote it or you get someone telling you about it. You just imagine an old guy telling you a story like that. Itâs that discomfort of being in a room with somebody like that⌠Iâve been in the company of people like that. They seem alright and then suddenly something pops up and youâre kinda looking for the door. And itâs being able to write that stuff. I like happy things turning bad or happening out of the blue… Itâs like a campfire.â
For those aware of Limmyâs unique brand of humour, his approach to storytelling will feel reassuringly familiar. Deftly talented at creating scenarios that from the mouth of anyone else would seem horrific, he is effortlessly capable at translating the stuff of nightmares in to absurdist comic vignettes. Think of it as comedyâs answer to David Lynch, if you will â if Lynch were a prophetic Glaswegian armed with a mobile phone and an unapologetically self-deprecating sense of humour.
Having adopted the seven-second video sharing platform as his go to outlet for short form comedy ideas since 2013, Vine feels like a natural extension of the sketch show format, which Limmy left behind following the conclusion of Limmyâs Show.
âItâs like going back to the old days in a way. I think it was around 2000 or 2001 that I was making wee videos for Flam Jam and Chunk, like the Guy Fawkes video. And then I made my own videos like Requiem and Birthday Card and then you get in to telly stuff and then you come back. With Vines, it just boils down to the ideas and doing something thatâs funny, rather than worrying about how the lightingâs all set up and making a big effort, getting a cast in and a director photography. Itâs just about the idea. No oneâs worried about whether it looks rough. If itâs funny, itâs funny.â
While Limmyâs Show never found mainstream success outside of Scotland, it nevertheless earned him two Scottish BAFTA awards and went on to garner a cult following. Despite not achieving the widespread attention it deserved, the show still had its fair share of high-profile champions, including the likes of Stewart Lee, Matt Lucas and Graham Linehan â the latter of whom both invited Limmy to work with them on their own projects.
âYou kind of savour the times when people get back to you and they say that they like this thing, and you think, âwell how did they stumble across this?â They must have found it on YouTube or someone must have recommended it… But what about the people whoâve liked your stuff since day one and youâre going âoh, the guy from The Strokes likes my stuff and that really means somethingâ. And Iâm like, âwho the fuck am I? What are you like? You fucking careerist fucking climber cunt.â Itâs like: âOh, look! Thingy on Twitter with the blue tick likes my stuffâ. And I go âlisten to yourself, youâre a slimy wee fucking nothing.â Remember the people whoâve been passing your stuff around for years…â
Despite steady sales of the showâs first two series on DVD, to date the third series continues to exist in the ether. Broadcast on BBC Scotland in late 2012, Limmy concedes itâs now unlikely that a DVD release will see the light of day.
âThere was a fuck up with the contracts,â he explains, visibly irritated. âI donât know who fucked it up, but before I could stick in all the commercial music, the BBC cleared all the music, but there was a thing with the DVD that we couldnât do it. So that means for the third series DVD, if I did want to put it out, unless we wanted to pay a fortune, weâd have to take out all the Jean Michel Jarre stuff for Falconhoof… Maybe people wouldnât notice, but with stuff like that, who fucked up the fucking contract? Put them in a fucking noose and chuck them off a fucking bridge, because thatâs my third series DVD fucked now and nobodyâs going to see that.â
Further adding to the disappointment is the recent revelation that the BBC turned down a proposal for a series centered entirely around the character of Falconhoof, the downtrodden host of fictional late night call-in show Adventure Call, whose suggestions intended to guide players through a fantasy role playing game are frequently ignored.
âItâs a shame, because I really liked it. Iâve written things that Iâve looked back at and compared to other things and I go âwell, actually I would still like to have made it, but I prefer this nowâ, and the Falconhoof oneâs definitely my favourite… Itâs quite mainstream and conventional but I like it. Itâs not full of wee jokes. Itâs not that kind of thing. It doesnât have a laughter track in it or anything. But I really liked it and Iâd love to have it made.â
And is there any hope that we may yet see it?
âI said to my agent âwhy donât we pass this about? Letâs see if anyone will take it. Channel 4.â But no, Iâve not heard back. Iâve not heard anything back saying ânoâ, but Iâm just assuming the fact that I asked six months ago and Iâve not heard back that nobodyâs in to it. And I loved it. So when you do something that you personally really like and then the people who could put it on the telly donât like it⌠What are the chances of me coming up with another thing thatâs better than that?â
Away from television, Vine appears to have provided Limmy with the perfect creative outlet. Free from the constraints that may come with the attachment to a broadcaster, anything goes, much like his Twitter feed. And the vast majority, with their disparate array of characters and stream of conscious observations, defy any easy classification (warning: link contains adult content) particularly this oneâŚ
âOh, the rope thing? Aye. Oh, I love that one. Especially for the voice I put on,â he laughs. âIf you want to judge a guy from his voice, he doesnât sound like heâs got broad horizons. Itâs not a liberal voice⌠itâs someone whoâs asking [affects the voice] âwhat the fuck are you watching here? What the fuckâs going on? I donât know what the fuckâs going on. Iâm scared.â I think I searched for it for the Vine, rather than being on a porn site and spotting a wee video. I mean, being straight, I wasnât sifting through a gay porn site to see if there was something there for me. And I donât imagine it was a wee thumbnail in amongst straight stuff. I think I deliberately searched for whatever it was. I spotted that and thought âfuck it, Iâll check that out.ââ
As well as Vine, Limmy has also continued to embrace YouTube as a creative platform, recently taking a bizarre, ironic foray in to the world of vlogging. Created as a reaction to the spate of young teens whoâve taken to posting anodyne videos about their lives in recent years, itâs something that intrigued and bemused him in equal measure.
âTheyâre all kind of filmed with the same camera, with the same lens, shallow depth of field and theyâre in a bedroom and thereâs a bed in the background and itâs got lights dangling in the frame,â he observes. âThereâs this blogger guy, seems like the middle class kind of guy, Iâm not sure – charlieissocoolike and Bryarly Bishop, this American lassie. Just coming in from the outside, going in to this world and seeing that theyâve got a girlfriend – you look at it and you think, well how is that big news? But it is to the people who are in to them and to him⌠Itâs pure big news and I donât know who the cunt is. And I love that⌠Itâs a bit like if someone read an interview with me and theyâre seeing this guy talking about how things are going really well. Theyâd be like âwho the fuck are you though?ââ
âI really like doing that. But I get to a certain point with things like that, or the Vines, where I lose interest for some reason, but I really like doing them. I love going out and putting that voice on and going out with the camera and seeing what happens, editing it with the fucking stupid face that I pull and that whole thing. Itâs just cracking. Taking clips from old things that youâve done too⌠and sticking it in to the new one and going âI like this, man. This is nice and mental.ââ
Limmyâs relationship with social media and the Internet stretches back to 1999, when he first set up his blog and website. Since then he has carved an established reputation on social media, frequently engaging with fans and non-fans alike on a wide range of subjects. But for all his unabashed curiosity to know what people have to say, the reactionary nature of social media is something he, along with many others, has found problematic.
âItâs weird how Twitter is shaping our culture now,â he muses. âSocial media is really shaping how we think about things and he we react to things. Itâs no mere add on to society. It really has shaped society. When you look online and you see people saying this is what we should be doing or saying now and this is how to do it and how to go about debating things and speaking online⌠There are some things that Iâve asked on Twitter before and thereâs a big uproar and Iâve had people tweeting me and saying âdonât think, donât speak, just listenâ. But this is how I talk to people. I tweet stuff and I ask online. I donât hide away nipping away to a reference library and finding out the facts privately. I like asking the people it affects. Some people think you shouldnât talk about something unless it affects them, but I donât think that.â
Ever the proficient internet troll (he wrote a Guardian piece about the subject), Limmyâs own run-ins with the likes of Caitlin Moran (he mocked Moranâs husband, The Timesâ music critic Pete Paphides, for giving Daft Punkâs Random Access Memories a glowing review, causing her to claim that she wanted to castrate him) and Louise Mensch (who called him out in a blog for The Telegraph for posting tweets claiming that he wished that Margaret Thatcher was dead) have been well documented. But while he doesnât particularly regret anything heâs said or done online, he does acknowledge that others may not be as thick skinned as he is.
âWith my upbringing and where I grew up, people slagged people. If you slagged them, theyâd slag you back⌠I know it pales in comparison to genuine issues that people have got, but Iâve had people slagging my stuff off on my blog and my website for years⌠People would email me and tell me how shite something was⌠You get used to it. It never really hurt me. Iâd worry a bit, obviously, you know? âAm I shite?â Eventually you think, well who gives a fuck, man? I get used to it⌠There are things that other people say that I disagree with and I think are harmful, in a way, but I accept that weâre all harmful in some sort of way⌠I honestly donât try to cause anyone harm. If itâs a big shot blue tick sort of person, I know theyâre a human being, but thereâs something about that where I think, you should have enough strength to deal with it. Itâs almost like theyâve got enough things to prop them up.â
Being thick skinned is one thing, but the reactionary nature of Twitter is something he also feels might be detrimental to comedy and the dark style of humour that heâs particularly fond of in the long run.
âI can imagine that in ten years or something it just becomes impossible to make jokes about gallows humour, because people whoâve been affected by it will know about it, even if they didnât watch the thing or they didnât read your tweet, or whatever it is.  Take Chris Morris – imagine Jam or Blue Jam – people looking back at that and going âI cannot believe people used to laugh at this,â the way people look back at things in the 70s, like racist stuff. âLook at what people used to find funny.â I almost imagine people looking back at dark comedy and disapproving⌠Now, if you come up with anything, on Twitter, right away somebody can get in contact with you and go âactually that happened to somebody, maybe you shouldnât be doing thatâ and thereâs a Twitter storm. I can imagine in a while that that will become less and less accepted.â
Another thing that Limmy has spoken about candidly in the past are his battles with depression and anxiety, frequently discussing issues relating to mental health. Having recently come off pills himself, his musings about the subject, though characteristically blunt and amusing, are frequently insightful and something that many of his fans continue to find valuable.
âDespite me being really happy when I was on the pills, I had these dips where I had flu-like symptoms that were either caused by the pills or made the pills dip, I donât know which caused which, but because I got that once or twice and I just thought, well if itâs not working I think Iâm actually ready to come off these anyway⌠And Iâve come off them and Iâm happier on the pills, but Iâm alright with this. Iâm up for this. I like the whole mindful thing and thinking about how Iâm thinking… You need to lose the plot a wee bit, go a wee bit mental in a good way⌠Itâs kind of how Iâm able to get back in to doing live stuff again. It just helps you to remember that it does nae matter. None of this fucking matters that much.â
With Limmyâs focus now turned towards his upcoming book tour, consisting of twelve sold out appearances across the UK, heâs faced with the challenge of selecting which of the stories translate best to being read in front of a live audience.
âIâve been going through the book and picking out my favourites. What I want to do is make people laugh and entertain them. Some of them are a bit too thoughtful⌠wee pensive ones⌠There are things in the book that should probably come with a trigger warning⌠But at the same time, I see books, like Stephen King or something, you take whatâs there. Itâs not like the telly. Youâve decided to pick this up and read it, as opposed to telly stuff that you switch on and youâre half way in to it. Youâve not had any warningâŚâ
Whether itâs likely to offend or not, one thing that is sure to get a look-in is the elusive Rennie, Limmyâs go-to fictitious friend renowned for his obscene acts of violence, usually carried out against his long suffering grandfather, which make for one of Limmyâs many Twitter staples.
âWith Rennie, I thought if I was to do that at my live thing, like this old guy getting tortured, some people might be fucking hurt by that,â he explains. âIt might ruin their night. And on the one hand, well, thatâs the sort of thing I do, you know that.â
Fans neednât worry about anything being toned down, however.
âBe the one to be all light and family friendly? Fuck that,â he exclaims. âI think Iâll drop him in. I can imagine saying something about my mate Rennie, even if itâs just âmy mate Rennie shags his granda.â That could be my âgarlic breadââ
Daft Wee Stories is available now.
Follow Limmy on Twitter here – @DaftLimmy
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