Jamie MacDonald is at the Edinburgh Fringe with his show Toxic Bastard about how as a white, middle-class, straight male he might expect people to consider him loathsome – but being  blind means he’s constantly told he's a role model. Here he picks his favourite comedy moments.

Billy Connolly

My earliest comedy memory was at my Gran’s up in East Kilbride which was/is a new town just outside Glasgow whose estates range from dead lovely to pure psycho. Gran’s was somewhere in the middle.

In her lounge, next to the telly, there was a shelf of  archaic looking books. But if you looked closer (I could see back then) they weren’t books at all but a line of VHS covers designed to look like books. God knows who they fooled if a mildly visually impaired eight-year-old could see through the  ruse. 

Concealed in one of the weighty tomes was a Billy Connolly video that was rated 18. That fierce red circle with the white numbering that screamed ‘adult’ and was so alluring to young kids. 

My brother, who must have been about 11, and I made it our mission to try to watch some of this illicit material. No easy task considering it took my Gran’s telly about half an hour to warm up. 

One day Gran and my Mum took the dog out or something and we managed to put it on. Anyone could have been on that video. It was the 18 certificate we were interested in but it was Billy Connolly himself. It wasn’t his Big Banana Feet tour. I think it was the one after. If memory serves he was in the big pink and black vertically striped suit and it was recorded in the Albert hall around 1987. 

I had no idea what he was going on about back then. I have now, like every other Scottish comedian, an encyclopaedic knowledge of his work. But back then his big hair, beard, mad eyes and on-stage presence was hypnotic and launched my now near 40-year love of comedy and the great man.

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Jethro

Like many kids growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I had a mate with a mad dad. A loose parent that didn’t mind children smoking and drinking in his house. 

At 13 I felt quite the man asking Mr ***** for an ashtray  before enquiring who the comedian was he was watching on his telly?  The answer was ‘Jethro’, a comic from Cornwall who sadly died during Covid. 

Now some of his jokes haven’t aged too well but for tight joke-writing there aren’t many who can touch the Cornish legend. I watched a full Jethro concert with Mr * ******. Choking on smoke, eyes streaming with tears, nose spraying out lager. He had more gags than I had pubes.

 One joke that is still quoted in my family today is the one where a stranger was asking after a regular in a pub. The regular asks what the stranger looked like but keeps failing to place him despite the stranger’s increasingly bazaar features being described by the bar man. one leg; massive ears etc. 

Finally it’s revealed that the stranger was completely bald bar one hair in the middle of his head. To which the regular says, and we always quote: ‘A red one? Oh you mean Ginger’. A perfect gag!

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Red Dwarf

As a teenager in the 90’s I was spoiled for choice with the sitcoms that were out there. Rab C Nesbitt, Ab Fab, Blackadder and a ton I can’t think of at the moment. 

But the one my brother and I loved above all was Red Dwarf. It went a bit off the boil after series six, but up until then it was awesome. 

I’ve tried pitching a few sitcoms and always wish I’d witnessed the Red Dwarf pitch. An everyman wakes up on an intergalactic  mining ship millions of years after the rest of the crew were wiped out in a radiation leak caused by his boss… who is now a hologram who winds him up. Plus an evolved cat who thinks he’s God, a subservient robot and a batshit ship’s computer…hilarity ensues.

The ’Backwards’ episode from series 3 is one of the best. The crew land on what appears to be Earth. But it turns out to be an Earth where time is running backwards. Hilarity does ensue. There’s bar fights where black eyes are punched off faces. Ribs are uncracked.

But the best gag has to be right at the end of the episode where they wonder where the Cat has gone. ‘To the toilet,’ someone says. Cut to Cat quickly standing up from the bushes looking shocked and stunned from the surprise reverse event.

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I’m Alan Partridge 

In the late 90s, I’m Alan Partridge hit our screens. What a time to be young!  Never has there been a more perfect opening to a sitcom. We see Alan in a radio studio announcing that it’s 4.45am. The early hour coupled with the radio studio instantly shows his fall from grace. 

We continue falling with him back to his new home - the three-star Travel Tavern on the outskirts of Norwich. Six of the funniest episodes of comedy spring from this bleak set-up.

 There are so many landmark moments – him trying to join in with the hotel staff by dressing as a monster using the shower curtain and his tungsten tip screws only to be reprimanded for being behind reception and vandalising his room. The sex scene where he tries to delay climaxing by talking about people needing wheelchair access to Norwich town centre and him being caught stealing a traffic cone by the police.  

But the best episode for me has to be episode 3 – Watership Alan. Here Alan pisses off the Norfolk farming community. He says they produce dodgy meat. He doubles down on this when he interviews the posh farmers’ union rep live on radio. At the same time he’s booked to front a promo video for Hamilton’s water breaks. A company offering boating holiday’s on the broads. Out in the open he’s heckled by the farmers and it culminates with them dropping a cow off a bridge onto him. I envy you if you haven’t yet seen it also if you’re still young!

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Adrian Mole

When I went to St Andrews Uni in the early 00s my eyes had started to get proper shit. However, being the modern man I was, I pretended it wasn’t happening. 

But sight is surprisingly tricky to fake. Actually impossible when it comes to reading, so I started listening to audio books from the RNIB’s talking book library. 

I fell in love with Sue Townsend and her Adrian Mole diaries.  I was aware of Adrian Mole from the TV show of his ‘growing pains’ in the early 1990’s but I had no idea both that there was a full series of diaries which saw Adrian grow into an awkward adult, husband and father  and that the author, Sue Townsend also lost her sight. 

The latter shouldn’t really be important but for some reason to me it was. Must be something to do with there not having been many blind people high up in the arts back then, just Stevie Wonder, some jazz musicians and the miraculously cured one from the Bible. 

The diaries themselves are astute, warm, toe curling and hilarious. Modern life, its ups, downs and politics beautifully recorded through the diaries of an ill-at-ease man, unhappy with his lot but who mostly does the right thing but in the wrong way.  

Back then I wasn’t involved in comedy but I reckon knowing that success was possible regardless of my disability  must have been significant. That I then chose the diaries of Adrian Mole as my specialist subject on Mastermind and came last pulls the rug from under that sentiment. 

It’s well worth reading or listening to the diaries but here’s the great Stephen Mangan playing Adrian in the ‘Cappuccino Years’:

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???????

I want to leave my final entry open. None of my choices have included any comedies with disability at its core. Growing up there was little to no on screen representation of disability. I’m not complaining. It was the way it was. 

Thankfully this is now changing. There is still not enough representation about and a lot of what there is, is pure tokenism. However there are a load of fantastic comedians pushing against this. From the ones I’ve worked with – Lee Ridley (aka Lost Voice Guy) and Rosie Jones, to the ones I know of and admire like Tim Renkow and Chris McCausland. I know Rosie just had a sitcom out on Channel 4, but I haven’t checked it out at the time of writing this.

So I’m going to put a link to it’s trailer and hope that it’s so good that it’s going to be my final landmark for my comedic influences. No pressure, Rosie! 

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• Jamie MacDonald: Toxic Bastard is at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose at 4.15pm during the Edinburgh Fringe