Limmy in talks to make Daft Wee Stories TV show | But he's done with sketches and internet shorts

Limmy in talks to make Daft Wee Stories TV show

But he's done with sketches and internet shorts

Limmy is in talks to make a TV series based on his book Daft Wee Stories – but he won’t be returning to his sketch show, nor the internet shorts that made his name. 

And he said it will be a while before he considers a sitcom, after the disappointment of having his show based on Falconhoof, the presenter of a late-night TV adventure game, knocked back by broadcasters.

The Glaswegian comedian is meeting with a production company today about the possibility of making a TV series based on his short stories – although he admits he’s not counting his chickens.

Speaking at the London Short Film Festival last night, he said: ‘Like all these ideas, you get your hopes up. It’s looking good, it’s looking good, they’re just about to say yes, they’re just about to say yes… No a new person’s come in and they said no.’

Limmy, real name Brian Limond, has just finished his second collection, That’s Your Lot, which will be released in May – as Chortle revealed earlier this week.

His comments came in conversation with Armando Iannucci, after a cinema screening of all 600 of his six-second Vines back-to-back over an hour.

He told the audience he was done with the format, saying ‘I’m finished with it. After I did this compilation I thought, that’s it, I’m not going to do another 600 Vines.’

Vine has been discontinued by owner Twitter, and Limmy said: ‘I looked at Snapchat, I thought: no fuck this. Instagram, no. It’s all too close to Twitter. ‘I’m on Twitter all the time; I’m never off it.’

He also said he wasn’t interested in Donald Trump, but admitted he tweeted about the President-Elect just to get retweets. 

Limmy explained he was more interested in the Scottish Parliament and council affairs, but said: ‘If I go on about Scottish politics there are a lot of people who aren’t in Scotland, but everyone knows about Trump. It’s all about the retweets.’’

He also said ’it’s going to take me a few  years to get back into the sitcom pilot writing game,’ following his disillusionment with the commissioning process.

‘I wrote one and it got knocked back, then I wrote another one [and that got rejected], then I wrote Falconhoof and thought "that’s safe, that’ll definitely happen", and I got knocked back and I thought, "nah, fuck this, they don’t deserve me.’" 

He recalled how being called to London meetings got his hopes up, only for them be crushed. ‘I thought, "They don’t just get you down four and a half hours from Glasgow to say "no", that takes ten seconds. But that’s exactly what they did. Four and a half hours in, "no", then four and a half hours back.’

The comic said he ruled out the prospect of making a fourth series of Limmy’s Show, after he realised ‘I was writing the third series and it got to the point where I didn’t write any new characters. I felt I was running out. So I thought I’d get into sitcoms now and that would be the new thing…but boom! Knocked back.’

Iannucci suggested that he could do a deal to make a fourth series of Limmy’s Show if a broadcaster also commissioned a sitcom, but Limmy rejected that notion, saying: ‘It would make me unhappy because it would be shite.’

 The London Short Film Festival continues until Sunday. Website.

Review

Limmy’s Vines are the antidote to selfie culture. Whereas bright young things normally try to project a shiny, happy image of how their life is going so well, these are six-second snapshots of anguish, misery and pain. 

Many of the early six-second offerings, especially, are little more than a series of agonised expressions and teeth-grinding, although as he got the hang of the format, more recognisable comedy characters emerge – although even then, few of them could be described as happy.

Iannucci said the experience of watching an hour’s worth of the snippets back-to-back reminded him of The Scream, by Edvard Munch. It reminded me more  of the scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex’s eyes are pinned open as he’s force-fed a visual overdose of all the horrors of the world. 

The result of seeing this films on a giant screen and cut together – neither as were intended – is hypnotic, sometimes disconcerting, sometimes darkly funny. Limmy’s son Daniel provided some lighter moments, too, revealing a more playful side,

An hour-long onslaught is an interesting experiment, but it will scramble your brain.

– Steve Bennett

Here, for the bold,are the 600 Vines compiled together:

Published: 13 Jan 2017

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