Limmy might be an actual genius....

Rosco McClelland picks his comedy favourites

Scottish comic Rosco McClelland is back at the Edinburgh Fringe with How Could Hell Be Any Worse? Here he picks some of his favourite comedy moments.

Back of the Y Masterpiece Television

My first recommendation is the Kiwi cult classic Back of the Y Masterpiece Television, a low-budget and even lower-brow television series from the dawn of the millennium. Created by Matt Heath of NZ Taskmaster fame it honestly just ticked all the boxes for a young me… and still does for an older me.

I'm not long back from New Zealand Comedy festival (where I won best international act, might I add), and while I was out there I blew a few people’s minds when I brought this show up. My good friend David Correos told me that he'd let Matty know I was a big fan. It also has one of the greatest opening lines I've ever heard in episode three, and to this day it still bounces around in my head and makes me do a horrible little laugh.

‘I'm proud to announce to you Back of the Y's first ever clean show, because in the weekend I found God...I found him on the toilet having a wank!’

Perfection.

John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous

My second recommendation is going to be John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous. This is a great stand-up special. I always secretly hate it when a comic touches on a subject so beautifully that it puts it off limits for everyone else. Mulaney does this at least two or three times in this hour, the horse in the hospital bit about Trump will take a hell of a bit to beat, and his take on the internet security checks is perfect. Any comic I see mention them onstage pales in comparison to his efforts here.

It also let me see that stand-up comedy specials can be beautiful, Radio City's backdrop is just magnificent, and the way it was filmed felt new and fresh to me...there's a shot where Mulaney moves across the stage hunkered down, and a camera on a rail slide zooms and moves with him, I honestly didn't even know that was an option

Limmy’s Show

Brian Limmond can't stop being a cultural contributor, pictures of his face become instant memes, his rants become viral clips. And he's been doing it via different mediums for years and years, constantly reinventing himself. It's easy to throw the word 'genius' around. But he might actually be one.

Watching Limmy's show when I was younger was like a lightning bolt to the brain, I didn't know Scottish people were allowed to make things like that! It's funny but also visceral at the same time, there's an uneasy sense through the show and I absolutely love it.

Chewin The Fat

My fourth is another Scottish show, Chewin The Fat. Man alive, this show had it all… characters, catchphrases and stuff maybe you weren't to supposed to see as children. It became something that everyone would watch and then quote in school the next day, it even gave birth to the arguably more successful Still Game via characters roadtested in it.

Chewin The Fat was a short-form sketch show and one of the rare shows of that type with an incredible hit rate, it still holds up well even now, simple ideas that you can just get onboard with. Like 'the ragin guy' who becomes increasingly frustrated with a fiddly task and then loses it and smashes the place up. It's great stuff honestly, give it a watch.

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson

For my fifth I'll go across the pond to America and give a huge shoutout to I Think You Should Leave. Another sketch show where the hit rate is off the charts, honestly? I can't think of a sketch that doesn't deliver. The first season was a perfect introduction to the wilder world for Tim Robinson, he used to write for Saturday Night Live and apparently most of the first season sketches are one's that they deemed not for that show. They missed out big time, I don't really watch 'SNL' but if they had stuff like this on it then maybe I’d tune in.

I'm a huge fan of the casting and how they seem to find these off beat actors that play the parts so well, and I love how every sketch seems to have this feeling of escalation for no real apparent reason. Also all I want is a good steering wheel, that doesn't whiff out of the window while I'm driving

The League of Gentlemen

Lastly I'd just put down anything that The League of Gentlemen ever do...whether it's the self-titled character driven show in Royston Vasey, Psychoville, or Inside no.9, they always deliver something brilliant. Tubbs and Edward saying ‘a local shop for local people’ will always be burned into my brain, and the ease and beauty of the filming of the call centre episode of Inside No 9 showed me that you should be able to do as much as possible with little faff. To tell that story with essentially five static cameras showed me how it's really done.