A Monday morning and Greg McHugh pops up on screen with a slight grimace on his face. It transpires that only moments before we are due to begin our video call, he has accidentally stepped on the upturned prongs of a plug.
“I went to move something and didn’t see the plug,” he explains. “It has pierced and gone into my toe, which is now bleeding. The amount of swearing I just did before I pressed the mic, you would have been shocked and stunned.”
Ouch. That sounds like a sore one. McHugh peers down at his foot, out of sight off-camera, and carefully inspects the damage. “That plaster … the blood loss is containable, I’d say,” he deadpans in conclusion. “We are all good.”
It is a wryly funny moment that sets us up nicely for the subject at hand: talking about his role in new BBC Scotland comedy Only Child, which begins this week.
What's new comedy all about?
The Edinburgh-born actor and writer, known for Gary: Tank Commander, The A Word and Guilt, stars opposite Rab C Nesbitt legend Gregor Fisher in the six-part series about a man returning home to look after his stubborn, technophobe father.
McHugh, 44, plays jobbing actor Richard Pritchard, with Fisher, 70, as his recently widowed father Ken, who has been slipping into patterns of increasingly eccentric behaviour.
So, what can viewers expect? From the outset Only Child, created and written by Bryce Hart, has all the hallmarks of something special. It tickles your funny bone and packs an emotional sucker punch. It makes you belly laugh while tugging on the heartstrings.
In short, it is a clear-eyed observation of mortality, growing older, intergenerational differences and the nuanced complexities of parent-child relationships. All told through the lens of Ken and Richard’s own tricky-yet-comedic father-son dynamic.
Here, McHugh talks us through the premise, shares some of his favourite moments from making Only Child, reveals his “embarrassing” past encounter with Gregor Fisher and reflects on how the themes covered in the series mirror his own life.
Who else is in Only Child?
The cast and plot McHugh and Fisher lead a stellar cast filled with well-known Scottish names, including Amy Lennox (Holby City, Shetland), Stuart Bowman (Rebus, Guilt) and Forbes Masson (The Crown, EastEnders).
The roll call also features Clare Barrett (Fair City, Sisters), Robin Laing (Outlander, The Gold) and Paul Rattray (Jamestown, Game of Thrones), with comedian Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous) providing the voice of Richard’s acting agent Sally.
In the debut episode, Richard (McHugh) leaves London to return to his hometown of Forres, a year on from the death of his mother Jean. There he finds his father Ken (Fisher) struggling to adapt to life alone, far more than either of them would care to admit.
“It is a humorous look at the circle of life,” says McHugh, when asked to sum it up. “It is about realising that time is finite and the people who you love in life are incredibly important.”
He credits writer Bryce Hart’s “subtle observations” in capturing the “human element” as being the magic thread woven throughout the plotline.
“What we talked about a lot is this idea of Richard looking at Ken and over time realising, ‘Alright, what I see as madness is actually his love for things and what is important to him,’” says McHugh. “It is really easy to say, ‘Oh, that mad old so-and-so’.
“But sometimes you gloss over the fact that there is a humanity in feeding the birds, or a process by which your dad cares about things that you have not noticed before. When Richard and Ken spend time together, Richard starts to go, ‘This guy is a really decent man.’ “I think what Bryce has done beautifully is observe. When you revisit your relationship with your parents, you start to see them almost more as your peers, then they start to slip away a bit. There is this kind of shifting point.”
I am working with my hero
When Only Child was first announced, McHugh said: “If you’d told my younger self graduating from drama school that one day I’d be shooting a father/son comedy with one of my heroes Gregor Fisher, I wouldn’t have believed you. To be honest, it still doesn’t seem real.”
Their professional paths have crossed a few times over the years. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. How did it all pan out working together on Only Child?
“I absolutely loved it from start to finish,” says McHugh. “I know that might sound an obvious thing to say, but I think what helped was I got over my nerves.
“I did an episode of Rab C Nesbitt, where I had a very small part [in 2010]. I was playing a stuck-up benefits guy. But I couldn’t say my lines because Gregor Fisher was sitting opposite me doing Rab C in all of his glorious rant.
“I couldn’t believe he was in front of me. I couldn’t believe I was in a scene with him. I stuttered my way through it and was useless.
“Then, a few years later, we met again on The Cockfields [in 2021]. I told him all that and his jaw dropped. Gregor said, ‘What?’ and I replied, ‘I just couldn’t believe I was in a room with you.’ “So, the embarrassing thing happened [on Rab C Nesbitt], then I got to talk to him about it a little bit on The Cockfields.
"When we did this [Only Child], I felt like we knew each other just enough that I could relax.
“I feel that the two of us a) got on very well and b) he is such a brilliant actor. Rab is obviously a big thing, but Gregor has done so many different roles. He listens, he is courteous, and he is also deadly funny. He is hugely professional as well.
“I loved the process and getting to work with him was just a joy.” McHugh grins. “He will hate me saying all that, of course.”
In the opening scenes of Only Child, a tetchy-yet-amusing telephone conversation unfolds as Richard attempts to talk Ken through a technical issue with his “iPad”.
No matter whether you are 18 or 81, the scenario of a grown-up child trying to stay patient with a waning degree of success, as a parent gets ever-more frustrated while grappling with new-fangled technology, is one that many of us will be familiar with.
It is that discombobulating stage in life where traditional parent-child roles begin to reverse. This is something that McHugh believes will resonate with viewers across the generational divide.
“As someone who has ageing parents, who are thankfully still with me, these conversations are more than frequent about how technology works and this ever-changing world,” he says.
“The older generation, who have come from not having a mobile phone, to then having iPads and passwords. So many times, I have gone through very similar things with my parents.
Read more
“This show will relate to so many people because it is intergenerational,” he continues. “This idea that technology has become so front and centre in our lives. The younger the generation, the more idiotic you feel, because they are so tuned into the technology.
“As much as we maybe laugh at the older generation, now that I’m in my forties, I’m the older generation in terms of how quickly my kids can do stuff.”
To that end, technology lends itself to a deeper metaphor than simply providing easy laughs, attests McHugh. “There is some gentle fun being poked with technology being a recurring theme throughout the series,” he says.
“But it is also highlighting the fact that, once you get away from these elements of technology, you realise that they are not important and spending time with people without technology is really what sustains us.”
Parallels to his own life
Only Child deftly juxtaposes relatable, laugh-out-loud moments with weighty subject matter. “I remember reading one of the scripts,” says McHugh. “This will make me sound like a terrible son, but I was on the plane going over to Germany to watch the Scotland game in Munich.
“There is a scene in the show where Ken confronts Richard about having not been there enough when his mum was still alive. My mum had had a small stroke, just before I flew to Germany. I spoke to her, and she said, ‘No, no, no, don’t cancel.’
“It was a stroke but not a serious one – a mini stroke,” he clarifies. “When I read the scene where Ken confronts Richard about how he was always away acting, or doing stuff on his mum’s birthday, I couldn’t control myself, I just burst into tears on the plane.
“It is so relatable and personal to me. But also, Bryce [Hart, the writer] tops and tails scenes with comedy, then all of a sudden you are drawn into this emotion. As an actor I was like, ‘This is gold dust.’ It is so difficult to do well.
“People joke about how The One Show gear changes from famine to fancy dress, but Bryce has done this masterfully, that mix. I hope audiences tune in for both.”
Poignant moments
Only Child serves up some stark home truths: none of us are going to be around forever and, when it comes to those we love, there is grave importance in cherishing the time we do have.
This, says McHugh, led to a powerful epiphany for him too. “Facing the mortality of your own parents is absolutely terrifying,” he says. “There is no doubt about it.
“My mum and dad are ageing and I’m starting to look at the reality of their situation. My mum had a small stroke, my dad fell and broke his ankle a few weeks ago. You have to ask yourself questions at a certain point that you never thought that you would have to confront.”
The relatability of playing an actor
McHugh’s character Richard Pritchard is a bit-part actor who has become a minor celebrity in his hometown thanks to a small, recurring role in a daytime TV drama called Detective Manners.
Returning to Forres, there is the flattering comfort of everyone knowing his name yet at the same time, Richard feels like a fish out of water, making no secret of his desperation to hotfoot it back to London as soon as he concludes his duty-bound visit to see his father.
“Like a lot of actors, which I can definitely relate to, he is scared of failing,” says McHugh. “Richard’s career has been, not a complete failure, but patchy. I suppose in an ideal world, he would like to return home as a movie star, but that is not the reality.
“The reality is he has played this bit part in Detective Manners. There is a shade of him thinking, ‘Oh man, I need to go back to this small town, where everyone knows who I am and maybe I haven’t achieved as much as I thought.’
“Then, when he goes back, he realises that, apart from the couple who run the bar, people aren’t that bothered. It is the pressure he puts on himself.
“It is less about the small-town mentality and more about his attitude towards the small town that leaves him quite conflicted about his own destiny, I think.”
The couple who run the pub have a wall of fame where they rank local celebrities. Did McHugh have a wry chuckle at this particular scene?
“Oh, absolutely,” he smiles. “I could tell you so many stories. I had a woman stop me yesterday to say, ‘Oh, hi, how are you doing?’ and I had never met her before in my life. Because I’m at a level of fame where people feel like they know me, but don’t quite know where from.
“I had a lady stop me a while back and say, ‘Oh, you fitted my cupboards, didn’t you? You work for the council. You came round and fitted one of my cupboards.’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t …’”
Location, location, location
Only Child is set in Forres and the north-east of Scotland. What key locations did they use? “We filmed a lot of it out of Glasgow, mainly because you need to film where the production base is, where there are crew and where budget allows,” says McHugh.
“But towards the end of the shoot, we got to go up to Forres and that was hilarious. People were quite shocked that Gregor and I were walking down the streets, filming our scenes together. The reaction to that was very nice and people took a huge interest. Forres is a beautiful place.
“We also filmed at Lochwinnoch, places in and around Glasgow. Budgetary-wise it is incredibly difficult to shoot an entire show up in the north-east. But we did our best to represent that area.”
One memorable scene in Only Child sees chaos ensue as a sequence of alarms go off around Ken’s house, set as reminders for important things he needs to do. One is to take his daily pills, another to feed the birds – there is a bit of confusion as to what alarm is for which purpose.
Watching him, Richard is struck not only by his ageing father’s vulnerability, but given a sudden, jarring glimpse at what his own future might look like, a couple of decades down the line. Did McHugh feel a similar jolt?
“My son came out with something the other day and I found it so shocking,” he says. “I will be 45 on January 5 and he said, ‘Dad, you will be half of 90.’ I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m going to be sick …’
“So, yes, I do think about what the next 20 years hold. What stupid questions am I going to be asking my family to do with my passwords? What embarrassing situations am I going to be unfiltered in?
“I dread it, but then when you work with Gregor and see what you could be like – he is a roguish role model for where I could be.”
The blooper reel
Only Child is packed with sharply funny moments and dark humour. Were there any occasions where he and Fisher broke character and descended into unscripted laughter – corpsing as they call it in the business – during scenes?
“There was so much corpsing,” admits McHugh, with a laugh. “The quieter the scene, those are the ones that me and Gregor would really struggle with.
“There is a scene with a remote control later in the series that we shot on the last day of filming. We could hardly get through it because it is a very quietly spoken scene and those are the hardest.
“When there is a bit of energy in the room, you don’t corpse as much because there is something to fall back on, but when you have to be quiet, that was when we would absolutely lose it.
“People might take it for granted, but he is really funny,” adds McHugh. “Some comedy actors are very good at acting comedy on screen, but they don’t really make you laugh that much, whereas Gregor is super funny. We had an absolute ball.”
Only Child begins on BBC Scotland, Thursday, November 21, at 10pm and on BBC One, Friday, November 22, 9.30pm. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer from November 21
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here