Rab McNeil: Let's hear it for Ricky Gervais – a larger than death character

Might as well. It’s on a three for two deal. The assistant says: “Do you have a Reward card?”

“Oh aye,” you say, fiddling about in your wallet. “Might as well get the points, eh? Might be a Boots in Heaven.”

“Not much point, sir. All the evidence suggests there’s no piles or halitosis in Heaven.”

“Sounds good. Right, ah’ll be off then.”

“Take care. Have a nice day.”

Not that Ricky believes in Heaven. But he does accept the arguably convincing evidence that we all die, and his forthcoming, darker-than-usual TV series revolves around that irritating eventuality. After Life, which begins on Netfix on March 8, features a journalist whose wife has died from cancer. Not unnaturally, this sends him off the rails, prompting him to smoke heroin and become somewhat unprincipled in his behaviour, which sounds a bit far-fetched for a journalist.

It’s already been suggested that Ricky might get flak for the heroin sequences, but he isn’t fazed, believing life’s too short to worry about snowflakes – the “I’m offended” brigade, who are everywhere these days.

They’ve already been up in arms at his pronouncements, such as the time he said he’d rather have a cup of tea with Hitler than someone with a nut allergy. Nazis took great offence at this. But, as he has said previously: “If you can’t joke about the most horrendous things in the world, what’s the point of jokes? What’s the point in having humour? Humour is to get us over terrible things.”

Amen to that. Ricky’s militant atheism has also gets him into trouble with the God Squad, particularly when he organises Twitter votes on the following lines: “God doesn’t prevent terrible things because (a) He can’t (b) He doesn’t want to (c) He causes them (d) He doesn’t exist.”

Ooh, naughty boy. If the day comes when he does have to make that dreaded trip to Boots – and we pray that never happens – then he can be sure he will burn in the fiery pits of hell, where I’m told they have a terrible problem with global warming.

This week, after saying of people who avoid confrontation and insults that they “might as well live in a f***ing video game”, he received backing from the influential Daily Star newspaper, which thundered in an editorial: “Everyone needs a bit of criticism and mickey-taking. It builds backbone.”

I will be quite candid with you here and say I’m not really a backbone kind of person. I deplore snowflakes as much as the next reactionary, but that doesn’t mean I like being slandered willy or even nilly.

I also deplore death and, while I do not believe in a loving god (if there is any kind of a deity, surely he deserves a good boot up the jacksie?), I do believe fervently in an afterlife, where you can eat as many fish suppers as you like without getting fat, and where Hibs win more than two games in a row.

It is that belief which will sustain me, should I ever have to make that final walk to Boots. Which reminds me. I must get some Bummo in.

****

HOW discombobulating to read that Scottish butlers are becoming increasingly popular with the international aristocracy.

Scots have often been thought of as good NCO material, but not butlers, surely? Imagine Jeeves had been Scottish in the Bertie Wooster stories.

“I say, Jeeves, it says here in the Daily Star that the weather is about to take a turn for the worse.”

“That’s right fascinatin’, ken?” [barely bothers to stifle a yawn]

“Perhaps we should cancel our planned holiday.”

[Becoming interested suddenly] “Dinnae talk pish.”

“I believe you have relatives up Saltcoats way.”

“Aye. So?’”

“A cynic might say, Jeeves, that you’ve a vested interest in this planned junket or jaunt to the jolly old Ayrshire coast. A junket or jaunt that you organised for us.”

“Well, where do you want tae go?”

“Monte Carlo is pleasant at this time of year.”

“Ah’m no’ gawn thair. The sun burns ma baldie heid.”

“That settles it. Monte Carlo it is.”

“Is it, aye? Well, to save the sun some time, ye can away an’ bile yir ‘jolly old’ bonce. Ah’m away tae Saltcoats.”

“Oh well, toodle pip.”

“Pip off yirsell, ya toff poltroon.”

****

NOW they’re coming for our gas cookers. Apparently, every time I ignite a ring upon which to cook some mince, I’m contributing to climate change. Who knew?

It’s the same with diesel cars. I bought my old wheeled horse ages ago, when they told us diesel cars were best for the environment. Almost needed a sun roof so that I could accommodate the halo I felt above ma heid every time I went for a drive.

Now, as the owner of both a gas cooker and a diesel car, I’m beginning to feel tainted with evil.

It’s so unfair. I do my bit. Recently, I did my own redd-up of plastic detritus along a shoreline on Skye. I recycle everything carefully and, decluttering the hoose recently, have been back and forth to the municipal dump, carefully lobbing small electrical items, large electrical items, bits of hard plastic, metal and wood into the correct containers.

Fomenting the cookers hysteria, Baroness Brown told a Westminster committee: “There are almost 30 million homes in the UK. They are a huge part of the problem.” Oh, sorry about that. Tell you what. I’ll just not cook anything. That’ll put her gas at a peep.

*****

SIR Billy Connolly, bless him, is to lead this year’s Tartan Day parade in yonder New York.

In so doing, he’s following in illustrious footsteps. Mine. A couple of clarifications: I think, technically, I was last in the parade. And I was on a bus. Still, I was there.

That was the time that, all inadvertently, I found myself waving to the crowds in Times Square from the open deck of a tour bus, alongside The Fonz, the Mayor of New York, another actor and, I think, a senator.

The then First Minister, Henry McLeish, and tour bus operator, Sir Brian Souter, were also upstairs on the bus. You know the next bit, because I told it in The Herald seven years ago. The crowd looked up and said (come on, altogether now, you remember it): “Who are these other folk with Rab?”

Yay, you did remember. The Big Yin in yon Big Apple will certainly be a memorable experience for all concerned. And I’m sure most of his jokes will be less than seven years old.

The catch with Tartan Day is that it can be kitsch. But, what the hey, it’s fine to don the old kilt now and again, to feel the breeze swirling around your Manhattans.

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