Kevin Brannigan has created a character, Big Angie, who will be up there with Rab C Nesbitt as Scotland’s most famous working-class character. Just ask Rab’s creator Ian Pattison.
He’s mentoring Kevin, who was having conversations with BBC Scotland about Big Angie before the Covid pandemic hit.
The channel gave us a taster of what’s to come on their Short Stuff online strand. Beauty and the Beef – which starred Kevin as Angie and Garry Sweeney as snack van lothario Beef – was uploaded in March and has become one of its most watched sketches racking up over 500,000 views and counting.
Kevin, 35, from Glasgow ’s Barrowfield, said: “I want to do for the east end of Glasgow what Rab C Nesbitt did for Govan.
“I can’t tell you how mind-blowing it is being mentored and encouraged by Ian. He’s a legend.
“I know Angie will be up there with the comedy greats.”
Pattison, 71, who created and wrote 10 series of Rab C Nesbitt, which starred Gregor Fisher, said: “Angie is the authentic comic voice of east end Glasgow. In time, that voice could go on to resonate anywhere.”
And while the pandemic put production on hold and Kevin waits to hear what’s next, the BBC is equally excited about Angie’s prospects.
Steven Canny, executive producer of Comedy at BBC Scotland, said: “Big Angie is a big star doing brilliantly with a massive and wide-ranging audience across BBC Scotland social outlets. Angie will be playing big stages for years to come and I can’t wait to see what chaos she creates on TV and social media as well.”
We will get a new taste of Glesga’s big darlin’ Big Angie on Thursday with the opening show at Glasgow’s Merchant City Festival – Big Angie’s Me, the Polis & the Priest.
Kevin is remarkably calm about the interest his character is getting.
But then, he’s been perfecting her for eight years and like any overnight success story, there’s been plenty of wrong turns on the way.
Big Angie’s debut was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016. Since then, Kevin has put her on stage and gone online. One of Kevin’s early supporters, Mari Binnie of Glasgow Life, seeing the TV potential, challenged him to come up with five new characters.
He wrote Glasgow Field, a fictional community based in the east end which didn’t feature Big Angie. She gave Kevin development money “for being a working class writer with no background in the arts”.
He then did a development week at the Tron Theatre where Pattison and Still Game director Michael Hines saw it – both were hooked.
Hines wanted to turn it into a TV sitcom and Ian wanted to help him with the writing. Kevin said: “Before Ian said anything else, he said, ‘I want to congratulate you on your future Bafta’. Coming from him that gave me goosebumps.”
Pattison helped Kevin turn the 40-page Glasgow Field mockmentary into the first half-hour TV episode. Hines loved it and in November 2019 told Kevin he wanted to send it to Jacqueline Sinclair, who produces Two Doors Down. Before he did, Pattison took Kevin aside and told him the Beeb would love it but would ask where Big Angie was.
Sure enough, Sinclair felt the BBC already had Two Doors Down and Scot Squad – known as gang shows because they feature multiple characters – but Scotland was missing an iconic character, like Rab, and wanted Big Angie.
Kevin said: “Then the whole world went on hold. Here was me with my big dream about to come true and the shutters came down on TV production.
“But the BBC have been so encouraging and this year we made Beauty and the Beef.
“The reaction to it has been amazing. It shows Big Angie is for everybody.”
During the pandemic, Big Angie kept people laughing around the east end – in person and online.
But like many families, Covid also touched Kevin’s family. On the day Kevin sent the first draft of the Big Angie sitcom to Pattison, his Uncle Jimma passed away.
He said: “We are such a close family and we were all at his death bed. The same day as the funeral, my grandparents caught Covid. My big cousin Donna and I moved in with them to give them care.
“We almost lost my gran Anne three times. She was in intensive care for seven weeks.
“It was the darkest and most difficult time in my life.”
With no background in the arts but a love of performing since he was a child, Kevin created Big Angie fully formed as a hybrid of himself, his mum, gran and female cousins – the working-class women around him.
While being gay in the east end could have been challenging, Kevin took the negatives head on and would “get up on a snooker table and dance” to make people laugh.
He said: “I’ve always been a funny person. I remember when I was eight I’d pretend to be this character Mary Koussefagg and stand on the dykes and give my cousins a laugh.”
His parents were accepting and there was talk of university but when he was 17, his dad was jailed for seven years. But performing still burned bright and, after taking up a creative writing course, he began to do stand-up.
In 2011, he did an hour and a half off the top of his head on this woman who didn’t have a name.
Kevin said: “I’m very close to my grandfather. He’s known as Big Archie and my gran is Big Anne and her daughter, my aunt, is Wee Anne. So Angie was an amalgamation of their names. Angie’s full name is Angela Margaret Balls. Margaret is my mum’s name. I’m not watching other people’s comedy to write my own version of it – I’m writing my blood.”
Kevin doesn’t see Big Angie as a Scottish Mrs Brown. Brendan O’Carroll’s character doesn’t have the layers of Angie.
The Scot argued: “She comes fully rounded and from a fully rounded world. Beauty and the Beef was a great peak into what that world could be.”
Now, we’ll find out more about Angie’s past in Big Angie’s Me, the Polis & the Priest, co-written by Viv Gee, in which she’s responsible for a chain of events heralding back from her younger years.
Kevin said: “Big Angie is a huge part of me and has far to go. She’s loveable, tough and has already touched a lot of hearts. Let’s see what’s next.”
Big Angie’s Me, the Polis & the Priest at the Old Fruitmarket opens Glasgow’s Merchant City Festival on Thursday. The festival runs until July 31. For tickets and info: merchantcityfestival.com
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