HE’S old enough to collect his bus pass but the man behind Scottish comedy gold like Only an Excuse? and Scotch and Wry still knows what it takes to make an audience laugh.
That’s why Phil Differ will stage a week of stand-up shows – Phil Differ: My Medical Hell – at the Edinburgh Fringe next week, running from Monday, August 22, until Sunday, August 28.
With many of the other comics young enough to be his grandchildren, the 66-year-old admitted he often has no idea what they’re talking about.
“There’s a big gap in age and I have to go and look up words like ‘influencers’ and ‘woke’,” Differ said. “Meanwhile I’m talking about prostates and colonoscopies and my show is at 10pm which is usually my bedtime.
“Stand-up is very much a young person’s game so I’m not sure if this is a comeback or a farewell tour – I’ll find out when I do it.”
Differ only began doing stand-up as he was in his late 40s. At the time, he was director of BBC Scotland’s Comedy Unit which brought out gems such as Naked Video and Still Game. The decision to go into stand-up was made after he was asked to judge a competition and felt a “phoney” because he had no idea what it was like to stand up in front of an audience for five minutes and try to be funny.
This was bothering him when he met comedian Fred MacAulay in the BBC canteen one day and when he mentioned it, MacAulay said he could set him up with a five-minute gig at the Stand comedy club.
Differ managed his five minutes – “the longest in my life” – and fell in love with stand-up. “Making a TV programme is all about compromise but this was complete freedom,” he said.
He did a run of five-minute gigs and thought he was getting on well until Stand host Jane Mackay said she had one piece of his advice for him and that was to stop looking at his “f**king feet”.
“I was looking down all the time in case I saw someone grimace,” Differ said.
He had six months of enthusiastic audience response, then bombed after he grew complacent and didn’t prepare properly.
“I remember sweating and made the big mistake of trying to explain the joke when they didn’t laugh so I vowed never again not to turn up so badly prepared,” Differ remembered.
He’s well-prepared for his Fringe run as he wrote a lot of material during the lockdowns which he describes “a collection of moans” about the various health issues that can affect older men.
“It’s mainly me whingeing about all the embarrassing things that get done to you as you get older,” he said. “The audience always has a percentage of people who are a bit older and seem to recognise where I am coming from, while the younger ones see me as a bit of a mad uncle and novelty act.”
As well as prostrates and colonoscopies, Differ talks about male pattern baldness and how the rest of his hair fell out when he developed alopecia.
“It’s kind of growing back in but there is a big baldy patch in the middle and I was incredibly vain about my hair,” he said.
“Glaucoma is another one I talk about. I got all these things off my dad – ‘here you are my son I will bequeath to you male pattern baldness and glaucoma and you are going to need a colonoscopy and your prostate is going to enlarge’.”
Despite being older than most of the other comics at the Fringe, Differ says stand-up is even more enjoyable than it was when he was younger.
“Bizarrely I find it relaxing,” he said. “The you that is out there is an extension of yourself and the stand-up me seems to be more confident. Even if it not going well, there is a wee challenge in there.”
Differ’s relaxed look is helped by the fact he always walks on stage slowly. That began after he played football before a gig and was so stiff when he walked on that everyone assumed he was just really laid back.
“Someone said I looked like Henry Fonda and someone else said they really liked the persona I had, but it was really just down to a stiff arse,” said Differ.
He knows he will be “knackered” by the end of his week of shows but is still looking forward to the experience, which will be his first time back at the Fringe since 2018.
“If it goes well I will want to do more and if it goes badly I will probably still want to do more,” he laughed.
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