Where everybody knows your punchline

Beer nuts. An innocuous enough phrase, if a little obscure, but with profound implications for me. Let me explain. There's something about comedy that binds people.

Laughter can be the universal link between all manner of people, regardless of race, creed or social background, particularly TV comedy, which is still to a large extent a shared experience.

Growing up as I did with two brothers equally obsessed with comedy, I have been well aware of the communion of comedy. One only need look at the nation-stopping impact of BBC Scotland's Still Game to understand its unifying quality. My cousin Sanjay, a Glaswegian restaurateur of some repute tells me how quiet his eateries get prior to the start of each episode of the programme, becoming deathly quiet, only to roar back to full-tilt business the moment the credits start rolling.

And there are few subjects that polarise more than TV comedy. Trawl the message boards of the interweb and the most passionate and vehement debates are seldom about war or peace or social justice. The superlatives, both positive and negative, are saved for TV comedy shows. I know: I had those superlatives aimed at me and a show I did for Channel 4 called Meet The Magoons; in my case they were mostly negative.

I write comedy now based on the programmes I watched as a child, inspiration given to me by the comedy craft of others. But there was one show that was special when it came to characters and writing, one show that elevated the craft of comedy to an altogether higher place. Cheers. Every Friday night for nearly a decade this fat boy from Glasgow became part of the life of a Boston bar for half an hour. Norm, Cliffy and Woody were my friends. Cheers was home. I lived with them, lived through them. I remember episode after episode, scenario after scenario, line after line.

But of all the thousands of lines of genius writing there was one particular line that has stayed with me forever. Norm, having finished another story about his oft-talked-about but never-seen wife Vera, offers the following philosophical vision: "Women… can't live with them." Here he pauses, sips his beer and completes the sentence: "Pass the beer nuts." Genius.

I laughed for weeks. Just an amazing coming together of brilliant writing, the finest comic timing and the most astute understanding of character. It's not a particularly well-known or well-discussed line from the show; it just became special to me. I was with a friend the other day; we were having a gossip and I almost unthinkingly came out with the line: "Women, can't live with them…" I expected no reply. Imagine my surprise when she, equally unthinkingly, replied: "Pass the beer nuts." All these years later and there was someone else who had heard, enjoyed and remembered that line. And we shared it. We shared and laughed and disbelieved. I think we will now be friends for life.

When is a Mac not a Mac?

A conversation:

Beth: I have a new Mac. It's so beautiful I think I might wee myself.

Hardeep: I think a Mac is designed predominantly to deflect moisture from the outside rather than protect against internal moisture. Unless of course you are talking about your computer.

Beth: No, I'm actually talking about a new waterproof coat I have.

Let's start making the Grade at home

Michael Grade, below, the massive fromage at ITV, last week launched a blistering attack on the media brain drain from Scotland to London. He complained that there was no shortage of talented Scottish creative types but they all seemed to live in Islington. Or Kentish Town. There is more than a little truth in what Grade says, but it is very much a two-way street. The BBC in Scotland seems unable to talk the BBC in London into commissioning any Scottish programmes. Those of us who want to work on the very best stuff feel obliged to come to London. Believe it or not I never wanted to leave Scotland. I came down for three months against my will. Now I find myself having been in the Big Smoke for nearly 16 years. It does astonish me that a nation that fights above its weight creatively seems to lack so much lustre when it comes to actually sorting out the business end of creativity. I would have thought that since devolution we might have gained a little confidence, fought against our parochial politics and seen the bigger goal. UK TV needs a strong Scottish voice. Maybe we should start offering it?

Mobile phone's no use to Gregory's Girl

The phone box is dead. Long live the mobile phone. Last year, apparently, 223 Scottish phone boxes lay completely and utterly unused: unused for an entire year. Obviously we all now pay as we go, mobile phone in hand. We talk a lot but say very little (if most of the conversations I overhear on buses and trains are anything to go by). Phone boxes are being rebranded into information points or internet connection points. One community in Lothian is actually fighting to keep its box – but only because the mobile signal in that particular neighbourhood is so bad.

I'm old enough to remember the halcyon days of the phone box. It was so much more than a means of communication: it was a cultural utility point. I still remember Clare Grogan in Gregory's Girl getting changed in a phone box, clearly inspired by Clark Kent. We would smoke fags and drink cider in phone boxes. It was the best place to eat chips, watching the windows fog up with condensation. Then there was always the use of the phone box as a Portaloo: I never did it, but soon came to recognise the pungent aroma of salt and vinegar and urine.

Then there was the actual phone. Me and my best mate Beep would trudge to the phone box by the park, having gathered a few tuppence pieces (they once had a use). Moments later we'd be phoning the chippy in Lomond Drive to see if Gilda was working a shift. There was no guarantee she'd pick up the phone but if she did we would swing by and ogle her the way teenage boys ogle gorgeous Scottish Italian lassies that make chips. Somehow it isn't the same to simply pick up a mobile phone and make a call: no sense of expectation, anticipation. No having to wait outside for a wifie to get off the phone to her sister Jeanie in Auchinleck. The phone box will soon be a thing of the past and I know that I for one will miss it.