Brian Beacom

JOHNNY Bett’s new revue show, Tipping The Hat is a delightful biographical piece featuring Fifties and Sixties comedy act Flanders and Swann.

Yet, this biographical play is filtered through the writers’ own incredible experiences; tales of being stranded in Soviet Russia, growing up a fish out of water in Fife.

But first Johnny explains how the comedy duo, famous for their sell-out revue, At The Drop of a Hat, seeped into his consciousness.

“When I was at school in Fyfe (in the mid-Sixties) we all loved our music teacher Miss Arnold,” he recalls with a mischievous smile of the lady with the physicality and presence to command a Fifth year boy’s attention.

“Anyway, she got bored of teaching us Wagner and Schubert and brought in records such as At A Drop of the Hat.

“It was lovely, gentle satire from Flanders and Swann who had emerged just before the big satire boom of the Sixties, with Peter Cook and That Was The Week That Was.

“I learned they were privileged left-wingers who were at Westminster school with the likes of, Peter Ustinov, Peter Brook and Tony Benn and I really loved their wit.”

Johnny Bett is perfectly placed to reproduce a vivid period in entertainment cultural.

Yet, while we know of his theatre work over the years, his prominence as a founder member of 7:84 and his innumerable TV and film appearances (in which his Cowardly accent is played out to perfection), the early life story reveals even more layers.

Growing up in Cupar, his father was a plumber. (“Going back to a family of plumbers and tinsmiths since 1745. “)”

But Johnny Bett was never going to sort anyone’s U Bend.

As as schoolboy he adored and performed Gilbert and Sullivan, translated Russian poetry by Yevtushenko for a Scottish broadsheet, and interviewed Hugh McDermid for the school magazine.

Johnny reveals aged 16 he won a scholarship to study in Russia and took off on the train, alone, to Moscow.

Along the way he was strip-searched in East Berlin (no visa), thrown out of a youth hostel, ( he came in late and through a kitchen window, where he put his foot through a meat pie) - and was thumped by the hostel warden.

But the Ealing Comedy of the adventure gave way to desperation in then primitive Poland when he was abandoned after missing a train.

And then he found himself both fascinated by and fearful of dangerous Russia where the KGB lived, it seemed in every corner of everyone’s mind.

“Cafes playing Beatles music was shutdown,” he recalls, with a little shudder.

“Khruschev’s Russia was terrifying and corrupt and paranoid.”

Meanwhile, in 1967, Britain experienced a summer of love. But Johnny’s love summer took place in later in France with a girlfriend.

Then came university. And work with the BBC. But theatre called loudest.

Yet, given the plumbing line to be so powerful in the family, is there any past connection with showbiz?

“I was told that members of our family were trapeze artists in the late 19th century,” he says, with a wide grin.

“But I’m not sure how this affected me because the truth is I’m not all that well balanced.”

Tipping The Hat, starring Gordon Cree and John Jack, Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday.