Smeato's finest hour puts Rab C back on the box

NOT for the first time, terror has given birth to comedy.

Last year's attack on Glasgow airport has emerged as the inspiration for the return of the nation's best-loved Glaswegian string-vested scallywag.

The great Govan street philosopher, Rab C Nesbitt, will be back on the TV for a surprise Christmas special later this year.

And although writer Ian Pattison is remaining tightlipped over the plotlines, he has revealed that the Glasgow airport terrorist attack last year played a major role in bringing his most famous comic creation back to life.

He has also hinted that such an attack – which made a national hero of Glaswegian baggage handler John Smeaton – may figure in the programme.

"It will be addressed," Pattison said. "All I can say is that Rab has a tendency to run towards things rather than away from them."

The unwashed, unemployed layabout that was Rab C Nesbitt became a cult hero for a generation of Scots in 52 episodes over seven series between 1990 and 1999.

Attracting five million viewers at its height, the programme made the names of actor Gregor Fisher and Elaine C Smith, who played Mary Doll, his long-suffering wife. It also put Glasgow's down-at-heel Govan district on the UK map.

Conceived in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was in power, unemployment was high and dodging work was a sport in some areas, the low-life Nesbitt was a creature of his times. Since the series ended, Pattison has resisted all calls to bring him back to life to confront the realities of 21st-century Scotland.

But he started to talk about the possibility again in early 2007 during a meal at an upmarket Glasgow restaurant with Fisher and Colin Gilbert, the show's producer. Pattison says he wasn't keen and couldn't help but see the irony. "We're talking about bringing this character back and look at this lunch we're eating," he told them. "It's about £200 worth. What right have we to revisit this territory?" The subject was dropped.

Then in June last year, a Cherokee jeep struck the passenger terminal at Glasgow airport where hundreds of passengers were queuing for flights. The jeep got stuck in the terminal doors and exploded in a ball of flames. A man was stopped by police with the help of staff and passengers – including Smeaton.

Pattison watched events unfold in his hotel room in Budapest, where he was working at the time. He says he surprised himself with his own reaction.

"I wish Rab was back now," he thought. "He'd have something to say about that."

It was at that moment that a Nesbitt comeback crystallised in the writer's mind. "On the back of the earlier conversation I had had with Gregor and Colin, Rab was at the back of my mind. But he began to swim forward to the front at the time this (the Glasgow attack] was happening.

"It was the excitement of Glasgow on a world stage and I was thinking it would be nice to get Rab's reaction to that," he said. "The very fact that I think he could have had something to say about that tells me that Rab is not the dinosaur, dead and gone, as some consider him to be.

"I can understand why people think that, but the challenge is to bring him back and make him relevant. We would not have done that if we didn't feel confident about that. When Rab comes back he will be punching his weight and a new generation will either love him or loathe him. Hopefully, they will not ignore him."

Whether Nesbitt responds in the same way as Smeaton, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal in December for bravery, is open to question. Pattison's character was never a big fan of the 'polis' and his creator, as yet, is not telling.

The BBC confirmed earlier this month that it had commissioned a 45-minute Rab C comedy to be shown on BBC2 over the Christmas period. As well as 54-year-old Fisher, Smith and Tony Roper, who played Rab's alcoholic sidekick 'Jamesie' Cotter, have all signed up.

At the time of the announcement, a show insider said: "If there is one thing for sure, it is that Rab will be the same old Rab. He is a lot older now and, he thinks, an awful lot wiser."