Iain Heggie's "A Wholly Healthy Glasgow" was a Fringe (or maybe even EIF) hit that I saw and thoroughly enjoyed sometime in the 80s. I hadn't seen anything else of his since - a fact I regret especially since his biog tells me that he has adapted Marivaux, a big fav of mine - until last night.

"The Tobacco Merchant's Lawyer" is also a Glasgow based piece but very different. It's a fairly gentle, even whimsical story set in the 18th century whose running gag is its protagonist's astonishment at a medium's forecasts of what's to be in the Glasgow of the future - horseless carriages, a receptacle box containing a five inch high town crier in every drawing-room (the same town crier what's more), water closets even for the poor, and so forth. It was a script that raised laughter in other ways as well.

A friend I met in the bar decried the fact that much of the humour sprang from local references and maintained that even if the references had been to his home town of Dundee he would have held the same opinion. I suppose it may seem a slightly cheap way of getting an audience on side, although one might question to what extent an Edinburgh audience would be sympathetic to weegie allusions or vice versa but I for one enjoyed that aspect, as well as the humour that he drew from more universal themes - father/daughter, modern/old-fashioned, wealthy old man/poor young suitor, tricky businessman/naive investor.

Now this was a one man show ably and impressively performed but what impressed me even more was the fact that in addition to actor and director the programme credits no less than fourteen people as having a hand in the production and another eleven individuals or institutions are thanked for their help.

Would that that ratio might be replicated for my show.