The Herald - The Herald Magazine
WEIR'S WAY
HER LIFELONG STRUGGLE WITH BODY IMAGE LED TO A COMEDY CATCHPHRASE THAT’S BECOME A CLASSIC. NOW ARABELLA WEIR IS DRAWING ON HER FAMILY CONNECTIONS TO SCOTLAND IN AN ENSEMBLE TV SERIES THAT’S QUIETLY EXTRAORDINARY
ARELY have I sat down next to Arabella Weir than we’re off and running. Most interviewees need time to warm up, but I’m still fishing out a notebook when – amid the cacophony of an upmarket Glasgow hair salon – she launches into a story about her “horrible Dunfermline granny” who had “something negative to say about everyone”.
If there had been a seatbelt, I would have buckled it at this point. Over the next hour, the comedian and writer – who coined the catchphrase “Does my bum look big in this?” for BBC sketch series The Fast Show – fires off a volley of one-liners alongside colourful anecdotes about childhood holidays in Scotland, motherhood, bereavement and fractured family ties.
There are moments where it feels like I’m staring into her soul. “My mother and I always had a tricky relationship,” Weir tells me at one stage. “I was very fond of her, but she was by no stretch of the imagination a mother. She was aggressive and withering.”
She equally reflects on how the first seeds of negative body image took root at a formative age, portraying a child who felt like a constant source of disappointment to her parents. “They never stopped going on about how fat I was from when I was little. I think my parents were embarrassed that I was short and plump. I look at pictures now and think: ‘I’m nothing like as fat as they made me feel.’ I thought I was enormous.”
It is easy to get side-tracked from the task at hand: talking about her role in BBC Scotland sitcom Two Doors Down. The show returns for a second series this week with Weir playing Beth Baird, the ballast of neighbourly relations in fictional Latimer Crescent and wife of Eric (Alex Norton). The 58-year-old has newly wrapped filming and describes being reunited with Elaine C Smith, Jonathan Watson, Sharon Rooney and Doon Mackichan as “a bit like a second date, but not quite as terrifying”.
The dynamic is reminiscent of her time on The Fast Show in the 1990s. Charlie Higson, she says, would describe himself and co-creator Paul Whitehouse as the mum and dad of “one big f*****-up family”. To which Weir would quip: “But just as f***** up as the kids.” Two Doors Down has a similar vibe among its cast. “But in our group, there is no one clear mum and dad,” Weir clarifies. “We are either all bickering children or the parents depending on the mood.” The latest series was filmed at BBC Scotland’s studios in Dumbarton and on location around Glasgow. “There are more scenes with us all together,” she says. “I think they thought that those are the ones that work best. If you take Till Death Do Us Part, Porridge, any of the great sitcoms – it is when everyone is in the room that it is the most fun to watch.”
Weir was particularly fond of working with Smith, best known for playing Mary Doll in Rab C Nesbitt, and Mackichan, who starred in Channel 4’s Smack the Pony.