I went to USA and jumped through hoops to be a comic
Chris saw funny side of basketball
You may recognise him as naive country officer PC Charlie McIntosh from BBC Scotland’s Scot Squad or even as ‘The Other Murray Brother’.
But his real name is Chris Forbes and he has his own story to share with audiences at this year’s Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
The Renfrewshire comedian had an interesting route to a career in the industry – only walking into the profession after a detour that saw him head to the United States in a bid to become a sporting superstar. During his years as a pupil at Bridge of Weir’s Gryffe High School, he developed a liking for basketball and, for a time, becoming a pro was his burning ambition.
Chris would play in the first-ever St Mirren basketball team and also played for the Scotland’s Under-16s side.
His sporting exploits were reported in the Express throughout the years and the cuttings his mum saved up act as material for his upcoming show.
And in a bid to make it in the sport, he even spent the final year of his high school education in America to improve his game and potentially pick up a college scholarship.
This experience comes in for the comedy treatment in Court Jester which he will perform in Glasgow this month.
Chris told the Express:“The show charts my life in basketball in Scotland where it’s very much an outsiders kind of sport. Any sport that isn’t football feels like you’re on the periphery in Scotland.If you played it, you were made fun of, and you were only really useful if you were tall. Because I did play over here and I was tall, it felt amazing. You know, I’d finally found a usefulness for my height.
“This feeling was quickly dashed when I went to the States where I went from being the tallest player in my team in Scotland to being the smallest in the team in the American high school.”
And after being thrust into the education system Stateside, Chris quickly lost sight of his goal of becoming a professional basketball player.
He said:“My goal was to go over there and play basketball but that quickly started to fall down the order of importance for me.
“I was blown away by there all of a sudden being cheerleaders and jocks, your goths and geeks, all these cliques. I saw cheerleaders driving their dad’s red BMWs to school, the quarterback was called Luke Chase. It felt like I’d walked into a 1980s American high school movie so my time over there became more about that experience and adjusting culturally.”
At a school talent show, Chris would tell a few funny stories and later say of that experience: “I didn’t think much of it at the time but I remembered that feeling I had for five minutes was better than my whole experience playing basketball.”
He went to university for four years to study physiology and development, still thinking he was going to do something sport-related, but then realised his calling lay elsewhere.
He signed up for an acting course at Glasgow’s Langside College and made his first steps onto the stand-up circuit.
Chris will perform Court
Jester at Oran Mor in Glasgow on Sunday, March 17 at 7.30pm.
For more information and to buy tickets, visit glasgowcomedyfestival.com/ performances/ chris-forbes-court-jester/