Long before 'Chewin' The Fat' hit the screens, Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill's first regular work together was on this underrated BBC Scotland sketch show 'Pulp Video', which, as was evident by its title, was a follow-on from 'Naked Video'. It first came about as a pilot for the 'Comic Asides' strand in 1995 and starred alongside Kiernan and Hemphill Veronica Leer, Nicola Park, Jane McCarry, Gavin Mitchell ( the latter two who would both later work with Ford and Greg on the wonderful 'Still Game' ), David McGowan, Fred MaCaulay ( who only appeared in self-contained sketches as a toilet cleaner ) and Andrew Fairlie ( Gash from 'Rab C. Nesbitt' ).
The pilot proved successful enough to warrant a six-part series the following year with Alan Francis, Julie Wilson Nimmo ( Hemphill's future wife ) and the gorgeous Ronni Ancona replacing Veronica Leer and Nicola Park. The quality of the sketches could vary, sometimes they could be boring and overlong but when they funny they were hilarious. One sketch had a group of pall-bearers carrying a coffin made out of cardboard on their shoulders, only for the corpse inside to burst through the bottom of the coffin and fall to the ground, another had the filming crew for the Daz washing powder commercials running in terror from the house of the Klu Klux Klan though my favourite featured Ford Kiernan as an out of work actor living in absurd world of pantomime.
Ford and Greg brought the same robust energy and verve to this show that they would later bring to 'Chewin' The Fat' and indeed its spin-off 'Still Game'. Ronni Ancona later went on to work with Alistair McGowan on his sketch show 'Big Impression'. 'Pulp Video' was for the most part very funny stuff, if not up to the standard of 'Naked Video' and a DVD release of the show is well overdue.
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