My father

MY dad was a massive influence on my life and it was really through him that I wanted to be a farmer. He encouraged me from a very young age. I wasn’t forced into it but always enjoyed it.

My mum says that when I was three he took me away in the tractor for a day’s ploughing. I had my piece with me and I was as proud as punch sitting in the tractor beside him. He died about five years ago but I have very happy memories of him and working with him.

He was never ill. He was 6ft 3, a big, able, well-built guy but he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in March 2013. They operated on him and he had radio and chemotherapy but it was just too aggressive. He was only 64.

The National:

For me it was not just an emotional loss. We were jointly running the farm but he was still the main man and did a lot in the office so his death had a big impact.

We sometimes had different points of view but that is natural and for all the times when I was a young lad and careless, he never once shouted at me. He had great patience for young folk.

Sunset Song

I DIDN’T read many books and I only read this because it was part of fourth-year English at the high school in Blairgowrie.

I enjoyed primary but I didn’t enjoy high school as I didn’t really fit in. Even though Blairgowrie is rural there weren’t many farmers’ sons there so I wasn’t hip or trendy but when we were reading Sunset Song, written by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, I became the boy to ask questions about farming.

The National:

I could totally relate to it and the way Chris Guthrie is torn between the world and the farm. When you talk about the smell of the earth it sounds silly but in springtime when the peewits are calling and the earth warms up there is something very romantic about it and the way of life.

William McIlvanney’s football documentary

ONLY A Game went out in 1985, written and narrated by William McIlvanney (below, right). I loved football and played a lot at primary school. It’s the one thing I wish I could have done more of but at secondary school my free time was spent at the farm.

The documentary made a big impression on me. It was filmed when Scottish football was still successful, back when we used to get to the World Cup.

But when you look at the state of Scottish football now and look back at that documentary and see the players we had then and the managers, it makes you wonder. That combined with McIlvanney’s voice and the way he plays with words makes it really special.

Joining Young Farmers

I JOINED when I was 16 and it opened so many doors for me. I was going all over Scotland to events and dances and I met people who had similar interests. I started taking parts in concerts and ended up writing the pantos and that led me to going on to comedy. If I had not done that I don’t think I would have gone down this route.

At school I had no inkling that I could do this but at the Young Farmers I was roped into these things and got a real buzz out of it. It made me realise I was able to sit down and think of jokes. The pantos were held in the Birnam Institute and would sell out for three nights in a row. Writing the whole script was satisfying and seeing people perform it was a real buzz.

We started entering the cabaret competition which meant each club had to do a 10-minute song and dance routine. When I was 21 they asked me to write a wee sketch to put in it and I did it like it was a football commentator commenting with lots of innuendos on a Young Farmers’ dance. We entered the competition every year and we were always getting better while the competition was getting bigger. It finally moved to Perth Concert Hall and we won. That was a great night as our club had never won anything before.

My first five minutes of stand-up

THAT was in 2012 in Glasgow at the Red Raw night at the Stand which is a night for beginners. I had been toying with the idea as I had written stuff for Young Farmers’ pantomimes and I thought I would love to do comedy.

I had no idea how you would go about putting on a show at the Fringe or anything like that but 2012 was a wet summer and one day, when it was raining again, I went on to the Stand website and saw there was this beginners’ night. I applied to do five minutes then thought “oh my god what have I done?”.

I got an email back a week later saying they would give me two slots. It was two or three months away but I felt a wee bit panicky.

When I got there on the day I had notes all over my hand and was wondering how I was going to do it. The room was packed and there were about eight acts on, a mix of established comics doing new stuff and beginners. I felt like I was in a dentist’s waiting room. My heart was pounding but it went well and when I came off I felt as high as a kite. It was a great sense of relief and achievement.

I was asked to come back to do some more gigs and it went on from there. If I hadn’t done that I would maybe be still sitting there yet thinking about it.

Being brought up on the family farm

I WAS never bored and it gave me a great work ethic as well as plenty of exercise. My dad, grandad, mum and two sisters all worked together and I was able to drive a tractor from the age of 10.

You can sit your tractor driving test for the main road when you are 16 and I remember my mate driving his tractor to school the year before our other pals had even started driving lessons.

There he was, not having to get the school bus and being independent and at 16 that’s pretty cool.

There were days when dad was wanting us to help with the sheep and it was blowing a blizzard and you didn’t want to leave the house. Dressing tatties out in the shed wasn’t much fun but then you got to go away and plough or feed the pet lambs so that was fine.

My grandfather came up here from Fife in 1949 so I am the third generation of tenant farmers up here but his forefathers were all farming before he moved to Perthshire.

There was a lot of manual labour when I was growing up but my sisters were always ready for a laugh and we’d try to have a bit of fun during the boring jobs, telling jokes and mimicking the folk we knew.

The guys that helped us with the tatties were great characters and they come through in my routine sometimes. A lot of my comedy comes from those experiences.

Going to agriculture college

I WENT there when I was 17 at the end of fifth year. It was guys like myself away from home for the first time and getting a bit of freedom.

I went from being quite quiet to going to nightclubs and chatting up girls and just having a good time. Looking back it was a great time to be a teenager. The 90s dance music was at its height, Oasis were at the top of their game, Tony Blair came in and Ireland got the peace agreement.

Then it came to the Noughties and there was foot and mouth disease, 9/11 and Iraq, so everything after that seemed to be rubbish. We were really fortunate although we probably didn’t realise it at the time.

Colin Campbell

HE was a farmer comedian from Fochabers who was big back in the Eighties. He did different accents from all round Scotland, places like Papa Westray and Bettyhill, and used to write brilliant gags. When I was about 14 all my pals were listening to Nirvana and the Stone Roses but I used to listen to Colin Campbell on my Walkman. He was a massive influence on me because he was a farmer doing comedy and showed it could be done.

I liked Scotland the What as well. They had a classic sketch about a shopkeeper phoning up Buckingham Palace and asking if Prince Edward would like a toy ferret.

Then there was Rikki Fulton in Scotch and Wry.

Colin Campbell was the biggest influence on me, though, and while farming is my first love I want to pursue the comedy as far as I can. It would be stupid not to.

The Bomb Sketch

I OWE a great deal to the internet and the opportunities that have come through it. If I had been gigging 20 years ago I think I would have been okay but my tour sold out and a lot of that is due to people seeing my sketches on the internet.

I was asked to play a farmer in a sketch in Scots Squad and what I really liked was that the script was just an outline of what was to happen and the rest was all improvised.

I was supposed to be a farmer who had found a bomb in the field so the police came to investigate. A lot of the stuff in sketches on Scottish television is set in the central belt so I decided to make the farmer from the north east. Scotland the What were a huge influence on me so that’s why I went with that accent. It’s been viewed 20 million times.

The BBC then asked me to do the Farm Diaries, and that led to The Farm. Breaking the News has been good to me too but if I had to pick one that really helped it would have to be the Bomb Sketch.

The women in my life

I’M surrounded by women with my two big sisters, my mum and my girlfriend, Morag. They’ll probably go nuts because I’ve lumped them all together.

I met Morag (below), a school teacher from Inverness, three years ago and she moved in last year. She’s great and supports me and, although she’s not from a farming background, she really appreciates where we live and can drive the tractor now.

She’s pretty funny too and some things she says I write down and use as material. She has definitely changed my life.

The National:

My mum has always been there and I am glad I was here and not working away from home when dad was ill.

She is still a partner in the farm business and she’ll go for the spare parts and do the books – all the boring stuff. She’s good at the lambing too. I’d be lost without her.

My two sisters, Claire and Caroline, have been a tremendous influence on my life. They are both successful businesswomen and after years of being rebellious they both married farmers.