Hey Arnold!

Arnold Brown answers his phone after six rings, his voice svelte but timorous on the other side. I ask him how he is, and promise not to take up too much of his morning. “It’s quite alright,” he assures me, his accent suddenly richer, “I’m just relaxing here.”

It would be hard to begrudge Brown, now somewhere around 70, a morning’s quietude. He’s been in comedy for nearly thirty years, most famously at the Comedy Store with Alexei Sayle and Rik Mayall in the early eighties. He’s starred in films and authored books; he’s been on the radio. Before all that, he was an accountant. His polymathic CV bulges with the varied experience of a likeable Vincent Gallo.

Asked about his upcoming show, Happiness, which begins in August at The Stand. Casually, he describes it as “tongue and cheek,” a discussion of drugs and technology and the pursuit of satisfaction. “Everybody’s looking for something,” he croons in his handsome brogue.

The manner in which he talks about his show recalls one of his gags from the eighties: “I enjoy using the comedy technique of self-deprecation - but I'm not very good at it.” It’s a standard one-liner, yet quite telling - Brown is unwilling to do the hard sell. His new act may be excellent - another testament to his robust legacy - but he keeps things low-key, surveying the show briefly, eager to move the conversation on.

Like Armando Iannucci, Brown is a Scot with broader cultural ties. He is Jewish – “two stereotypes for the price of one” he whispers. I imagine him staring at the back of his hand, laughing from the left side of his mouth. He seems distinctly proud of his ethnicity and the perspective which comes with it. “Like Armando, who’s part Scottish, part Italian... it’s the viewpoint of the outsider, the immigrant experience,” he asserts.

Invited to comment on that pillar of Semitic wit, Woody Allen, Brown says: “[He is] an absolute favourite of mine... his neuroses... although he hasn’t made a good film in years.” Curious, given that Brown has little in common with Allen: his comedy doesn’t wallow in unruly self-doubt as the American’s does, it isn’t defined by the Jewish experience to the same extent, and Brown – tall in a polo-neck and suit in publicity shots – is unironic, looking debonair as the horn-rimmed New Yorker never could.

Indeed, it is Brown’s Scottish background which seems to have been the most pervasive theme throughout his career. “There is something so idiosyncratic about Scottish comedy,” he states, naming Billy Connolly as one of his favourite stand-ups. Recently, he’s been involved in radio, sometimes as a humorist – Arnold Brown and Company and appearances on The Beaton Generation – and sometimes as an historian of sorts, presenting shows on the work of Ivor Cutler and Stanley Baxter. What both of these figures share is an affiliation with a certain Scottishness - they are archivists of the Scots’ language, culture and, significantly, its humour. For me, Brown’s style has more in common with Cutler than Baxter - a line, at once poetic and immediate such as ‘The earth meets the sky over the hill, I was told by a sparrow with a lump on his head,’ would undoubtedly appeal to the subtle literariness of Brown’s approach.

In addition to his radio work, he has acted in a number of projects: he cropped up in the The Young Ones; played various roles in Hello Mum and The Comic Strip Presents... in the eighties; and starred in Young Adam, the dark 2003 adaptation of the fine Alexander Trocchi novel. I ask him to tell me about the film: “I just had a scene with Ewan McGregor,” he affirms, downplaying the part, moving the conversation on.

This is not to say, however, that Brown’s career is unmarred by less interesting work. He has a failed sitcom, The Brown Man, under his belt, and in the past was the voice of Isle of Jura whisky. He did the campaign for The Full Monty VHS release. Yet for every trite advert there is some worthy cause, some side project of great interest. He’s been working with a doctor in London, researching the role of laughter in general health. “Yes, that’s true actually,” he says. “It’s significant. We held a number of seminars on the topic.” He was involved with John Cleese at a conference investigating the ties between comedy and Freudian analysis: “When I first addressed the panel,” he says, relishing the anecdote, “I told them, ‘Before I begin, I must warn you that whatever you don’t understand is significant.’” He has a wealth of gags and, often, I get the impression he’d rather be telling me about them than about himself.

As our conversation draws to a close I ask him about Frank Sinatra, whom he supported when Glasgow was announced European city of culture in 1990. “The crowd were very restless and I wasn’t sure if they were looking for a comedian” he says, “but I suppose I was more suited to the event than, say, Jerry Sadowitz, you know?” I think of Sadowitz in that plastic penis, the Sinatra fans soaking wet.

There’s a pause and I consider asking if he’s happy, but decide against it. Before thanking him and letting him go, I try and press him on the support slot, the event he cites as his proudest achievement. “It must have been quite an honour?”

“Yes it was,” he says, with time for a final one-liner; “Frank opened with ‘Fly Me To Dunoon.’”