River City's Jimmy Chisholm back on stage in new Fringe play

But there’s good news too. The actor who played Sonny, Jimmy Chisholm, is coming off TV and straight on to the stage in a new Scottish play, Hingin’ Oan Fir Googsie, premiering at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ths month

We caught up with him this week to talk about his five-year stint as Sonny in River City, and about the new absurdist comedy in which he is about to star.

“I loved Sonny,” Chisholm said. “I’ll miss him terribly. I just thought he was a great wee guy. He was willing to do anything for anyone. It’s been amazing having a regular job as an actor, and it’s nice to get a chance to develop a character and give him a life of his own in a series.

“You really feel you belong to something, which you don’t get much as a theatre actor because you're usually together for seven weeks or so and then you never see each other again.” River City itself is living on borrowed time with it set to be taken off air next year. Fans want it saved but Chisholm is doubtful.

“I know there are moves afoot to save it, and they did that with Take the High Road with the protest Save Our Soap (Chisholm also starred as Jimmy Blair in that show for five years in the Eighties and Nineties) but I don't see that sort of thing happening now. Whatever money the BBC needed to produce River City will have already been allocated. They've got to allocate their money two years before they make anything.”

The upside for Chisholm is that his departure has allowed him to get back to his first love – theatre. “To me, that’s acting,” he said. “I mean, yes, I love TV – well, I loved playing Sonny – but, to me, theatre describes acting because you’re there from start to finish. And no matter what happens you have to deal with that and go through it, and, you know, there’s a sort of ‘take me by the hand’ suggestion to an audience which you don’t get to do through a camera – it’s more like modelling, you’re just presenting an attitude, a line, an image, whereas it’s all linked from beginning to end in a theatre and the audience see it all, the magic – and the mistakes!"

Chisholm has worked with some of the most prestigious companies in the UK, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, and in London’s West End West, as well as making many appearances in the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, to name but a few. However, he is also a champion of the importance of small local theatres to entertain audiences.

He said: “I think, like everything else, theatre has been confused with profit, whereas, to me, it’s a community service. To me it’s a part of society to be able to sit down next to total strangers and watch something and be able to turn round to a stranger and know you’re feeling the same thing at the same time. Again, it's like a belonging – which is a major theme of Hingin’ Oan Fir Googsie – a feeling of oneness. I think that’s why people are struggling so much with loneliness at the moment. We’re not prepared to go as ourselves to a strange environment and become part of a bigger environment. That’s what theatre is asking you to do and I think that’s very very important in this day and age.

“Nothing does that better than the Fringe with so many small venues. There’s no reason for why someone chooses your show on the day, but the point is that out of the one or two million people who are randomly walking about looking for something to see in the Festival they pick yours and they tell someone in the pub that night, ‘don’t go to that show, it's rubbish’, or ‘go to that, it’s brilliant’. And that is how most shows operate in the Festival, apart from the big conglomerates that have taken over the Festival now.”

All that said, Chisholm is, of course, hoping they choose his show...

“They'd be very foolish if they didn’t," he said with a smile. “Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie is a play, shall we say, inspired by another play called Waiting For Godot. It discusses similar themes but, at the same time, it is very different. It is theatre of the absurd. It’s not saying anything is fact, it’s not saying anything is a lie, but it is asking you to think and I think any audience will be constantly reminded that this is a story about the human condition rather than anything else, and you’ll recognise that in yourself without it being laid on with a trowel.

“It’s a very poignant play, but also very funny and that is where the absurd comes in. You might laugh at something and then, ten seconds later, you’re going ‘God, that could be me’. Yet what you’re watching doesn’t bear any relation to you or your life. But it’s what they’re saying, what they feel... It’s theatre, it’s storytelling. I think it is beautifully written and, to me, it’s engaging from start to finish, and I hope it will be to the audience.”

But despite Chisholm's love affair with theatre, there is no doubt that featuring in Braveheart with Mel Gibson was a big highlight in his career and he tells a story of his first meeting with Gibson that reveals not only the young Inverness lad’s rising fame, but also his burgeoning confidence in the acting business.

“Getting a chance to be on set with Mel Gibson in a film that was so well received was brilliant. It’s probably the most famous thing I’ve done,” he said.

Gibson by that time, of course, was an international film star, but he quickly found out that the Chisholm was also a household name in Scotland.

“When I walked into the hotel room for my interview for the job, there was Mel Gibson sitting on the couch and he got up and shook my hand and I was totally tongue-tied. I’d never met anyone as famous in my life. He sort of went, ‘Hi, I’m Mel Gibson,' and I said, ‘Yes, I know’! Then I said, ‘I’m Jimmy Chisholm’ and he said, ‘Yes, I know’! Then I realised I was still holding his hand!

“I let it go and he said ‘please have a seat, there’s not much to this interview, I hear you could do this job falling off a log, so if you want it, it’s yours.’ And I said, ‘lovely, thanks’. And he said, ‘right I’ll get you down in the lift, I’ve got to go out and check some locations for the film’.

“When we got out of the lift, there were these two women with a huge metal trolley for cleaning, and one of them looked at me, then turned to the other and whispered and it was obvious they recognised me from Take the High Road – this was the Eighties – and so they came running over shouting ‘Jimmy Blair, Jimmy Blair!’ They hadn’t spotted who was coming out of the door with me at this point, so Mel Gibson said, ‘Oh it’s nice to have a celebrity on the show!’ And I said to him, ‘Don’t worry, Mel, this’ll happen to you one day!’”

There is no doubt that Chisholm will secure TV appearances in the future. He has been so much in demand that he holds the record for guest appearances in Taggart. As Chisholm puts it: “I’ve been killed more times in Taggart than anyone else!”

But for now, the theatre’s the thing once again as he looks forward to playing in John McColl’s Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie. Chisholm regards it as a real treat to be back in a small Fringe venue. We suspect audiences will feel the same.

Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie will be performed at Braw Venues @ Grand Lodge, 96 George Street, Edinburgh, for a limited run from August 12-16. Tickets at edfinge.com