Odds and sods

I went to see a rehearsed reading of a comedy play last night. It’s called Odds and Sods and it’s written by two friends of mine, Tom Brogan and Fraser Campbell.

It was on at the Ramshorn theatre in Glasgow.



It’s about a day in the life of a bookies in Glasgow. The play is about the individual characters in the bookie shop but it also runs along a central story line.

The characters are:

Sandy, the bookie. An alright kind of guy, been a bookie all his life, loves taking the money off his punters.

Janice, the daftie. Sandys assistant, a lovely woman with a heart of gold, a brain of mince and a hidden talent for Japanese.

Sheila, the moocher. Sheila likes to flirt with the guys for their stake money, but she’s actually hiding something.

Frank, Mr Solid. A taxi driver who grafts hard and likes the occasional flutter at the bookies. Mr dependable is also hiding something.

Jordan, the pop star. Back in the day Jordan was on top of the pops, he has aspirations to get back there but he spends most of his time in the bookies.

Milton, the nutcase. Milton has crazy notions, he believes he has a gambling addiction and Sandy’s taking advantage of his “illness”. His life goal is to open a “bouncy strip club”.

Shug, the loser. Poor Shug, seems like he never wins. He only wants one big win, just to show he’s not a loser all the time.

The dialogue flows nicely between the groups of characters telling all their stories as it goes along the main story line.

Shug, sick of being a loser, puts on a mad bet with his last pound. An accumulator! Each bet crazier than the last. We follow the progress of the accumulator, as each of Shugs bets start to come in the punters get more excited and Sandy gets more nervous.

I really enjoyed the play, it was very well written and very well acted. The jokes were free flowing and the story was well constructed.

This was only a rehearsed reading so the actors were all holding scripts though they were only referring to them now and again and not reading from them. It was obvious they’d rehearsed it before and knew most of their lines. It all went by really smoothly with the occasional extra swear and stumbled over word (“Janice” missed a cue but we won’t mention that).

All in all I really enjoyed it and I’d really like to see a full production of it.

Tom, Fraser, make it happen.