In his boilersuit and wellies, parking his tractor beside the cowshed, Jim Smith turns everything you thought you knew about comedians on its head.
No airs, graces, velvet suits or skinny jeans. Forget groupies (or as they’re known on the comedy circuit). There might be a few pints at but the only drugs around Jim are for treating the ewes’ feet.
Jim, 41, is better known by his showbiz name, Jim the Farmer.
He does what it says on the poster, building a comedy career by observing the mating rituals of , gently mocking rural life and wondering what would happen if came from Fife.
In a world full of young men’s predictable jokes about Boris Johnson, Jim’s wholesome chat has gone down like a week of sunshine when it’s time to lift the tatties.
He’s a regular at comedy clubs across the country, did his first solo tour last year and appears on panel shows such as Breaking the News.
His five-minute films for the BBC are being put together in a half hour show next month. Glasgow Comedy Festival has just added a second show at the Kings Theatre. And his video about has been viewed nearly seven million times.
Jim said: “My material hasn’t changed much since the early days. It was just about me coming down to Glasgow. I told the audience I had set off three days ago on my tractor and the whole village came out to wave me off.”
Other farmers diversify into llamas or convert the steading into a wedding venue. Jim drives all over the country to tell jokes about agricultural machinery. He fits gigs in around the demands of lambing and driving the combine.
There will be no gigs in April, when he will be in the shed looking after the newborn lambs.
He did get a taste of the tweedier side of farming back in , when he was on tour and it was time to harvest the barley.
For the first time in his life, he had a contractor do the hard work for him.
He said: “I was in Oban doing a gig to 400 folks. I felt like one of those posh farmers, saying, ‘Right, OK my good man, I’ll be back on Monday morning’.”
Jim is a third generation tenant farmer, looking after 240 acres of that haven’t changed much since his grandparents arrived in the 50s. He has about 60 beef cattle and 400 sheep. In farming terms, this is an easy shift, with a 6.30am start.
His cousin, a dairy farmer, starts the day at 3.30am – when comedians are still finishing off the last of the wine from the green room and wondering about a kebab.
Jim never wanted to do anything else. At school, he liked but preferred to spend Saturdays on the tractor with his dad. Agricultural college in Aberdeen was grand – “200 lads – cars, beer, girls and tractors. That was the four main food groups”.
Then, straight back to Perthshire and on to the farm. Jim first stretched his funny muscles at Young Farmers’ pantomimes, adding local jokes.
He had always liked comedy, saying: “When all my mates in school were listening to Kurt Cobain, I was busy listening to Colin Campbell.”
Campbell was the first funnyman farmer, doing rural gags, accents and Desert Highland Discs. Billy Connolly was too rude for his parents but his big sister smuggled a video into the house and blew young Jim’s mind.
When he outgrew the Young Farmers circuit, Jim was not ready to give up comedy. But going from amateur panto in Dunkeld to a show at the Fringe was too big a leap. He found a beginners’ night at The Stand comedy club in Glasgow. He applied.
Jim said: “They came back to me with two slots.
“The place was packed. I got on reasonably well. I brought a cousin and a pal that lived in Glasgow and that was it. I didn’t want to tell anyone else in case it went wrong. If it had been in Perth, I never would have done it. But if I make an a**e of myself in Glasgow, nobody is going to know.”
It turned out there was an appetite for gags about sheepdogs and the difficulties of dating when you wear a boilersuit. He played in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, keeping his more technical farming gags for
audiences that know their way round a baler.
He was not an overnight success. But playing a farmer on Scot Squad and breaking into the BBC gave Jim an audience that did not wear a tweed cap and take its at the door.
He has no plans to give up the farm. He is engaged to the local primary schoolteacher, Morag, from Inverness.
Cynical comedy audiences don’t believe that such a People’s Friend story character exists in Scotland in 2020 but she does and she and Jim are having a baby in the summer.
The proud father-to-be is already anticipating this rich new stream of comedy material.
His Glasgow Comedy Festival shows will draw a line under his current jokes, some of which he admits are showing their age. The plan is to return after the baby’s born with killer new material.
Jim said: “It’s like that difficult second album, if it’s not quite as good, people will be .
We’ll just see where it goes. Farming is first and foremost. We will take this comedy as far as we can.
