Still Game faces its final theatrical countdown

Several dates for the shows at The Hydro in Glasgow are already listed as “low availability”, and it’s likely some nights may be sell-outs.

But is this yet another “Frank Sinatra goodbye” - and has the world really seen the last of the scatalogical senior citizens of Craiglang?

The TV series ended with apparently genuine finality as Jack and Victor prepared to pech their way to the summit of Ben Lomond.

A programme celebrating the 22-year-old soap appeared to accept that this time there would be no new series, and that the greatest Scottish comedy partnership since Jack Milroy and Rikki Fulton had finally come to the parting of the ways.

It could indeed be The End - even Rab C Nesbitt retired eventually - but despite a persistent groundswell of complaints that the scripts were latterly getting worn and tired (a view not shared by diehard fans) the Hydro is unlikely to have difficulty filling its numerous seats.

Meanwhile the Scotsman newspaper, reviewing this new (and possibly last) show, comments:

“There’s a crude, over-reliance on the priapic concerning ‘Boabby’ the Barman. Winston gets the best lines, including a cheeky aside about the new BBC Scotland channel; Penny-pinching Tam, the best musical number amidst some disappointing competition; and Isa and Navid’s unresolved sexual tension, returning from the 2017 production, is once again Still Game at its best – warm, waggish and evergreen”.

The likely response to this analysis from Jack and Victor is arguably only too easy to imagine, and cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper.