Comedian Chris Neill: "I'll be a fish out of water"

CHRIS NEILL has a series of tough tasks lined up for this weekend. Manly tasks, like welding and football training. Grisly tasks, like gutting fish and tattooing. Tasks that require a strong stomach and a gritty attitude.

Unfortunately, comic Chris is a "wussy southerner" who's left shattered by a half-hour's stand-up routine and who was once described by a reviewer as the love child of Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd. So it's not looking good.

"I think they've found me the most objectionable jobs they can," says the Fringe regular with a mock moan. "I'm going to be exhausted."

Of course, his fun-packed weekend is not just a bizarre way for the radio producer-turned-comedian

'I'm just a middle-class fop – I do half an hour of radio and I'm totally exhausted'

to fill his time in between gigs at The Stand this weekend. There is a point to all of this.

Chris, 40, London born and bred and a self-confessed "middle-class fop", is in fact 25 per cent Leither. His mission is to find out which 25 per cent – "perhaps my left leg?" he muses – for a new BBC radio show to be recorded in Edinburgh on Monday.

"I just want to find out if I have any genetic affinity to Leith. Although I suspect I'm not a typical Leither," he adds.

It was his paternal grandfather, the rather grandly named George Washington Neill, who gives Chris his Leith heritage. Neill senior was born in 1916 and brought up in a tenement on Lindsay Road with his five brothers and sisters, but left as a raw teenager in the depression of the 1930s to seek work down south.

He was Chris's longest surviving grandparent, only dying when Chris was 23, so he has plenty of memories of him.

"He wasn't the kind of grandfather with funny stories to tell and a toffee in his pocket," says Chris. "I remember on my 18th birthday he made a song and dance about taking me out for a drink. He always drank in his local Labour club in Ealing but we went out to a pub near my parents' house. When he saw the prices, I ended up buying all the drinks.

"I can't say he was a good husband or father. He seemed to have a great deal of bitterness about life."

A factory worker and later school caretaker who rarely spoke about his Scottish upbringing doesn't sound the most promising basis for a comedy show but his grandson is cheerfully unworried. "I'll draw a comic veil over all that," Chris says brightly.

And so to the tasks. Firstly there's George Brown and Sons – classed as a boilermakers but actually specialising in engineering such as ship repairs. Based on The Shore and founded in 1828, George Brown was chosen because boilermaking was Chris's great-grandfather Alexander's trade. "Well, actually I think he was an alcoholic," says Chris. "But when he wasn't slumped somewhere he was a boilermaker."

Then it's on to gutting fish with Welch Fishmongers to experience another of the port's time-honoured jobs.

There's also training with Leith Athletic football club because, as Chris explains, "The only time my grandfather remembered he was Scottish was when he was watching England-Scotland games." His grandson, however, isn't often seen on the terraces.

"I'm probably already 100 times better at gutting fish than I am at football," he winces.

If he's not too giddy after attempting to kick a ball, it'll be on to a tattooist in fine Leith seaman tradition. "I am wondering if the producer is expecting me to demonstrate my commitment to this by getting a tattoo of a mermaid or something," he adds.

Any real Leithers – or Edinburghers – who fancy having a laugh at Chris's efforts can do exactly that on Monday. The show is being recorded at The Stand and places in the audience are free.

As for Chris, a regular on Radio Four's Just A Minute and Fred MacAulay's Thursday show on Radio Scotland, there will be a slightly more serious edge to it all.

He chose to examine George, rather than his other three – all English – grandparents, partly because "Edinburgh has always been very good to me. But also possibly to feel a bit more warmly about my grandfather, although I should probably just be in therapy about that.

"I'm just a middle-class fop – I do half an hour of radio and I'm exhausted – but you don't have to go back very far in the genetic pool to find life was a lot harder.

"My grandfather was 16, 17 at most when he left to go to London. I'd just like to understand a little bit more about what made him the way he was – and tell some jokes along the way, of course."

To join the audience at the BBC recording, turn up at The Stand, York Place at 12.45pm on Monday – recording begins at 1pm and no latecomers will be admitted.