“WE’RE CALLED JOSSY’S GIANTS, FOOTBALL’S JUST A BRANCH OF SCIENCE”
Even if you remember nothing else, anyone who watched Jossy’s Giants can remember the theme tune. The exact plot details may now be lost to childhood memory, but that jaunty Undertones-lite foot-tapper? It still echoes from the 1980s. Yet Jossy himself initially wasn’t a massive fan of the song.
“The bloke who wrote it had a pub band,” explains actor Jim Barclay, aka Jossy Blair, “and we all went to this pub to hear him and his band play this song. I didn’t like it! But Sid [Waddell] and Ed [Pugh], the director, said, ‘It’s perfect’. I was totally wrong, of course: it’s very catchy and works terrifically.” Barclay duly treats FourFourTwo to a rousing chorus of “We’re called Jossy’s Giants…”
Securing the defining role of his career at that stage happened in similarly haphazard fashion. Barclay, a stalwart of the early-80s alternative comedy scene and jobbing actor with appearances in such touchstones as The Young Ones and The Professionals, was originally considered for a supporting role.
“My agent put me up for a character called Bob Nelson,” says Barclay, now a sprightly 73. “I just happened to be
