A STILL Game star has revealed how he was left in tears after filming the final scene of the show’s last episode.
Gavin Mitchell, who played Boaby the Barman for all nine series of the hit Scots television show told of how he wasn’t aware that he was even crying until a make-up artist slipped him a tissue between takes.
Speaking on The Robin Galloway Breakfast Show on Pure Radio last Friday, the 58-year-old revealed he couldn’t hold back his emotions after delivering the last line of the show.
Pure Radio released a clip of the pair discussing the climax of the show, which features an aged Boaby uttering his classic line: “Look who it isnae”.
Host Galloway asked Mitchell, whose character manned the bar at local pub The Clansman, about how the last Still Game had affected him more than the end of any other series of the show.
Mitchell replied: “Yeah, I think it’s just because I had the final word and so it was quite a weird scene, that scene.”
Mitchell revealed how he was all alone for the entirety of the journey to film the scene as the rest of the cast had filmed their finales.
He said: “Normally, we’re all together when we get picked up in the morning, we get picked up in a van and we travel in together.
“We all did scenes in The Clansman but that was a really unusual morning because I was on my own.
“I got picked up in a cab, taken down [to the studio] no one else was there, taken into make-up and they turned me into old Boaby as it were.”
The actor then told how those behind the camera paid their respects by refusing to look him in the eye as he walked towards The Clansman one last time.
Mitchell recalled: “We then walked on set, and nobody would look at me, everybody kind of respectfully kind of put their heads down and wouldn’t make eye contact.
“[I] walked on set and they’d rehearsed the camera move so it was really smooth, didn’t have to spend a lot of time.
“[I] did two takes, the first take I got it right because I’m damn good, but we did one for safety and the make-up girl came in to check on me, Anne-Marie.
“When she was checking my wig and make-up she just gently turned me round.”
Anne-Marie had realised that the actor had begun to tear up without noticing and slipped him a tissue between takes as the enormity of the scene hit home for Mitchell.
He said: “I could feel her putting something in my right hand and I thought ‘What’s that?’ I looked down and it was a tissue.
“She just pointed at my eyes and I realised I was crying and I didn’t even realise it, it was bizarre.
“I think there was just a lot of weight in that one line – you knew it was the end.”
Pure Radio shared the clip to social media on Friday with the caption: “Boaby the Barman on filming the last ever scene of Still Game.”
The video has since received over 10,000 likes and dozens of comments from fans who were quick to share their own thoughts on the touching ending to the show.
One said: “I know a lot of people that cried at the end.”
Another added: “Superb ending to a fantastic show.”
A third replied: “Absolutely brilliant last episode, gutted it was [the end] though.”
Another responded: “It broke my heart, I wasn’t ready.”
Still Game was first broadcast on 6 September 2002 and ran for six series before eventually returning for a further three series which ended on the 28 March 2019.
