Limmy British Comedian From Glasgow

Early life

Limmy is the stage name of Brian Limond, a comedian and actor born on 20 October 1974 in Glasgow. He grew up in the city's Carnwadric district and attended Shawlands Academy. He later studied multimedia technology at Glasgow Caledonian University and graduated in 1996.

His first working life was in technology rather than comedy. He built websites and worked as a Flash developer at the Glasgow new media company Black ID. In the summer of 2000 a group of Black ID employees set up a rival firm, Flammable Jam, where he served as a director. During that period he was invited to contribute to a reference book for Macromedia Flash developers, New Masters of Flash: The 2002 Annual. In 2001 he co-founded a further company, Chunk Ideas, and in 2006 he sold his share to his co-founder, Donnie Kerrigan, so that he could concentrate on comedy.

Career

Limmy began putting comedy online through his own website and blog, which hosted a range of Flash-based projects. In late 2006 he started a daily podcast, Limmy's World of Glasgow, which drew the attention of the mainstream British media. The same year the Scottish culture magazine The List placed him fourteenth in its Hot 100, a ranking of people with the biggest influence on Scottish cultural life. In March 2007 he gave two sold-out performances at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, and that year he also played a character named Zack Eastwood in Consolevania and VideoGaiden.

In June 2009 the BBC commissioned a six-episode sketch series, Limmy's Show, which first aired on BBC Scotland in January 2010. A second series followed in February 2011. The programme ran for three series and a Christmas special between 2010 and 2013. During that time he also made a cameo appearance in the Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd, playing a window cleaner with an almost unintelligible Glaswegian accent in the July 2010 episode "The Final Countdown". He wrote a sitcom pilot built around Falconhoof, a recurring Limmy's Show character, though BBC Scotland did not take it forward.

In 2014 he had a regular segment in the second series of Charlie Brooker's satirical news programme Weekly Wipe. His first book, the short story collection Daft Wee Stories, was published by Random House in 2015 and was followed by a reading tour of the United Kingdom. Three of its stories also appeared in The Scotsman. In January 2016 he performed four nights at the Clyde Auditorium and one night at the Hammersmith Apollo in Limmy Live!, adapting material from his television work. A second collection, That's Your Lot, came out on 1 May 2017 with a similar tour, and a third book, Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny, was published in 2019.

He also made podcast appearances, including on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast in 2015, 2017 and 2020 and on The Blindboy Podcast in 2020.

The BBC commissioned a one-off special of Limmy's Homemade Show in 2017, broadcast in April 2018. It began as a planned web series, and Limmy produces, performs, directs, films and edits it alone, with the action set in and around his home. A full series began airing in April 2020. In October 2020 he presented the one-off commentary Limmy's Other Stuff and afterwards announced his retirement from television. Since 2018 he has streamed on Twitch most days, playing video games, talking to viewers and telling improvised comic stories. He is also active on Twitter, YouTube and, formerly, Vine, and his YouTube channel had about 528,000 subscribers as of April 2025.

Recognition

Limmy's Show earned two British Academy Scotland awards: one in 2011 and one in 2013, the latter for Best Comedy/Entertainment Programme. His inclusion in The List's Hot 100 in 2006 marked an early point of recognition in Scotland.

Personal life

Limmy has one son. His early podcast was named after his home city, Glasgow.