No Holds Bard
No Holds Bard

No Holds Bard

  • TV comedy drama
  • BBC One Scotland
  • 2009
  • 1 episode

A 60-minute mockumentary from BBC Scotland celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Stars Ashley Jensen, Denis Lawson, Bill Paterson, Barbara Rafferty, Paul Higgins and more.

No Holds Bard

No Holds Bard is a 60 minute comedy mocumentary following the lives of five people as they prepare to vie for the 2009 Cup O' Kindness, the trophy awarded to the grand champion in recitation of the works of Robert Burns. Held in Alloway, the birthplace of Burns himself, this prestigious competition is the centrepiece of the annual celebrations devoted to the Bard's immortal memory. And this year it may prove memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Amongst the competitors are Hayley Braid a 12 year-old with a determined mum, Isobel (Ashley Jensen) and a batty granny (Barbara Rafferty); Struan Robertson (Paul Higgins), the official representative of the Dumfries Burns Society, headed by tyrannical president Miekel McMiekel (Denis Lawson) with bickering cohorts Cronie Cameron (Ford Kiernan) and Cronie McKay (Forbes Masson); the enthusiastic Paula Pickford (Felicity Montagu), recently settled in Scotland with her husband Boyd (Vincent Franklin); Robert Lauchlan (Greg Hemphill), a gardener with a difference at the Burns Cottage tourist attraction; and Stevie Kerr (Tony Curran), prison inmate and protégé of rehabilitation therapist Sarah Rutherford (Laura Fraser). The mocumentary captures the ups and downs of each participant's progress as the pressure intensifies, the poems are recited and the champion is crowned.

First released: Monday 18th January 2010

  • Distributor: 2 Entertain
  • Region: 2
  • Discs: 1
  • Catalogue: BBCDVD3033

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