Jane McGarry: Still Game's Isa channels Jackie Bird for new theatre role

And perhaps an even greater shiver of horror.

The Still Game star is set to appear (in video form) in a new Fringe Festival play The Next Big Thing, featuring sampled music of the Fab Four.

However, Jane reveals her early Beatles connections weren’t always so fab.

“When I was young, me and my friend Karen Logan, who’d been pals since Primary One, would teach ourselves to play guitar and we’d try to sing Beatles songs.

“And of course we’d force the adults to listen us.”

Jane’s voice takes on the shudder as she continues.

“I remember one day one of Karen’s relatives was in the house and we sang Yesterday to him. Or rather we made him listen to it.

“It was only later we learned this poor guy just broken up with his wife, and been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

"And here we were singing the must inappropriate song imaginable."

She adds, with a wry smile; “Whenever I think of Beatles songs that memory comes right back at me.”

Yet, the experience didn’t put Jane off singing.

Jane, Karen and their friend Melanie Masson once formed a band and became the three backing singers in Hyperactive.

“At 16, we won the Evening Times Sights and Sounds of Glasgow,” she said in delighted voice.

“But success had its downside. At the time we were going to the dancing. We’d go into town with our children’s bus tickets and then jump into the toilets and put the make up on to get into the clubs.

“But after the story of the band’s success was in the paper, we couldn’t get in anywhere. The game was up.”

Karen Logan went on to join Dollar, and was later in Buck’s Fizz. Melanie Masson became an X Factor and panto star.

Jane of course went off to drama college and worked continuously in theatre until she found TV fame playing Isa in Still Game, alongside creators Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill.

Meantime, she’s looking forward to seeing how her role in The Next Big Thing transpires.

The play, set to appear at the Fringe Festival, is adapted from the novel by Michael Russell MSP.

It asks questions about the direction of Scotland via a storyline about John Lennon’s boyhood holidays in Durness, Sutherland.

The ex-Beatle was to be a regular visitor to Durness during his younger years after his dear Aunt Mater remarried a dentist called Bert who owned a home that overlooked Sango Bay.

Jane’s virtual appearance sees her play "glamourous but aggressive TV presenter Morag McCleish" in the play which asks questions about how small communities in Scotland can survive the onslaught of big business.

It’s especially relevant in an Amazon-led business economy,

The actress admits she channelled Jackie Bird to play the role of presenter.

“Not that Jackie is aggressive,” says Jane, grinning.

“But I did think of her , how she always looks great and I got to wear a nice blouse for the shoot, which was really find to do.

"And there’s a wee bit of Kirsty Wark in there too. Kirsty can be a bit nippy.”

Jane adds; “I love working with young people and it was great to play someone who was so far removed from Isa.”

This final series of Still Game is now being filmed but the mum-of-two admits it will be incredibly difficult to shoot.

“I love Isa and she’s been a huge part of my life, so much so that I think of her and the other characters, as being real.

"I don't want it to come to an end, yet at the same time everything has a beginning, a middle and an end.

"It’s the same when you lose your parents. My mum is 90 right now and hanging on, but sometimes you realise that everything has to come to an end.

“Sometimes you need closure.

"And in terms of Still Game, I think Ford and Greg have called it right in bringing it to an end.”

Yet the final moments will cause tears to fall from glass eyeballs.

Jane adds; “When I read the script I texted Ford and Greg to tell them I was sitting crying in the hairdressers.

“It’s not that everybody dies in the last episode. But it’s clever and poignant. And it’s smart. And it’s really lovely and it does the show justice.

“It ends in the way it should. It feels quite final.”

Jane will be so sad to turn over the final page on her life with Isa.

“I’d love to be playing Isa when I’m the age she is now. That would be amazing. But who knows."

Jane's Isa days may soon be gone but she's back in panto this year at the Beacon Theatre in Greenock.

She will be starring once more as the evil Carabosse, with Mark Cox as Cludgie the Henchman in Sleeping Beauty.

"I love panto," she says. "I love making the weans cry."

The Next Big Thing, Theatre 1, theSpace@Surgeon's Hall, 3-25 August, (not 12, 21) at 7.15pm.