We thought we would celebrate Alan Cumming’s birthday today with this wee stroll down memory lane. To most of his fans, Cumming is best known for his Tony-winning performance as the MC in Cabaret: or for playing political spinmeister Eli Gold on seven seasons of The Good Wife for which he received multiple Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG award nominations. And New Yorkers people think of him via his queer cabaret bar Club Cumning.

However to us Brits,  Cumming initiated his claim as a potential queer icon was the hysterically camp situation comedy called The High Life in 1994. Cumming co-write and co-starred in this too silly-for-words six-part series about the crew of Air Scotia a tiny Scottish airline that were all ……..how can we put this nicely ….. totally mad.

Cumming played Sebastian Flight (named after the character in Brideshead Revisited, but spelled differently of course), and Forbes Mason, the co-writer and co-star, played fellow Flight Attendant Steve McCraken,  There was the sex-mad chief purser, Shona Spurtle (Siobhan Redmond) and their loony pilot, Captain Duff was played by Patrick Ryecart. 

We loved it because it was wickedly funny and pushed the envelope as far as they could in the days when the sight of  a homo on TV was very rare indeed.  What endeared us all was the fact that  not only was it all filmed on the most minuscule  of budgets, but you could sense the cast were having such a blast making it   These were the good old days before TV took itself way too serious

Here’s Season 1. Episode 1 and we think you soon get hooked on this slice of classic Scottish  TV  as well.