I had seen this film a while back, and liked its unique, quirky qualities. Although it has a happy ending, a true crime case that sounds very much like this doesn't. I just read on the BBC online, about a gang war that resulted in the deaths of six people. In this case, rival gangs competed in Glasgow, selling drugs from Ice Cream vans. This occurred in 1984, the same year this film was made. Who knows more about this?
shareIs this the TC Campbell thing?
I dont know too much about it as I was only 5 at the time, but I remember my Dad saying that it was inspired by some real-life turf war thing.
Sort of. The "T C Campbell thing" was about ice cream vans selling soft drugs
in the *beep* parts of Glasgow. It was a territorial dispute that went far
too far.
Not *quite* the same thing as Comfort & Joy...
It is known in Scotland as the "Ice Cream Wars", true it was in Glasgow and concerned gangster families. There is sure to be something about it online. It was well documented and there may have been the odd book about it if I recall.
The "Glasgow Ice Cream Wars" are listed on Ask.com and on Wikipedia.
It was a really nasty episode in Scottish history.
...an episode of Rab C. Nesbitt had Rab's tall and slightly dopey son buying drugs from a guy who dealt out of an ice-cream van ('Nembuthals with raspberry sauce'). I always thought this was inspired if slightly dark comedy - I guess it was referring to something specific.
share I attended a screening of the film where Bill Patterson and Clare Grogan talked about it. Patterson had said that Forsyth had knowledge of slight feuds among the ice cream families, but that the deaths for which TC Campbell was wrongly imprisoned - the burning to death of six members of the Doyle family, in the Ruchazie housing estate - broke in the news on the seventeenth of April, astonishingly the week of the premiere!
This cast a pall over the movie which was seen as making light of the ice cream wars - when, in fact, the film had preceded the all-out ice cream wars by a couple of days.
The Chandleresque, whimsical plot has often, therefore, been downplayed, people misremembering it as a film where a DJ is trapped in the middle of the true-life ice-cream wars.
It may also be the starting point of the urban legend of the deep-fried Mars bar, a delicacy never - never ever mind - actually sold in any Glasgow chippy.
Christmastime in Glasgow is happily evoked and Patterson makes an interesting anti-hero.
The ice-cream van jingle of the Mr. Bunny ice cream van franchise will make you want to rip out your own ears after a while, though. Couldn't a DJ have offered to loop it for them?
~/ ding, da ding, da ding, ding, ding, da ding, da ding ...
ding da ding, da ding, ding, ding ...
Hello Folks! /~
... sorry, just watched it on STV and couldn't resist :)
I was driving on the road where the ice cream van was smashed up about 12 hours ago, as it is round the corner from my mothers!
It is great to see the Glasgow I grew up in, and in his first feature and most Glaswegian "That Sinking Feeling"
Deep-fried Mars bars are no urban legend. I have seen them offered in several shops, all over Scotland. Indeed, one chippy in Glenrothes had a sign announcing "Any sweet battered".
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'adam' - yes, there are many shops that now sell it, but I've read a few sources citing an English journalist who started the rumour of the deep-fried mars-bar in a book on Scotland he was writing. That book even said that 'salt and sauce' was normal in Glasgow chippies - for goodness sake!
One of my favourite things about Scotland is that someone in every city will proudly tell you that the deep fried mars bar was invented there. There's even a chippie in Stonehaven that claims to be the originator on it's sign.
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Its very weird that this comedy drama was inspired by true events.
Its that man again!!