Cloons in kilts okay with me, laddie

The natives of Caledonia have long been the butt of Sassenach jokes, but a series of new films has made the Scots, and their impenetrable accents, the official laughing stock of the world.

The funniest character to have hit screens from Middle America to Cannes this year is a green Scottish ogre called Shrek - fast on the footsteps of such comic Hollywood Scots as the janitor Wullie in The Simpsons and the farting, belching Fat Bastard in Austin Powers II: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Shrek is an anti-social slob with filthy habits: he uses his ear wax for candles and catches fish by farting.

Based on a children's book by William Stieg, and co-directed by New Zealand first-timer Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, Shrek is the story of an ogre (voiced by Austin Powers star Mike Myers) who teams up with a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy) and a beautiful princess (Cameron Diaz).

Myers also created Fat Bastard. His Shrek was to have had a North American accent but no one laughed at the jokes at the test screenings.

The film's writer, Terry Rossio, says several accents were tried but only a thick Scottish one was hilarious to everyone. "For about a year Mike did it in his usual Canadian accent, even though he had pushed all along to do it in Scottish. But it wasn't funny in any other accent."

Shrek, the first animated film to be shown in the main Cannes competition since Peter Pan in 1953, has gone down a treat with critics and audiences - it is top at the box office in the US this week.

Myers, whose father is a Scot, is proud of his Highland ancestry, but has managed to put one Scottish grotesque in almost every film he has made, and even played a bagpipe version of Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? in his early film So I Married An Axe Murderer.

He claims the Scots have the most postmodern identity in the world, are always able to laugh at themselves, and rarely take offence at even the most outrageous stereotypes - as long as they are responsible for them and not the English.

The comic book idea of Scottishness so eagerly embraced by football fans, with all the jokes about kilts, worries some Scots. But Colin Gilbert, head of the Glasgow based Comedy Unit, who produced the TV comedy series Rab C Nesbitt, as well as the recent hit, Chewin' The Fat, said it was great that the Scots accent was now globally acceptable, when just a few years ago it was looked on with disdain by the rest of Britain.

He said Scots should be delighted that the Americans thought Myers' accent was so funny. "Mike spent a lot of time in Scotland. In fact, there's a lot of debate here about who Fat Bastard was based on. Several people claim the privilege.

"It's a very encouraging sign that Scottish accents can be used on such a global scale because it shows it's acceptable to almost everyone these days.

"Even if they're laughing at Mike Myers now, it helps in other areas because it means that a huge audience is prepared to listen to Scottish voices."

The film is crammed with movie and TV in-jokes, and parodies of fairytale characters familiar from Disney films, such as a Cinderella-like princess whose duet with a songbird proves explosive.

It's been seen as a swipe at Disney by Dreamworks producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. He is former head of production at Disney, where he presided over such animation hits as Beauty and The Beast and The Lion King.

- INDEPENDENT