Funny money
Comedy firm set for £10m sale
Scotland’s leading independent comedy TV production company is set to be sold for about £10million.
London-based RDF Media is planning to buy The Comedy Unit, which makes Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game (pictured) and Chewin The Fat, it was confirmed yesterday.
Any sale will lead to a bumper windfall for former BBC producers April Chamberlain and Colin Gilbert, who set up The Comedy Unit ten years ago.
The Glasgow-based company now has an annual turnover of more than £6 million, and as well as making TV and radio programmes manages local talent including Karen Dunbar, star of her own BBC Scotland sketch show.
RDF Media, which makes Wife Swap, has said that it is in talks to buy they company, adding that shareholders would be updated ‘in due course’.
Local independent TV companies are attractive to buyers because the BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Channel 5 all have quotas for a certain percentage of programmes to be made outside London.
Published: 30 Aug 2006
