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IT’S 10 in the morning in Scotstoun and the two most popular men in Glasgow are posing for selfies with punters on the pavement.

The people of the Clydeside suburb may have gone up Dumbarton Road for the bus or the messages – a brush with telly’s most popular pairing wasn’t on the shopping list.

“No ways” are exclaimed, phones brandished, smiley faces pulled, hands shaken, backs slapped and days made.

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The big man with the dark ’tache dives into the chemist and the wee man with the ginger one waits outside.

The big one has a wee hangover. The wee one’s not big on sympathy.

A man wearing a suit and a peaked chauffeur’s cap opens the door of a people carrier to let them climb inside.

He calls each of them “sir”.

Jack Jarvis and Victor McDade would consider this a rare day out.

But Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill seem to be enjoying it too.

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The Still Game duo invited the Daily Record to join them on a frantic publicity road trip around the country’s radio stations, the final PR drive before they disappear to re-emerge as Jack and Victor in The Hydro on September 19.

And the transformation is taking place right before our eyes, with both men already sporting character moustaches.

“We used to stick them on when we were doing it for TV”, said Ford, with the ginger one. “So we grow them to make sure they don’t blow off during the performances or we end up hunting down around the audience to put them back on.

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“I’ve never had a problem with ginger. Ginger hair’s terrific. Jack had ginger hair when we did the flashback episode.

“Greg doesn’t think he looks ridiculous with a tache but I know I do.”

Ford and Greg had a high-profile fallout when Still Game was at the height of its commercial success. The cloth caps were hung up in Osprey Heights for what seemed like the last time in 2007.

Greg’s since admitted that if their “friendship failure” did anything, it made them realise what everyone else already knew. That there was something special about their relationship.

(Image: Daily Record)

If anything were to expose any cracks papered over by a lucrative 21-show run at The Hydro, then it might be a late night on the wine the evening before a 7.30am appointment on a high-energy commercial radio station accompanied by a journalist and photographer on a six-hour publicity jaunt.

At worst, Ford and Greg wind each other up with the enjoyably familiar rough and tumble of middle-aged men who started this carry on in the playground, just as the opening credits suggest.

They test each other with deadpan humour and one enjoys hooking the other with a dummy line just as much as when they first met through comedian Bruce Morton at a party in a flat in the 90s.

The pace is relentless. Chipping in with a funny anecdote is like trying to compete with Lionel Messi at keepy-uppy.

One takes 20 notes off the other after a reminiscence about the location of the old Glasgow Empire and Metropole theatres develops into an on-the-spot bet settled by an iPhone fact check at Heart FM.

They joust over the referendum travelling between Capital and XFM, starting with political points and ending with tears of laughter on their faces.

(Image: Daily Record)

By the time they’re pretending to be Jack and Victor in a tiny Radio Clyde studio (they swear they’ll never be seen doing it out of costume) all is finally lost and the interview melts into a wheezing, snorting, puce-faced hysterical breakdown.

Even in those moments with defences seemingly down, they fiercely guard the content of their comeback, whispering behind hands when a rehearsal note occurs to them somewhere on the M8, though they do let us in on some titbits.

They tell how director Michael Hines is standing in as Boaby the barman in rehearsals while original Gav Mitchell recovering from broken ribs at home with his script.

They wonder why they’ve ended up paying so much to keep the original “dirty stinking rag” of a couch in storage all this time when they could have bought several new ones from DFS.

They say there’ll be a mention of Kilmacolm in the script because at least one person in the car grew up there, and because any word with two “k” sounds is scientifically proven to be funny. Apparently.

And an unseen documentary about cameos of Michelle McManus and Jim Watts in an earlier TV episode, dubbed Raging Bulls***, will be shown at half time during the shows.

With the morning rounds over, the pair are spun out of the car and into The Hydro for pictures of the vast empty arena a week before technical rehearsals begin.

They are then marched across to the SECC where they are force-fed lunch in between unexpected phone calls and final questions from their travelling companions.

“When we put those costumes on for the first time last week, it was like power surging through us,” said Greg, suddenly that boy in the playground again. “It was like putting on a suit of armour. It felt comfortable, not an ounce of it was unfamiliar to me.

“The nerves go away in the costume. It makes us realise people aren’t here to see us, they’re here to see Jack and Victor.

“We know better actors who haven’t had the opportunities we’ve had.

“When you play a character who people have fallen in love with, it’s the best thing that can happen.”