#I would name it after Rab C. Nesbitt

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On October 28th 2010 Scotland sadly lost the very funny man Gerard Kelly.

Everyone loved the mop of black hair, the half-length trousers, the bright Dr Martens and the cry of "Hiya pals", but you could spend hours figuring out exactly what made Gerard Kelly such a physically funny pantomime star. It was something to do with the knobbly knees, the way one leg would drag coyly behind the other, and the impression of Kelly having feet that headed in opposite directions. The actor Karen Dunbar, who appeared alongside him in three Christmas shows at the King's theatre in Glasgow, has her own theory. "I think it came from his hips," she said. "He used his whole body."

Whatever his secret, Kelly – who has died aged 51 after a brain aneurysm – was a consummate performer who reigned supreme at the King's theatres in Glasgow and Edinburgh for 20 years. To do this for a dozen performances a week required formidable energy. A fortnight into Sleeping Beauty, at the King's, Glasgow, in 2007, he began suffering from sciatica and amazed his colleagues by carrying on regardless of the pain.

Typically, Kelly played the Buttons-type character, a lovable clown who never got the girl but endeared himself to the audience with his rascally grin, gift for comedy and unerring democratic instinct. His generosity of spirit was addictive. Kelly could keep everyone, from children to pensioners, on side. "He knew exactly how to play the audience," said the director Tony Cownie, who staged several of the pantos. "You couldn't direct him. The minute Gerard walked on to the floor, I just sat back. You can't tamper with genius."

A private man who kept a low media profile, Kelly was a team player and commanded tremendous affection. Born Paul Kelly (he changed his name when he got his Equity card), he was brought up in a family of five children in working-class Cranhill, in the east end of Glasgow. His father, Charlie, ran a chip shop, and his mother, Rose, was a hotel waitress. A teacher at St Gregory's secondary school in Glasgow encouraged him to act. From the age of 12, he landed parts with the help of the agent Winifred "Freddie" Young. He appeared in adverts and the TV adventure The Camerons (1974), for the Children's Film Foundation.

Kelly built an accomplished television career, with early work including a part as a teenager with learning difficulties in Donal and Sally, written by James Duthie, which was broadcast in the Play for Today strand on BBC1 in 1978. That year he auditioned for The Slab Boys, John Byrne's celebrated carpet-factory comedy, at the Traverse theatre in Edinburgh, but was considered too young for the part. He was, however, cast as the designer Spanky Farrell in the Play for Today adaptation of The Slab Boys in 1979. He returned to the role at the Traverse in 1982 in all three instalments of what had become a trilogy (with Cuttin' a Rug and Still Life). That production transferred to the Royal Court in London and was a major success.

Here in Scotland, Kelly is fondly remembered for his leading role as Willie Melvin, a bank-teller with literary pretensions and dodgy friends, in the 80s sitcom City Lights, set in Glasgow. He made many guest appearances in programmes such as Rab C Nesbitt, Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV, The Comic Strip Presents and Juliet Bravo, and was a regular on the sketch show Scotch and Wry, starring Rikki Fulton. In 2006, Kelly teamed up with Tony Roper in Rikki and Me, a stage tribute to Fulton.

After bad-boy parts in EastEnders, as the violent Jimmy in 1994, and in Brookside, as gangster Callum Finnegan from 1997 to 2000, Kelly turned in a viciously funny performance as Ian "Bunny" Bunton, a camp panto director, in Ricky Gervais's Extras (2005). His other stage appearances included Neil Simon's The Odd Couple in 1994 (revived in 2002) for the touring Borderline theatre and Iain Heggie's A Wholly Healthy Glasgow in a production that opened at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 1987 before transferring to the Edinburgh festival and the Royal Court.

Intelligent and politically engaged, Kelly ran the radical 7:84 theatre company in Scotland with David Hayman for three years in the late 80s. He directed Hector McMillan's sectarian drama The Sash ; Raymond Briggs's When the Wind Blows , about a nuclear attack; and an anti-poll tax farce, Revolting Peasants , for the company, whose name derives from athe statistic at the time that 7% of the population of the UK owns 84% of the wealth, it is probaly not changed much since then, if anything will have grown wider.

He had been due to revive his role as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Show at the King's in Glasgow. The part was taken by his friend and City Lights co-star Andy Gray. "He knew what worked," said Gray of Kelly's pantomime work. "I don't think 'Hiya pals' will ever be said again. He did it year in, year out, but 'Hiya pals' worked every time because he did it with such gusto and conviction." Sadly we also lost Andy following complications caused by COVID-19 in January 2021, the two will be having a ball together up there.

[scotianostra]

Happy  Birthday the Scottish actor Peter Mullan born 2 November 1959 in Peterhead.

I love Peter’s work and rate him as highly as Brian Cox and If ever there was a story of rags to riches it is Peter Mullan, born in Peterhead the family later moved to Mosspark in Glasgow. Mullans father was a drunken violent man but despite this Peter did well at school, at least till the age of 14 when the climate at home forced him out onto the streets and into a gang, spending less and less time at school. In his own words he was aggressively lobotomising himself but admitted he kept up his reading on the sly “You couldnae tell the gang you were reading Carl Jung.” he said.

I’m not sure his heart was in the gang culture as he says he was “kicked out” after a couple of years, he returned to school and sailed through his Highers and started at Glasgow University at 17. His dad died of lung cancer on his first day. Mullan studied economic history and drama and despite suffering a nervous breakdown in his final year still managed to graduate. He went on to teach drama at Borstals, prisons and community centres while becoming involved in the left-wing theatre movement that flourished in Scotland in the 1980s. In 1987 he made his professional acting debut with the Wildcat theatre company in a political pantomime.

Bit parts in Scottish films and TV series followed, The Steamie, Taggart, of course, and Rab C Nesbitt, as well as The Big Man and in Braveheart, he uttered the words, “We didn’t come here to fight for the” Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were another two films that Mullan served his apprenticeship in.

The breakthrough came when Ken Loach chose him in the title role of “My Name is Joe” he gave a brilliant portrayal Jekyll-and-Hyde character , a recovering alcoholic whose humanity and warmth masked a frightening capacity for brutality. He won his first award at Cannes as Best Actor for the role.

Around the same time Mullan was starting to get into directing, three surreal comic dramas set in the Glaswegian working-class world and then his first full length film, he not only directed but wrote the excellent Orphans an odyssey of four working-class siblings roving round Glasgow in the 24 hours after their mother dies. Channel Four, who funded the film chose not to distribute it as they didn’t think it would attract a large commercial audience.

The film however was shown at Film festivals around Europe and won numerous awards, in interviews, Mullan has said that once Orphans started winning awards Channel Four apologised and asked if they could distribute it, an offer he refused.

Since then Peter Mullan has not looked back, directing and penning The Magdalene Sisters and Neds as well as starring in amongst others, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, War Horse, Hector and Tommy’s Honour, on the small screen he was one of the main characters in ITV series The Fixer, The BBC Two drama Top of the Lake, and in the excellent drama series Gunpowder.

More up to date Peter has appeared as Jacob Snell in the first two seasons of the Netflix series Ozark, all  three series of the BBC Two sitcom Mum and a recurring role in the popular TV reboot of Westworld. He has also starred in the Netflix fantasy drama Cursed. We will next see Mullan alongside Colin Farrell and Tom Courtney in the BBC series The North Water.

Peter was also one of the participants of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival project, which features talents from the country’s arts industry making lockdown-related short films as a response to the country’s theatres having to close during the coronavirus pandemic.

 Of late we have seen Peter in the excellent mini-series The Underground Railroad, the dark comedy-drama Skint and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, he has a few projects on the go just now, the pick of which, for me anyway, is Payback, it is being filmed in Glasgow and Edinburgh and is a  six-part crime thriller.

[scotianostra]

Happy 62nd  Birthday the Scottish actor Peter Mullan born 2 November 1959 in Peterhead.

I love Peter’s work and rate him as highly as Brian Cox and If ever there was a story of rags to riches it is Peter Mullan, born in Peterhead the family later moved to Mosspark in Glasgow. Mullans father was a drunken violent man but despite this Peter did well at school, at least till the age of 14 when the climate at home forced him out onto the streets and into a gang, spending less and less time at school. In his own words he was aggressively lobotomising himself but admitted he kept up his reading on the sly “You couldnae tell the gang you were reading Carl Jung.” he said.

I’m not sure his heart was in the gang culture as he says he was “kicked out” after a couple of years, he returned to school and sailed through his Highers and started at Glasgow University at 17. His dad died of lung cancer on his first day. Mullan studied economic history and drama and despite suffering a nervous breakdown in his final year still managed to graduate. He went on to teach drama at Borstals, prisons and community centres while becoming involved in the left-wing theatre movement that flourished in Scotland in the 1980s. In 1987 he made his professional acting debut with the Wildcat theatre company in a political pantomime.

Bit parts in Scottish films and TV series followed, The Steamie, Taggart, of course, and Rab C Nesbitt, as well as The Big Man and in Braveheart, he uttered the words, “We didn’t come here to fight for the” Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were another two films that Mullan served his apprenticeship in.

The breakthrough came when Ken Loach chose him in the title role of “My Name is Joe” he gave a brilliant portrayal Jekyll-and-Hyde character , a recovering alcoholic whose humanity and warmth masked a frightening capacity for brutality. He won his first award at Cannes as Best Actor for the role.

Around the same time Mullan was starting to get into directing, three surreal comic dramas set in the Glaswegian working-class world and then his first full length film, he not only directed but wrote the excellent Orphans an odyssey of four working-class siblings roving round Glasgow in the 24 hours after their mother dies. Channel Four, who funded the film chose not to distribute it as they didn’t think it would attract a large commercial audience.

The film however was shown at Film festivals around Europe and won numerous awards, in interviews, Mullan has said that once Orphans started winning awards Channel Four apologised and asked if they could distribute it, an offer he refused.

Since then Peter Mullan has not looked back, directing and penning The Magdalene Sisters and Neds as well as starring in amongst others, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, War Horse, Hector and Tommy’s Honour, on the small screen he was one of the main characters in ITV series The Fixer, The BBC Two drama Top of the Lake, and in the excellent drama series Gunpowder.

More up to date Peter has appeared as Jacob Snell in the first two seasons of the Netflix series Ozark, all  three series of the BBC Two sitcom Mum and a recurring role in the popular TV reboot of Westworld. He has also starred in the Netflix fantasy drama Cursed.  

Peter was also one of the participants of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival project, which features talents from the country’s arts industry making lockdown-related short films as a response to the country’s theatres having to close during the coronavirus pandemic.

His film, Fat Baws, is an 18-minute monologue filmed in Peter’s Glasgow home describing a surreal, hilarious and slightly disturbing showdown with a wideboy jackdaw demanding he puts out more of his favourite food, the eponymous fat balls

This past year Peter has been very busy, as Ridgeway Snr in  The Underground Railroad, a priest in The BBC drama The North Water,  he also has a few things in the pipeline,  The Hanging Sun” is a noir thriller movie set in Norway,  Liaison an upcoming British-French television series developed for Apple TV+,  The Lord of the Rings TV Series and another film,  Baghead. He is also involved as creative director in a new BBC Four production, Skint, which is  filming in Glasgow just now. 

[scotianostra]

The Scottish actor Ronnie Letham was born on September 10th 1949.  

Not one of our best known faces, Ronnie was what is termed as a jobbing actor.

Dugald Ronald Letham  was born and brought up in Falkirk, Ronnie attended Bantaskin Primary School, not too far from where I live, he went on to Falkirk High School where he caught the theatrical bug and put on several school plays. after this he continued his education and trained as a teacher at the Jordanhill College, Glasgow.

Bu he saw teaching wasn’t what he wanted to do and  enrolled at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in the same city, where he met many of his lifelong buddies, including Billy Riddoch, who would later appear with him as Lachie McCrae Snr in Hamish Macbeth, and in a few other series including Rab C Nesbitt and The Baldy Man.

As a young man, Letham acted and directed in several productions at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, at the time still in the Grassmarket, but he spent most of his career in London, appearing on stage in the National Theatre on London's South Bank and at the Lyric, Hammersmith, including in Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor. He loved nothing more than to return to his roots and remained highly respected and in demand north of the Border, where he would relax, if that's the right word, by watching his beloved East Stirlingshire play at Firs Park, Falkirk.

Ronnie Letham had roles in Taggart, The Sweeney, The Bill, Rumpole of the Bailey, The High Life, Atletico Partick , the 1998 TV mini-series Ultraviolet  and, New Tricks with Dennis Waterman. He also popped up from time to time in Craiglang as Harry Drennan, the errant, boozy husband of Isa in Still Game.

Perhaps Ronnie will be remembered most for a role he only played the once, that of “Mr Nesbit”, father of Rab C, and his brother Gash Nesbit snr,  during flashback sequences of the TV series, when Rab pondered his youth and how he and his brother turned out the way they did.

Although he was an accomplished stage actor and director, Letham's other best-known role was as Peter the Fireman in Hamish Macbeth, the man charged with putting out fires in the village of Lochdubh, though famously starting one in the local primary school in a love-fuelled dispute with Rory the grocer.

Letham had a small role in a major movie, The Saint, starring Val Kilmer in 1997, but he largely sacrificed his career in his latter years to look after his ageing father in Falkirk.

Like a scene out of one of the shows he appeared,an occasion in real life happened after he gave up acting, when, apparently after a mix-up over his name, police burst into his father's home in Falkirk, pointed guns at his head, handcuffed him and hauled him off to London as a suspected terrorist. He was freed with an apology several days later after the mistake was realised.

Ronnie died on 27th March 2008 at the age of 58 from complications after falling and breaking his hip in a supermarket, he was described as  a one-off, an actor "of the old school" who could just as easily have been a character, rather than an actor, in his many TV series.

His friend, the aforementioned  Billy Riddoch said his language often made Rab C himself sound polite. "He was a master of the Anglo-Saxon language, often Chaucerian but never abusive, more decorative than that,  He was larger than life, he had a razor-sharp wit and he had the heart of a lion. We in the theatre talk of 'the four stages of the actor', but Ronnie was unique. No-one ever said 'get me a Ronnie Letham type!'"

[scotianostra]

Happy 61st  Birthday the Scottish actor Peter Mullan born 2 November 1959 in Peterhead.

I love Peter's work and rate him as highly as Brian Cox and If ever there was a story of rags to riches it is Peter Mullan, born in Peterhead the family later moved to Mosspark in Glasgow. Mullans father was a drunken violent man but despite this Peter did well at school, at least till the age of 14 when the climate at home forced him out onto the streets and into a gang, spending less and less time at school. In his own words he was aggressively lobotomising himself but admitted he kept up his reading on the sly "You couldnae tell the gang you were reading Carl Jung." he said.

I'm not sure his heart was in the gang culture as he says he was "kicked out" after a couple of years, he returned to school and sailed through his Highers and started at Glasgow University at 17. His dad died of lung cancer on his first day. Mullan studied economic history and drama and despite suffering a nervous breakdown in his final year still managed to graduate. He went on to teach drama at Borstals, prisons and community centres while becoming involved in the left-wing theatre movement that flourished in Scotland in the 1980s. In 1987 he made his professional acting debut with the Wildcat theatre company in a political pantomime.

Bit parts in Scottish films and TV series followed, The Steamie, Taggart, of course, and Rab C Nesbitt, as well as The Big Man and in Braveheart, he uttered the words, "We didn't come here to fight for the" Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were another two films that Mullan served his apprenticeship in.

The breakthrough came when Ken Loach chose him in the title role of "My Name is Joe" he gave a brilliant portrayal Jekyll-and-Hyde character , a recovering alcoholic whose humanity and warmth masked a frightening capacity for brutality. He won his first award at Cannes as Best Actor for the role.

Around the same time Mullan was starting to get into directing, three surreal comic dramas set in the Glaswegian working-class world and then his first full length film, he not only directed but wrote the excellent Orphans an odyssey of four working-class siblings roving round Glasgow in the 24 hours after their mother dies. Channel Four, who funded the film chose not to distribute it as they didn't think it would attract a large commercial audience. 

The film however was shown at Film festivals around Europe and won numerous awards, in interviews, Mullan has said that once Orphans started winning awards Channel Four apologised and asked if they could distribute it, an offer he refused.

Since then Peter Mullan has not looked back, directing and penning The Magdalene Sisters and Neds as well as starring in amongst others, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, War Horse, Hector and Tommy's Honour, on the small screen he was one of the main characters in ITV series The Fixer, The BBC Two drama Top of the Lake, and in the excellent drama series Gunpowder.

More up to date Peter has appeared as Jacob Snell in the first two seasons of the Netflix series Ozark, all  three series of the BBC Two sitcom Mum and a recurring role in the popular TV reboot of Westworld. He has also starred in the Netflix fantasy drama Cursed. We will next see Mullan alongside Colin Farrell and Tom Cortney in the BBC series The North Water. 

Peter was also one of the participants of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival project, which features talents from the country’s arts industry making lockdown-related short films as a response to the country’s theatres having to close during the coronavirus pandemic.

His film, Fat Baws, is an 18-minute monologue filmed in Peter’s Glasgow home describing a surreal, hilarious and slightly disturbing showdown with a wideboy jackdaw demanding he puts out more of his favourite food, the eponymous fat balls.