Kintyre man’s Blithe Spirit boosts Beatson funds
A RADIO style version of a 1940s ghost story inspired by a Kintyre producer and concocted in a Glasgow coffee shop raised £1,400 for a cancer charity.
Former Campbeltown Grammar School pupil Sandy Brodie, 59, has recently been treated for non-aggressive cancer of the spine at the Beatson unit, which was also founded by a Campbeltonian, Colonel Sir George Thomas Beatson.
When Mr Brodie dreamed up the scheme for a Beatson benefit play, he knew just the crowd of thespians to put it together.
He lives in Dowanside Road in Glasgow and regularly meets fellow residents for coffee at Nardini’s in Byres Road.
Mr Brodie said: ‘Everything we do hatches in Nardini’s. I’d gone through treatment at the Beatson and decided I wanted to give something back, so I produced and direct Blithe Spirit.
‘It took half a dozen rehearsals and was great fun. We might take it to next year’s West End festival.
Persuaded
‘Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit was first performed in 1945 and is a clever ghost story. I persuaded a nephew to adapt it as a radio show.’
The one-off show featuring Iain Wotherspoon as Charles, Maggie Moran as Ruth, Marie Birchard as Elvira, Penny Herman-Smith as Madame Arcati, Christian Zannone as Dr Bradman, and Morag Stark as Mrs Bradman and the maid was performed in the Hyndland Community Hall last month.
Guest singers performed songs of the period and photography was by Mr Brodie’s niece, another Campbeltonian, Morven Yarham (née Carmichael).
Sir George Beatson, a pioneer in oncology, was born in Sri Lanka in 1848, where his father was surgeon general to the Indian Army.
As a boy he moved to Scotland and was brought up in Campbeltown and latterly was educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities.
He became a surgeon at the Glasgow cancer and skin institution. He died in 1933 and, 15 years later, the Glasgow Cancer Hospital was renamed the Royal Beatson Memorial Hospital in his honour.