Jake D’Arcy

Actor.

Jake D’Arcy, who died on May 30, was an actor who is fondly remembered as the football coach in Gregory’s Girl. The film told the story of a female star striker played by Dee Hepburn and D’Arcy played the man who was struggling to come to terms with it.

It was a star turn in a film that became a surprise hit around the world and went on to make household names of some of the stars, including leading actors John Gordon Sinclair and Clare Grogan. D’Arcy, however, did not have the same success after the film, although he regularly won supporting roles in series such as Still Game. He was also one of the Majestics in the groundbreaking BBC Scotland series Tutti Frutti

Having trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, D’Arcy began working in television and theatre in the 1970s. He was in the original 1978 Glasgow production of John Byrne’s Slab Boys, taking over the part of Spanky, which was played in Edinburgh by Robbie Coltrane. It told the story of a group young, urban Scots working at A. F. Stobo & Co Carpet Manufactures and was greeted with ecstatic reviews. The Herald at the time said the entire cast, including D’Arcy, was received with enthusiasm verging on rapture.

D’Arcy worked for Byrne again when he appeared in Tutti Frutti. The series, which starred Coltrane and Emma Thompson and was broadcast in 1987, was about a touring band called The Majestics led by Big Jazza, played by Coltrane. In flashback, we see Jazza’s funeral and standing round the grave, the three surviving members of the band break out into their version of Three Steps to Heaven. One of them is Francis (known to the fans as Fud) who was played by D’Arcy. D’Arcy’s first work in television had been in Dr Finlay’s Casebook in 1970 and he went on to appear in a number of high-profile Scottish television dramas including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Omega Factor, a science fiction drama set in the Highlands.

Gregory’s Girl came in 1980 and it was perfect for D’Arcy. He played Phil Menzies in the comedy, a PE teacher who struggles to accept that his best player is a girl.

Tutti Frutti came seven years later as well as supporting roles in other dramas such as Minder, Lovejoy, Hamish Macbeth and The Bill. He also had a number of appearances in prominent Scottish comedies, playing Pete the Jakey in the BBC Scotland sitcom Still Game. He also appeared three times in Rab C Nesbitt and four times in Taggart. He had roles in a number of films and last appeared in the 2014 film What We Did On Our Holiday, which starred David Tennant and Billy Connolly

His most recent television appearance was on the Christmas special of British comedy show Outnumbered, but he always remained modest and reticent about acting. Fellow actor Douglas Henshall, who appeared with him in the Channel 4 drama Psychos, said that D’Arcy would sometimes deny he was actor at all. “I never tell people I’m an actor if they ask what I do,” he told Henshall. “I tell them I’m a plumber.”

Among those who paid tribute to him after his death was his Still Game co-star Greg Hemphill. “Laughs came so easy for him,” he said. “We were lucky to have him in our show. “