Teenage talent factory where they found passion for performing

Talk of the Toon: Iain Connell, on left, and Robert Florence (seen inset, in cap at Toontalk), and Louise Stewart, far right, who all got their big break via the theatre group, alongside Burnistoun’s Big Night co-stars Holly Jack and Jane McCarry The first thing I noticed was that there were girls at Toonspeak, which was significant because there weren’t many girls playing for my football team, Calton Boys Club!

Me and my pals did funny stuff, but we also challenged ourselves with serious productions.

We were invited to go to The National Theatre and met Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins and Nigel Hawthorne. Through Toonspeak I met (Burnistoun co-star and writer) Robert Florence. We had a similar sense of humour. We both loved Vic Reeves and started writing sketches. Toonspeak swerved my life in a completely different direction.

I went to All Saints Secondary, a good school, but when I first went to Toonspeak, when I was 13, I hadn’t done any drama.

The first show I did was Bugsy Malone. Every girl wanted the part of Tallulah, but I played Snake Eyes. Then when I was 15 I did Peter Pan, with Stephen Purdon.

Toonspeak is free and that felt important, that people were given the opportunity to try it for nothing.

It was quite unusual that there were a lot of guys there. It was an important way for young guys to express themselves.

I recently had a part in Good Omens, the adaptation of the Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett book, and the first scene was with Michael Sheen and David Tennant, which was pretty amazing.

It was never really my intention to become an actor, but it has been really varied and interesting, and a lot of that’s down to Toonspeak. It’s great that it’s still going.

I’d been at the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, but had come back to Glasgow and gone back to Toonspeak, where I first went when I was 11.

Gillies was going around all the youth theatres in Glasgow, but when he came to us he found who he wanted to play Lex that day.

Toonspeak definitely helped people who otherwise might have taken a different road in life.

Stephen King believed in the idea of drama as therapy.

He wrote a powerful piece called Sprogs about kids who’d got themselves into bother and we toured it around schools and borstals.

Toonspeak was free, which the powers that be need to think about when they’re cutting arts funding.

I met my two best mates there when I was 11 – one is a civil servant and the other is a deputy head teacher.

Toonspeak was a springboard, and without it my life now would be very different.

Growing up in Glasgow’s East End, Iain Connell was more interested in football than the theatre until drama teacher Marie Birchard suggested he try Toonspeak. Now 40, he is one of Scotland’s most successful comedy writers.

Iain Robertson has Toonspeak to thank for landing his breakthrough role as Lex in Gilles Mackinnon’s Small Faces. Now 36, the River City star has just directed his first short film, Bridge.

Louise Stewart, 33, went to Toonspeak because her mum said she should, because her sisters did, and because her uncle Robert Florence had. Now living in London, the Burnistoun star has worked with some of the biggest names in the business.