VARIETY? It really was the spice of life...
Legacy of laughs from Scots showbiz giant Johnny Beattie
If EVER I was to write a book,’ Johnny Beattie once mused, ‘I would call it from Broadway to Cowdenbeath.’ He wouldn’t have been far wrong. for Beattie, who died yesterday at the age of 93, had the sort of wide-ranging career that today’s comedians could only dream of.
from performances at the Waldorf Astoria to miners’ clubs in Lanarkshire, his own sketch show on the BBC to a stint as a quiz show host, there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen, done or cracked a joke about in a lifetime of showbiz which spanned seven decades.
One of a slew of Scottish comedians who became stars from the 1960s onwards, he worked regularly with the likes of Rikki fulton, Stanley Baxter, Billy Connolly, Andy Cameron and Jack Milroy, all of whom became great friends.
He even made it to Hollywood, with a part in the movie The Big Man alongside Liam Neeson, and wrote a speech for an American president, before spending his eighties not in cosy retirement but as a soap actor, in the BBC Scotland show River City.
He was notorious in showbiz circles for always being ‘on’, able to deliver his razor-sharp wit at the drop of a hat.
‘Jack Milroy used to say when I opened the fridge door and the light came on, I’d do a 40-minute set,’ he once said.
But more than that, he was from the old school.
‘He was such a gentleman,’ recalled actress Leah MacRae, who worked with him on River City.
‘He was really protective, especially of the women around him, you know.’
BORN in Govan in 1926, Beattie left school at 16 and found work as an apprentice electrician in the Govan shipyards. At 18 he was called up towards the end of the Second World War, and joined the Royal Marines.
He was sent off to Singapore, where he kept his fellow Marines in stitches with offthe-cuff jokes.
His big break came in 1951 when he was approached by a stranger in the University Café in Glasgow and asked if he’d like to join an amateur dramatic show.
The following year he went professional, touring the country doing stand up comedy shows.
It was in small theatres, places such as the Rothesay Winter Gardens and the Ayr Gaiety Theatre where he cut his teeth, and for the rest of his life he would maintain that he far preferred them for their intimacy with the audience.
Indeed, live theatre was something he would return to again and again, and in his later years he was one of Scotland’s most in-demand pantomime dames.
He had little time for the more base humour of some modern comedians. ‘Some of the stuff comics say these days is unbelievable – it would make your hair curl,’ he said in 2012.
‘The theatre where I made my name was a theatre run by a family for families. If I’d said “hell” or “damn” I’d have been sacked.
‘It used to be all about feelgood humour and I’m a great believer in that. Comedians nowadays seem to have to shock audiences into laughing.’
The hodge-podge nature of Beattie’s career often amused him: such as the time when, during a tour of North America with Kenneth McKellar in the 1960s, he was asked to address the Saltire Society at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, only to find himself booked to play a miners’ club in Cowdenbeath a few days later.
No wonder he came up with that book title.
He married his wife Kitty in 1950 and they had four children – Maureen, a successful actress, Louise, Paul and Mark.
The couple separated in 1985 but never divorced, and were apparently on the cusp of reuniting in 1993 when Kitty died of cancer. Until his death, pictures of
Kitty adorned the walls of his flat in Glasgow’s West End.
In 1964 he starred in his own sketch show, Johnny Beattie’s Saturday Night Show.
His best-known character was the simple-minded Glaikit O’Toole, who he would later reprise on Rikki fulton’s show Scotch & Wry.
He was perhaps best known for his beloved quiz programme, Now You See It, which he presented for three years in the 1980s.
In fact, so popular was the show that more recently there was an attempt to bring it back, spearheaded by Still Game’s ford Kiernan. However, the actor could not secure the rights to the show and the project was abandoned.
‘That would have been great,’ Beattie mused in 2018. ‘It’s amazing the people who still mention Now You See It to me in the street. They must have liked that show.’
There was a brief career as a rapper, of all things, – his song The
Glasgow Rap – which features lines including ‘Who needs to go to New York State/When you can rap in the Gallowgate’, got to number 15 in the charts – and regular TV appearances on beloved Scottish TV shows of the day such as Taggart and Rab C Nesbitt.
PERHAPS his most unusual job, however, was penning a speech for former US president Ronald Reagan, when he was inducted as a Keeper of the Quaich to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Scotch whisky industry in 1991.
Beattie was given just six hours to write the speech and then watched the following night as the American president read his words live on TV.
‘Whatever you say of Ronald Reagan, he could deliver a line – his delivery was fantastic. Let’s face it, he was an ex-film star,’
Beattie commented years later. Perhaps Beattie’s words helped. One line read: ‘In common with other migrants who left Scotland and went to America, they were given a horse, a plough, ten acres of land and two tickets for frank Sinatra’s first farewell concert.’
In 2012 he marked his 60th year in showbiz with a BBC special. On the show Billy Connolly remarked that it was ‘60 years the Scottish people will never get back’.
Beattie hit back with: ‘I’m now as old as my gags.’
He surprised many in showbiz in 2003 by taking a role in new BBC soap River City. He loved the job, and relished getting stuck into a new challenge.
And, in typical Beattie style, when he finally retired from the soap in 2015, after 12 years and at the ripe young age of 88, he joked that it was Zayn Malik’s decision to quit One Direction that inspired him to leave the soap.
‘When I read about that, I thought maybe it was time for me to go,’ he cracked.
He described the role, as pensioner Malcolm Hamilton, as ‘the easiest job I ever had’, and it was only a bout of ill health which forced him into retirement.
It was an extraordinary end to a deeply fulfilling career.
Speaking on a radio documentary about his life in 2015 Beattie said: ‘I’ve been very lucky.
‘I’ve had a variety of things, in the theatre, radio and television.
‘I’ve done after-dinner speaking, I’ve done it all. The variety of the variety, if you like.’