Strongman was harder than nails

Recording-breaking strongman and television entertainer Graham Brown has died aged 91.

In 1974, he smashed a world record by tearing apart more than 1,000 sixinch nails with his hands.

His feat, in Arbroath community centre, was witnessed by comedian Frank Carson who was in the audience and kept cracking jokes.

Graham had to ask him to keep quiet as he homed in on the record.

A painter to trade, Graham often sung during his strongman acts and became a regular on Grampian Television’s Bothy Nichts programme, broadcast with Jimmy Spankie from the Aberdeen studios.

Graham will also be remembered for freeing a girl with her head trapped through railings in Arbroath.

Fireman and police had tried to release her without success and eventually called in Graham.

With his hands still bandaged from his record nail-breaking session, Graham went to the High Road Bridge and managed to prise apart the railings and free the child.

Graham had turned to bodybuilding as a young man after being ribbed for being so skinny.

He bought a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course and soon began developing muscles and even set up his own bodybuilding school in Arbroath.

Graham was born in Arbroath in July 1931, one of three children of Campbell and Alexina Graham.

The family moved to Inverkeilor where Graham began school but returned to Arbroath and he completed his education at Park House and Arbroath High School.

Graham left school at 14 and started an apprenticeship as a painter and decorator with Fred Mathers.

His national service was spent with the Royal Artillery at Oswestry, Shropshire.

He returned to Arbroath to paint for Meekison before going to work for Robertsons in Dundee during which time he even had to paint part of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

While working at the then Condor naval base, Graham met his future wife, Sarah, known as Sadie. They married in 1954 and went on to have four of a family: Malcolm, Steven, Alison and Graham.

He later went to work with Arbroath Town Council as a painter, which he combined with touring the world as a strongman, always wearing his kilt.

Less than a year after Graham broke the nail record, he suffered a life-changing accident.

The hydraulic platform he was working on in the centre of Arbroath was struck by a lorry.

He fell to the ground, suffered serious head injuries and was in a coma for eight weeks.

He did make a significant recovery and went to work at the rifle ranges at Condor.

POWERHOUSE: Graham Brown and in his strongman heyday as a world record breaker.