‘People wanted to be around Dad. He had a way about him’
Daughters’tribute as play honours footballing icon
Tommy Burns’ talent as a footballer and coach thrilled and enthralled Celtic supporters but, according to his daughter Jenna, he had a profound effect on everyone he met wherever he met them.
“People just wanted to be around my dad, because he had a way about him,” she said. “He really made people feel a certain thing, and he had that impact on everybody. That’s a fact.”
That influence will continue next month when the stage show of the Celtic and Scotland legend’s life, The Tommy Burns Story, opens at the Kings’s Theatre in Glasgow. The production, starring Liam Harkins, centres on family, faith and football – the key tenets of Burns’ life. Written by playwright David Carswell, it recounts the highs and lows of the life of the flame- haired midfielder, who is remembered for being as classy off the field as he was on it.
The Burns family spent time recalling stories of their father with Carswell ahead of the show’s launch, ensuring the production was an accurate reflection of not only his achievements on and off the pitch but also the everyday idiosyncrasies that formed the essence of his personality.
For daughter Emma, 39, the prospect was initially daunting. She said: “At first I wasn’t sure about a play portraying my dad. But when I got to see it, there was nothing I didn’t like. Even the mannerisms were right, all the wee things people might not have picked up on. So much of it was true to life.”
He was Tommy at work and, to some, Tam on the field. But not at home, and that’s where the audience is invited for most of the show which manages to be intimate, heartfelt and often hilarious. “My mum only ever called him Thomas, or Thomas
Burns,” said Emma. “She never called him Tommy.”
Jenna added: “They called each other ‘pally’ and to hear that after so long was really nice. Liam, who plays my dad, must have really studied him because there are things I wasn’t even aware of that my dad did until I saw him doing them.
“The way he licked his lips, or pushed his glasses up with his knuckle. At one point there’s a scene when he’s sitting in the living room, and even the way he sat with his hand over the armrest on the chair was so accurate. It wasn’t even something you’d pick up on, and yet it was so familiar.”
Tommy Burns’ career is the stuff of legend, not just to the thousands who idolised him during his days playing for Celtic, Kilmarnock and
Scotland. As manager he successfully led the Ayrshire club to promotion to the Scottish Premiership in 1993 before returning to Parkhead in 1994 in the dugout where he helped kickstart the Glasgow giants’ late- 90s renaissance alongside owner Fergus Mccann.
Burns in 1995 delivered the Parkhead club their first silverware after six dismal years and introduced swashbuckling players such as Pierre Van Hooijdonk, Paolo Di Canio and Jorge Cadete to Scottish football.
Later, he teamed up with former Old Firm rival Walter Smith in the Scotland dugout, serving as assistant manager to the former Rangers boss. The pair’s deep bond became emblematic of the bigger picture in the goldfish bowl of the Old Firm – their closeness showed friendship mattered above all else.
The image of a grief- stricken Smith carrying his pal’s coffin from St Mary’s chapel in Glasgow’s Calton in 2008, following Burns’ death at 51 from skin cancer, is etched in the memory of thousands of Scottish football supporters.
Like its central character, who was also renowned for his fiery moments, the play – which as well as Inverclyde actor Harkins stars Sarah Louise Greer as Tommy’s wife Rosemary and James Mcanerney as the narrator – doesn’t shirk any challenges.
Among the most poignant a re the scenes when Burns
is faced with the reality of his fate, both in the consultant’s office and alone in the pews of St Mary’s.
Emma said: “The door was always open with my dad. Jorge Cadete turned up one Christmas Day with his fiancee. My mum knew nothing about it, and the house was full of family, but he came in for dinner and sat playing Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly with everybody. My dad was very open like that.
“But with his illness, things were much more private. The scene in the doctor’s surgery was hard to watch, putting myself there, thinking about what it felt like for the two of them sitting there – that horrible feeling of thinking that someone you really love is worried or scared.
“That’s devastating for me, and watching that scene was hard, thinking what they were both going through.”
Many of his family, friends and colleagues saw the play when it was given a trial run at Celtic Park last winter. Inevitably, the experience was a bittersweet one for his girls, and not just because of their own grief. Emma said: “I saw it twice at Celtic Park. Once I took comfort from it, and the other time I was an emotional disaster.”
Jenna added: “It’s a weird feeling, but seeing people like Danny Mcgrain and Darren O’dea being upset at the play was difficult. I was watching through my hands at times. It is funny and light hearted, but there were moments when it hit me like a ton of bricks.”
The pair say they both think about their dad constantly. Emma said: “I think about him every five minutes. He’s the first thing I think of when I open my eyes.”
Jenna added: “We get to celebrate my dad all the time. We can watch
clips of him on Youtube, interviews, playing football, and I think that makes it easier to push all the things you don’t want to remember from that period to the back of your head. I can’t believe it’s been 14 years since he died. He is still so
present in my life.”
The To m m y Bu r n s Story, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, July 7, 8 and 9