THERE has been, in the best tradition of gritty cop show Taggart, a murder.
Bloody and brutal, brother slaying brother, the killer on the run from his family and the law.
It's a drama that could have come straight from the pages of the latest Taggart script, with the show's regular crime-fighters - DCI Matt Burke, and his team of detectives, Jackie Reid, Robbie Ross and Stuart McCreadie - quickly on the scene.
As it turns out, DI Ross, aka Taggart regular John Michie, is rather bemused to admit that this particular search for a bloodthirsty criminal wouldn't take the detectives long to track down: in fact, he's one of the family.
Michie breaks into a gutsy laugh: "Yes, it's true. I'm descended from a murderer and a lot of sheep rustlers - fine, traditional Highland stock," he grins.
"Nothing wrong with that though - most of the Highlanders in those days would have probably been pretty much the same."
A bit of recent digging into family history revealed the murder connection.
"It was the 17th century, Michael MacDonnell murdered his elder brother and had to get out of Lochaber," explains Michie, settling nicely into the role of narrator. It's a bit like his latest television part, a documentary in which he uncovers the facts behind one of the most intriguing episodes in Scotland's past, the Clearances.
"He went east and allied himself to the Forbes clan," he continues. "He changed his name. As Michael, he was known as Michie, so he took that as his surname.
"Recently I was up in Lochaber and I met a guy who told me that my late second cousin, Donald, had been approached to contest the chieftainship of the MacDonnell clan.
"They thought I might be interested," he explains, "but the current chieftain can rest easy. First, I live in London, and secondly, it costs an awful lot of money to contest these things in the Lyon Court."
So with roots in the Highlands, a childhood that spans his birthplace of Burma, early years in Kenya where his father worked as a bank manager and now living in London, Michie has the classic background of a fully-fledged member of the diaspora.
Add to that the role of a Glaswegian TV cop, and you've got to wonder what he's doing in Edinburgh.
"My mother and father brought us here to live when I was 12, our home was in Barnton," he explains. "Dad had a lot of pressure to deal with in Kenya - racist pressure. I'm not saying his life was always in danger but he would be phoned at the weekend and the voice at the other end would tell him that someone would be coming in on Monday and he would give them the £2 million loan they wanted.
"There was an occasion when someone was sent to the house and broke down the door and he nearly lost his life. So it was pretty serious stuff.
"Although I was brought up in Africa, I was always very aware of my Scottish heritage - and the Scots abroad always seem very keen to hold on to that, much more so than the English."
The Michies returned to Scotland when his father took a less turbulent role with the Bank of Scotland on The Mound. Michie Jnr was sent to school at Glenalmond in Perthshire.
If his dad hoped it would give him a grounding for a sensible white collar career, he was mistaken. His son certainly appreciated the financial commitment to his schooling, yet is as firm an opponent of the "which school did you go to" system as you're likely to meet. No wonder his own three children - two girls and a boy, the result of his relationship with ex-Hot Gossip dancer Carol - have all been educated at an inner London comprehensive.
Perhaps if he'd gone to the local secondary, he'd have embraced the life of an actor sooner.
"It was too dangerous to join in that kind of thing at Glenalmond," he laughs. "It was an all-boys school then, and while there was a danger I'd end up playing a girl, I wasn't terribly interested.
"It was later that I kind of fell into acting," and he roars with laughter as he adds, "it was only because I thought it would help me get a few girls!"
Before the call of the greasepaint, Michie had his own mini drama to perform. It was 1976, he was 19, and for some reason a trip to the ends of the earth on a cargo ship packed with fertiliser seemed like a good idea.
"It was bloody horrific," he says now. "I'd hoped we'd get to Australia, which we did, but it took eight months.
"One of the best experiences of my life was getting off that boat and nothing would ever get me back on one. It was like this: the galley boy was just 16 years old and he started to go mad. So they just chained him to his bed. Crazy."
Michie spent over a year in Australia living on his wits to survive - at one point he sold paintings door to door, knocking them up and then passing them off as Royal Academy originals.
It was back home in Barnton with his parents that he decided it was time to make a career decision. "I realised I wanted to be an actor. I was working in bars - the Calton Studios and the Golf Tavern by the Meadows, but was desperate for a job in theatre.
"So I persuaded someone at the Traverse to give me a job as a stage hand. Once I saw actors working I couldn't wait to do it too."
He headed to London to work towards the Equity card he needed before setting off for Kenya to work in theatre and gain vital experience, cramming 17 plays into ten months. Soon he was back in Britain and a regular on TV screens in everything from Casualty to his first appearance in Taggart - he played a suspect, not a cop - and on the big screen playing alongside Richard Harris in To Walk With Lions, the follow up to Born Free.
DI Robbie Ross is Michie's best known role, and it's one he's happy to hang on to.
"ITV have just commissioned ten more episodes," he grins, "That's fantastic news, it's one of the biggest commissions and at a time when there's not a lot of money around, to get ten episodes is a sign of how much faith they have in Taggart."
Six months of filming begin next week - giving Michie plenty of opportunity to catch up with his Edinburgh family. His sister, Fiona, lives just off Leith Walk, and his nephew, Jamie, is carving an impressive name for himself within the acting community.
For Michie, in Edinburgh to run the 10k at the weekend in aid of his pet charity, Leukaemia Research, home may be London, home is in the English capital, but his latest TV series, Highlands, shows the strength of his bond for the land of his forefathers.
"As I've got older I've developed a real passion for Scottish history," he explains. "Now I'm finding out the truth of it, and it's fascinating."
For now though, there's murder on the cards and Taggart to film. Michie is content to carry on cleaning up Glasgow's mean streets.
"I'm perfectly happy to keep with it as long as they want.
Besides," he grins, "the easiest bit about being an actor is the acting. It's being an actor who's out of work that's hard."
Highlands, presented by John Michie, is on STV on Sundays at 5.20pm.
TAGGART THE SURVIVOR - STILL GOING STRONG AFTER 25 YEARS
TAGGART is the world's longest continually running police drama. The pilot episode went out in 1983 starring the original Detective Chief Inspector Jim Taggart, Mark McManus.
It was intended as a one-off but is celebrating its 25th anniversary with ten new episodes commissioned.
Created by writer Glenn Chandler and originally set around Maryhill Police Station in Glasgow it followed the tough-talking, gritty cop Jim Taggart, balancing his hardman no-nonsense image with that of caring husband to his feisty wheelchair bound wife Jean.
The series looked doomed in 1991 when McManus died during the filming of an episode, but it continued under slightly different titles.
Eventually the original name was revived.
The series has been seen
in more than 80 countries, from Iceland to New Zealand, and America to Japan.
Famous fans include film director Ken Russell, crime novelist PD James and the late Queen Mother.
Appeared Edinburgh Evening News May 2008
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