PRIDE AND PREJUDICE....

This is a fairly dated piece in terms of when it was written, but the issues, themes and the story are all timeless.
Indeed, it's actually quite relevant right now, as a new film, Belle - which tells something of this story  - is due for release sometime this year.




  ELEGANT and perfectly poised, the young lady sits in all her finery with a book laid open on her lap, her dusky companion by her side.

Lady Elizabeth Murray's hand reaches out to the pretty young woman, gently touching her gown.

On the surface, it's a fascinating image of two young women born in the same era but surely separated in society and status by the mere colour of their skin.

One has been delivered into 18th-century aristocracy. The other, presumably, can be little more than her slave.

It is a striking painting but the assumption that this is a lady and her subservient maid couldn't be more misguided.

For in an era of slavery, when many of African descent could only look forward to a life of service and misery bereft of basic human rights, when even Edinburgh banks were involved in the owning of ships transporting slaves, Dido Lindsay was the rare exception to the rule.

Born the illegitimate daughter of a liaison on the high seas between a Scots aristocratic naval officer and the black slave he captured, Dido enjoyed privileges, wealth and a social status that her contemporaries in the latter half of the 1700s could only wish for.

But there was more to Dido than simply being lucky enough to be born into an enlightened and loving family who refused to allow the colour of her skin to relegate her to a life below stairs.

In fact, the graceful, elegant and enigmatic Dido may well have been the spur which prompted her great-uncle, the First Earl of Mansfield, William Murray, to deliver a historic ruling that led to freedom for thousands of those less fortunate than her.

 With her portrait going on public display for the first time at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh (FEB 2002), interest in her remarkable story has been reawakened.

"Her story is fascinating," agrees Margo Norris, archivist at Scone Palace, ancestral home of the Earls of Mansfield. "Her role was unusual - most black people in Britain at the time would have been employed as servants, pageboys or footmen - she was treated as a member of the family.

"And she went on to become reasonably wealthy in her own right."

The picture, by one of England's best artists of the late 18th century, Johan Zoffany, is among the most thought-provoking items at the Great Houses of Scotland exhibition currently running at the Portrait Gallery in Queen Street.

Curator at the time James Holloway says the very fact Dido's image appears in a painting, which would have cost her family thousands of pounds to commission at the time, indicates her elevated status.

The portrait is among a beautiful collection of works contributed by Scone Palace, including a magisterial painting of William Murray, dubbed "the greatest lawyer of all time", resplendent in the robes of the Lord Chief Justice of England.

Born at Scone in 1705, he had left post-Union Scotland and Jacobite turbulence in the hope of establishing his career south of the Border. He was called to the English bar in 1730, quickly earning a reputation as a brilliant lawyer and the nickname "Silver-tongued Murray" for his public speaking gift.

He would go on to become the only man to serve as Lord Chief Justice for 32 years. He was also an MP, Solicitor General of Scotland - during which time he and his family lived in Edinburgh - Chancellor of the Exchequer and was on good terms with many figures in the intellectual movement Scottish Enlightenment.

But the legal tangle which confirmed his position in history was a landmark decision to emancipate the slave James Somerset by declaring in 1772 that his master had no right to sell his freedom.

His decision sent shock waves through the land. It spelled the beginning of the end of a shameful chapter in British history and gave hope to thousands of black people who had been driven out of their native homes, on to slave cargo ships in horrific conditions and sold into a life of slavery, lining the pockets of their wealthy owners.

That would probably have been the fate awaiting Dido's mother. Wrenched from her homeland, she was crammed into the hold of a Spanish slave ship for what would have been a terrifying and life-threatening journey across the Atlantic. Conditions would have been horrific: many were doomed to die on board from outbreaks of smallpox, dysentery, scurvy or from sheer terror. Some jumped overboard.

Those who refused food would be forced to their knees and a red-hot coal pressed to their mouth to make them scream. Their jaws would be wedged open and food emptied down their gullet.

But the Spanish slave ship was captured during the siege of Havana by William Murray's nephew, Rear Admiral Sir John Lindsay. His eye was clearly caught by one young woman in particular, and remarkably he refused to abandon her when she inevitably fell pregnant.

Instead, he brought her home and organised a job below stairs as a housekeeper at his uncle William's mansion, where Dido was eventually born.

But, as John Cairns, professor of legal history at Edinburgh University who has studied the 18th-century black population in Britain, explains, the childless Murrays had no desire to relegate this "bastard" infant to the kitchens.

"We have to remember that these people were aristocrats with a high sense of their own importance," he says. "It was of tremendous significance to have aristocratic blood in your veins - and Dido had aristocratic blood. The blood of William Murray's nephew, Lindsay, flowed in her."

Although she may not have had the entire run of the house, and it is not known whether she travelled north to Edinburgh when Murray did, Dido certainly enjoyed an elevated status.

"She had particular responsibility for running the dairy and poultry," says Ms Norris. "But judging by her fine clothes and the fact she had a reasonable income - especially after her father's death when he left her GBP 1000 - it's highly unlikely she ever got her hands dirty.

"She grew up with the other young woman in the painting, Elizabeth, the Second Earl of Mansfield's daughter, and would have been her playmate. Dido was treated a little bit like a nanny governor - neither below stairs but not quite completely above the stairs."

Certainly her presence among an aristocratic family did not impress everyone who came to visit, or attract their approval. American Thomas Hutchison, Governor-in-Chief of Massachusetts Bay, seemed to question the motives behind William Murray's affection for her when he wrote: "A Black came in after dinner. She had a very high cap and her wool (hair) was much frizzled in her neck, but not enough to answer the large curls now in fashion. She is neither handsome nor genteel. They call her Dido. He (William Murray) knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her - I dare say not criminal."

Dido's role within the family may have remained little more than a curiosity, but for one particular court case which came before her great uncle in 1772. He was by this time Lord Mansfield and his ruling would have ramifications on both sides of the Atlantic.

It's not clear just what influence Dido's presence in Kenwood House may have had as he ruminated over the case of a negro called James Somerset, whose desperate bid to escape the chains of slavery had posed the groundbreaking legal question over his right to freedom.

However, Lord Mansfield found in Somerset's favour, and set him free. It was a ruling that created mayhem in Britain and America, as downtrodden slaves saw the Somerset finding as a sign that their term of imprisonment was finally at an end.

They gathered up what few possessions they had, and deserted their masters in droves.

At last they too could count themselves as free as a young girl called Dido.

 

Cutting the chains

EXACTLY what influence Dido Lindsay may have had over her great uncle's finding in a landmark legal case is lost in the mists of time.

But what is clear is the profound impact Lord Mansfield's Somerset finding had - not only on the slave trade but on Britain's relationship with America.

Somerset had been brought to England from Massachusetts in 1769 by his master, a Scotsman called Charles Stewart.

He absconded but was recaptured, put in irons and placed on board a ship bound for Jamaica where he was to be sold into slavery.

Anti-slavery campaigners, seeking a test case, decided to challenge Stewart's right to buy and sell his servant's liberty.

Although Lord Mansfield's decision referred specifically to Somerset's case, his finding that "No Master was ever allowed here to take a Slave by force to be sold abroad because he had deserted from his Service" was seen as a fatal blow to the future of slavery. The case was cited as ending the slave trade in Britain on both sides of the Atlantic, prompting slaves to desert their masters and, citing the Somerset case, seek independent employment.

But there was a further side-effect of Lord Mansfield's ruling.

American colonists fighting for white colonists' freedom from Britain were quick to use it to boost their own argument: that if all men are created equal, why then should they remain "enslaved" to a country thousands of miles away?

 

First published Edinburgh Evening News February 2002.

www.edinburghnews.com

The art of putting myths in the picture

PORTOBELLO beach, and Paul Reid was down on his hands and knees positioning a little golden goblet into the sand.

As the waves rolled in, Cockenzie Power Station's chimneys to his right, the promenade chippies and cafes behind, he captured image after image on his camera, each angle, each shadow, every gleam of sunlight on its gilded curves, all recorded, filed and saved.

Back home in the "bland room" he calls his studio - bland and empty because most of what Paul does tends to leave and not come back, destined instead to hang on the walls of wealthy art lovers - the little golden cup and his beach snaps were propped up in preparation for Hercules' arrival, muscular and a bit dishevelled, salty spray from the Atlantic drying in his hair and the cool water lapping at his bare feet.

Today the cup, the beach, the Greek hero and Penicuik-based artist Paul are at a New Town art gallery preparing for one of the most eagerly anticipated art exhibitions of the Festival.

On the walls of The Scottish Gallery in Dundas Street hang the results of intense labour, meticulously detailed realistic paintings that at first glance might look as if they've time travelled from an age when art wasn't all about unmade beds and pickled cows, yet on closer inspection are curiously modern: half men-half beasts of Greek mythology against backgrounds that could be - and sometimes are - strikingly familiar, in their hands or at their feet little glimpses of the modern world that shouldn't be there but still somehow don't look out of place.

Combined, they make up the latest collection of work by an increasingly acclaimed artist whose art school tutors originally sighed and said he was doing it all wrong, but who now counts royalty and famous patrons among his ardent fans.

Eventually someone will spend thousands and take home the Hercules painting - there are two to choose from - the little goblet that sat at Portobello sand now depicted as the giant vessel granted to him by Helios (the sun) so he could sail to Erythia where he was to kill a three-headed giant and bring home his cattle.

"The cup was photographed at Portobello beach," nods Paul, "and the beach in the painting is Gullane. I need to have photographs and rough materials to work from so I'll scout around looking for whatever hills I find or beaches. I use the Scottish landscape, because that's what's around me."

The result is that the gentle lines of rolling hills behind Odysseus, depicted in one striking painting not as an Ancient Greek but with brown hiking boots, kilt socks and rifle as he finds men cruelly transformed with pigs' heads by the witch goddess Circe, are based on scenery around Ballater. In another version of the Hercules myth, the rocks of Gullane in the foreground are complemented by the island of Fidra rising from the sea beyond.

The largest work - a 7ft by 5ft scene of Theseus and the Minotaur with a GBP60,000 price tag - involved him meticulously preparing mini models to base it on, including a mini set of stairs, a moulded lion's head and tiny candelabra adapted, bizarrely, from a little Egyptian chariot model bought at a branch of Game Station which he took apart and rebuilt using nails and glue.

One of the most intense works, a black ink depiction of the gigantic form of a cyclops, towers over the long defunct brewery buildings at Duddingston Road West, which father-of-two Paul found almost by accident and felt perfectly suited the brute force of the mythical creatures.

If the images look as if they've fallen from the pages of a fantasy novel, then it's probably not surprising. Paul, 37, today keeps a guide to Greek mythology art - a reference point for many of his works - handy, but as a child growing up in Scone, Perthshire, it was Ladybird books that retold ancient stories with fascinating illustrations that caught his attention, before giving way to teenage superhero comic books.

"It was actually comics I wanted to do. I loved 2000 AD and Judge Dredd," he confesses. "I spent a lot of time copying the images, and when you think about it, comic book artists tend to draw perspective and human form - they need to know where all the muscles go and how they work. They don't spend as long as I do on it, but they need to be able to do it. So when I went to art college, I could already draw the human form correctly, because I'd spent so long drawing Batman."

His realistic style, the "superhero" mythical characters and their stories which even now find their way into modern culture means he's amassed a league of fans from a sector not generally known for their patronage of art galleries and highbrow masterpieces - the video games community.

"I'm from that generation that played a lot of video games and used the first home computers," says Paul, who, in turn, is hugely appreciative of the art skills involved in today's massively popular games industry. "They seem to like my stuff and I like a lot of what they are doing."

At the other end of the scale, his work has drawn royal patronage. The Prince of Wales has followed his work from his graduation from Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee, where tutors keen to promote more contemporary styles often marked down his efforts, to his first Scottish solo exhibition at the Scottish Gallery in 2002.

So impressed was Prince Charles, that he invited Paul to join him on a royal official visit to Turkey and Jordan in 2004, where he soaked up the desert landscapes and ancient cities and returned to his Edinburgh studio to create striking artworks, three of which are now in royal possession.

Now his latest work is waiting for inspection - and already sold stickers are dotted around the Scottish Gallery's walls - prices range from a couple of thousand pounds for a sketch, to the supersize GBP60,000.

So who buys his work? "Various people," he smiles. "I'm lucky. There's one very famous person who's bought two or three, but I'm not supposed to say who. They bought large paintings though, so you can assume they have quite big walls . . ."

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News August 2013

2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

Stroke survivors and the painful road to recovery

A RUSTLING crisp packet is just background noise to most of us, yet it's enough to cause Graham McGuire to snap.

He's been talking, quite clearly and very precisely, about his recovery from a stroke. Now, as fellow stroke survivor Paul Hodson crunches up the empty packet, the sound proves just too distracting for him to continue.

"Will you please stop that?" he suddenly barks, and Paul, who like Graham battles daily with communication condition aphasia, is suitably chastised. He apologises, puts the bag down and quietly folds his arms.

Graham's blunt outburst might have seemed unnecessary to some - after all, a scrunched up crisp packet doesn't make that much noise. But it turns out that even the droning sound of traffic outside, or the chatter of people in another room, is enough to fog Graham's fragile concentration, making every word he utters an even bigger challenge than it already is.

Paul, sitting opposite in a room within Stroke Association's Leith offices, isn't offended at all. For aphasia - the frustrating aftereffect that hits a third of the 120,000 stroke survivors in Scotland - also left him struggling to speak, read, write and, devastating for someone who once worked high up in the city's banking industry, numerically dysfunctional.

Life post-stroke for them both is a giant leap away from broadcaster Andrew Marr. He recently returned to television screens following his stroke in January with the only hint that all was not completely right being a walking stick propped up at the side of his chair. As he set about grilling politicians and chatting to his Sunday morning guests about the big issues of the week, his knack for untangling complex issues and putting squirming interviewees on the spot seemed as sharp as ever.

The Loretto School-educated presenter's stroke left him with some mobility problems, however pictures of him this week exercising in a park without the need for his cane suggest he's winning the battle against those.

But for Graham and Paul - like Marr, both were in their early fifties and at the peak of their careers at the time - the confusion as they woke up in hospital having had a stroke was compounded by the horrible realisation they had been left with one of its most frustrating aftereffects.

Suddenly, simply trying to communicate basic needs - never mind emulating Marr's incisive brain power or returning to work - posed a daily challenge of epic proportions.

Now, in a bid to create greater understanding of aphasia, the charity Stroke Association has launched a campaign which primarily targets health workers who are often stroke survivors' first port of call and yet who may be unaware of just how debilitating it can be.

New research from the charity, released to mark Aphasia Month, reveals 43 per cent of those affected found communicating with their GP difficult - raising concerns over the standard of care they might ultimately receive. And nearly a third quizzed indicated problems being understood by their GP.

Certainly in Graham and Paul's case, aphasia - the result of damage to the language centres of the brain and which can also be caused by tumours, trauma or neurological illness - didn't just devastate their ability to communicate normally, it wrecked their successful careers and altered their lives forever.

"I'll never be back to normal," explains Graham, now 67, who held an academic post at Strathclyde University and worked for the Leith-based Centre for Advanced Marine Studies at the time of his stroke in October 1997.

"Even the noise of traffic which most people don't notice can prevent sensible conversation. You're distracted all the time by noises which wouldn't bother other people."

Today, his speech seems fine, the result of years of hard work that included re-learning the alphabet and being taught to read all over again. And now Graham, of Morningside, supports others affected by aphasia at a local Speakability group, where he hears devastating stories of people whose lives crumble as they lose their income and friends drift away unable to deal with their sudden inability to communicate.

Paul nods as Graham describes the impact of aphasia and challenges of having to learn basic communication skills all over again. For the former bank executive, even simple tasks like recalling his age and differentiating between right and left can be a struggle.

A law and economics graduate, he was 51 and working as a project manager for the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2007 when he entered hospital to await a triple heart bypass. The problems with his heart, however, led to a stroke.

He woke up acutely aware that something was very wrong. "I knew I could speak before," he says, "but then all I was able to say were 'yes' and 'no'. So I knew immediately that I had a big problem."

As with Graham, intense speech therapy has helped. Now Paul, of Canonmills, can make himself understood, although sometimes painfully slowly as he searches hard for each word. For those listening, second guessing what he wants to say might be well-intentioned, but he stresses that every conversation, however challenging, aids his recovery.

"It's important that people wait for me to explain and don't jump in," says Paul. "It's annoying, and for me it's about trying to improve. I can't do it if someone is already talking for me.

"But before I had nothing at all," he adds. "I am slowly getting there."

For details of Speakability groups, log on to www.speakability.org.uk

 

Quarter of a million affected

More than a quarter of a million people in the UK have problems speaking, reading and writing as a result of communication condition aphasia.

It is caused by injury to the language centres of the brain, either through stroke, head injury, brain tumour or a neurological condition such as meningitis or multiple sclerosis. Around a third of the 120,000 stroke survivors in Scotland have the condition.

A stroke occurs when the blood supply to the brain is cut off by a clot or a bleed in the brain. Around 12,500 people in Scotland have a stroke every year. It is the leading cause of adult impairment and disability.

Stroke is the country's fourth biggest killer after cancer, heart and lung conditions. Risks include obesity, alcohol and smoking. High blood pressure and irregular heartbeat can also lead to stroke.

Born to be a woman...Gina reflects on the fight for her life.

 

GINA Smith rummages in her cavernous black handbag and pulls out a sheet of yellowish paper.

She unfolds it slowly and deliberately, revelling in the impact she's creating.

Indeed, if someone was to film the scene, it would be no doubt accompanied by a dum-dum-DUM! soundtrack, there'd be audible gasps from the audience and a final round of applause.

The paper now unfolded and flattened on the table, is clearly a birth certificate. Gina, stubby nails painted deep blue, points proudly to the 'gender' column. Girl, it states.

"Girl," she says, puffed with delight. "It's written down there. Born a girl. Her Majesty's officials recognise I'm a woman, the department of Work and Pensions have done the same.

"I carry the papers with me because I won't take any crap from anyone any longer," she adds, stiffening.

"I have it all here in legal documents."

Gina, a former soldier and miner who worked in the dirt and claustrophobic bowels of Polkemmet pit, crosses her bare legs and adjusts her figure hugging frock. It has a vivid psychedelic print, cut low at the front and unfortunately just a bit on the short side so that when she bends over to take off her towering heels because they're hurting her feet, she gives a quick flash of her knickers.

Even if she realised, it's unlikely that she'd care. For having fought tooth and painted nail to get to the point where she can proudly wave that replacement birth certificate in any face she chooses, she's not about to worry about flashing some flesh.

Indeed, changing from a he to a she certainly wasn't without a fight. Back in 1994 when she was officially still male - even though the past life as Ian George Smith, father of four, one-time husband, soldier and miner, was very much no longer on the scene - Gina launched a one-woman campaign that highlighted the anguish of those like her, desperate for gender reassignment surgery but suddenly denied by a controversial health board rule. Her angry challenge made banner headlines. Gina, then in her late 30s, became something of a poster girl for those born in the wrong body, a bit of a pioneer at a time when sex swap surgery was still referred to in headlines as a "gender-bender op" and transsexuals were often cruelly dismissed as some kind of weirdos who needed to 'man up'.

Time moves on, attitudes change though, surely? Today, 18 years on since life and body changing surgery, it might be expected that we've all stopped snickering at the women who feel they really should be men and the men who yearn to be women, and learned to move on.

And yet earlier this month saw the launch of a new campaign aimed at dispelling transgender bigotry. Time for TEA (transgender education awareness) was developed by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender National Youth Council, a unique project that will run in schools, colleges and universities.

As well as seeking to change attitudes among students, it will also target teachers, helping them understand the correct terminology and issues that transgender students might be experiencing.

That launch came just a few weeks after River Song, 18, who is in the process of switching from male to female, claimed she had been banned from the toilets and verbally abused by a member of staff at the St James Centre.

None of which really surprises Gina. After all, the piece of paper she feels she must constantly carry - a legal replacement for her original birth certificate granted post-surgery - proves that simply going through the process hasn't meant an end to her personal struggle.

"I didn't do anything that anyone else in my situation would not have done," she says, shrugging off suggestions that her high-profile mid-Nineties campaign was in any way brave or pioneering. "I suppose I'd fought so hard for so long - I'd got used to fighting. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life without the surgery, so I had to fight.

"Part of it has been me fighting against myself," she adds grimly. "I did all these very masculine jobs, like joining the army for seven years, working as a miner for two. But I couldn't shake the feelings that I had.

"Actually," she sighs, "I don't think you ever do get your head around it all. It's 'why me?', and 'why did life pick me for this to happen to?'."

Gina was the middle of five children growing up in the Midlands and knew from a young age that she was different. It wasn't a particularly pleasant childhood, she recalls. For a start there were her own conflicting feelings about her identity which arose just as younger siblings came along and she found herself suddenly squashed in the middle.

"People talk about middle child syndrome," she sighs. "Well I think it all helped to screw me up."

She craved attention and says she got it in the most shocking way possible. Years later she accused her father of sexually abusing her as a child, claims which he angrily refuted before he died and which, much to Gina's upset, never resulted in any court hearing.

A bit older and she began to attract attention from men, awakening feelings that she'd been told were wrong and which she battled against by taking on "macho" jobs. "I tried to fight it, I didn't want feminine feelings," she explains. "Every time I tried to get rid of the feelings they came back stronger.

"No-one can understand it because even I don't understand. Eventually I couldn't stand being two people at once, I thought I'd have to sort it out."

So she joined the Infantry in 1971 and served in the most butch places of all, Northern Ireland. Later as her regiment's Colonel's personal valet, she'd wait until he and his wife went on holiday and then raided the woman's extensive wardrobe, shedding his infantryman's uniform to prance around their home dressed in her finest Christian Dior cocktail frocks and heels.

Army life came to an abrupt halt in 1978. Tortured by her secret, Gina went awol in the most unlikeliest of places. "Jamaica!," she howls. "Of all the places to go awol, I did it on a small island and there was nowhere to go. Twenty-eight days in the slammer and then SNR - services no longer required."

Still desperate to prove her 'masculinity', Gina married, worked at Polkemmet pit and fathered four children. "It was extremely exhausting, " she remembers. "It was like I was acting all the time and I couldn't keep on doing it anymore."

Her marriage ended in 1988 and Gina slowly shed her masculine layers to become, on the outside at least, every inch a woman. Her children, still young at the time, had had no problem accepting her transformation, to them she became 'Aunty'. "You can't sit down with a four, six, eight-year-old or whatever and say 'sorry I'm not going to be your dad any more, they would have been devastated," she continues.

"I was fortunate that they have just always seen me the way I am and I'm unbelievably proud of them."

Sex swap surgery was not particularly new - high-profile personalities such as April Ashley had made the male-female transformation in the Sixties, and she went on to become a Vogue fashion model. But it wasn't much talked about either.

Gina, of Saughton, started hormone treatment and was days away from surgery in 1994 when health bosses decided to stop funding the GBP7000 gender-swap operations unless in "exceptional cases". Enraged, she loudly campaigned against their plans, eventually forcing a U-turn and undergoing full surgery in early 1995.

To prove how far she's come, she recalls a moment during the recent Fringe when she suddenly stepped on to a stage for an impromptu, first ever, stand-up comedy routine during which she fielded questions from the audience - some more intrusive than others - about being transsexual.

She enjoyed it so much that she's planning a much bigger, more formal show for next year's Fringe. "It'll be called 'Everything you ever wanted to ask a transsexual but were too scared to ask'," she giggles.

All a world away from the days when she desperately hid herself for fear of being found out, drank too much and thought of ending her life.

"You have to go through a lot alone and have guts and determination," she nods, "but I couldn't stand being the way I was any longer. I just want people to know I'm like any other woman."

 

 

Triggered by survey results, campaign sets out to increase understanding

 

A CAMPAIGN to highlight transgender issues was launched this month.

Developed by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender National Youth Council, Time for TEA - transgender education awareness - is the first campaign of its kind in Scotland and will target older secondary school pupils, college and university students. It aims to work with teachers, helping increase under-standing of transgender issues. The campaign follows a LGBT Youth Scotland survey that revealed more than three quarters of transgender people had experienced bullying at school. Almost nine in ten said that bullying had a negative impact on their education. Fewer than half said they would feel confident reporting it. Nearly half of those who responded said they had left education as a result of bullying.

More details from www.lgbtyouth.org.uk

 

 

More than 80 years of ground-breakers

SURGEONS carried out the first recorded attempt at male-to-female reassignment surgery on Lili Elbe in Germany in 1930, who died three months after her fifth operation.

The first female-to-male surgery was in 1960s America.

April Ashley, pictured,

underwent surgery in 1960 and became a Vogue model and actress.

American tennis professional Renee Richards had male-to-female surgery in 1975. Despite opposition, she went on to play tennis on the women's professional circuit.

Former Second World War fighter pilot and racing driver Roberta Cowell underwent male-to-female surgery in 1951 - the first recorded case in the UK. The change meant she was barred from Grand Prix.

(c) 2013 Johnston Publishing Limited

Heroes who must not be forgotten.

A very old one this*... stumbled across, forgot I'd ever written it although obviously the research must have been agony. No reason in particular for suddenly posting it, just that it's always fascinating and humbling to remember those who fought and died in two world wars.
Story mentions plans for a national memorial in honour of the Victoria Cross medal holders... ten years on and I don't believe it's ever happened.
Poignant anniversary next year.... Time to revive the idea, perhaps?

THEY were the bravest of the brave, men who fearlessly disregarded their personal safety to save the lives of others.

In remarkable acts of selflessness, displaying extreme courage and with incredible strength of character as enemy fire poured down, they revealed almost superhuman qualities.

Their reward for laying their lives on the line - and, indeed in many cases, sacrificing them - was to come in the form of a small but enormously precious medal, cast from the bronze of two Russian Crimean War guns captured after the siege of Sebastopol in 1855 and awarded in recognition of exceptional gallantry, regardless of rank or grade.

There have been just 1354 awards of the Victoria Cross since it was instituted in 1856, the merest glimpse of its distinctive crimson ribbon on the breast of a veteran enough to establish him as a military monarch - irrespective of whether he was a private or a colonel, a corporal or a major.

Its civilian equivalent, the George Cross, was instituted in 1940 to replace the Empire Gallantry Medal, the Albert Medal and the Edward Medal.

The decoration has been awarded to a mere 400 people, who, just like their counterparts in the armed forces, have all displayed incredible bravery for others.

While the courage of this select band of individuals could never be in doubt, it is only now that plans are being made to create a National Memorial in their honour and to establish a fund to ensure the restoration and upkeep of many of their far-flung graves - assuming, that is, that the necessary 250,000 pounds can be found.

Of course, such matters would have been far from the minds of the fearless fighting elite from around the Edinburgh area, whose split-second reactions, and fortitude in the face of almost certain death earned them the recognition and gratitude of an entire nation.

They include the likes of Lance-Corporal William Angus, the Great War light infantryman from Linlithgow who voluntarily left his trench in the face of enemy fire to rescue an officer, a deed accomplished despite him sustaining some 40 wounds for his troubles; Leith-born Sapper Adam Archibald, who in 1918 defied machine-gun fire and poison gas to persevere in the essential construction of a floating cork bridge across the Sambre-Oise Canal in France; and the remarkable Corporal Thomas Peck Hunter, a 21-year-old Royal Marine commando from Stenhouse, who sacrificed himself as a target to save his troop. It was April 2, 1945, when Cpl Hunter and his 43 Commando Royal Marine comrades were on the German Gothic Line defences at Lake Comacchio in Italy. Barely more than a teenager, Cpl Hunter was in charge of a Bren gun section when he spotted his men were devoid of cover.

Seizing his gun, he charged across 200 yards of fire-swept open ground towards a group of houses where three heavy machine-guns were lodged. Their gunfire was intense, yet so determined was his bid to detract the Germans from firing at his own men that the enemy was confused. Startled by the ferocity of Hunter's shooting, six of the enemy machine-gunners surrendered, while the remainder of them simply fled.

Cpl Hunter then cleared the entire house, changing several magazines of ammunition as he ran, firing accurately and continuing to draw the enemy fire away from his men. Most of his troops had reached cover by the time he was hit in the head, a single German bullet all it took to snuff the life out of a fighting hero.

Today, the VC which he never lived to see is on show at the Royal Marines Museum in Southsea. Closer to home, there is now a memorial plaque to remind pupils at the Capital's Tynecastle High School of his heroism, while eight cottages in Stenhouse Street West stand in his memory.

Almost 100 years separated him from Lieutenant Robert Blair of the 2nd Dragoon Guards, a 23-year-old from Avontoun in Linlithgow who found himself at Bolandshahr, India, in September 1857. Yet they are linked by the same indefatigable fighting spirit.

Lt Blair had been ordered to take a party of one sergeant and 12 men and bring in a deserted ammunition wagon. But as they approached, almost 60 Indian mutineers on horseback moved in.

It must have been a terrifying sight yet, without hesitation, Lt Blair formed up his men and gallantly led them through the rebels. He made good his retreat without losing a single man, leaving nine enemy dead in his wake. Two years later, however, he was himself dead, a victim of a far trickier foe - smallpox. Today, a plaque in his memory can be seen at the Covenanter's Prison Section in Greyfriars Cemetery.

 

 

In all, more than 30 military elite from around the Edinburgh area were awarded the VC, their heroic deeds stretching from October 1854 and the Crimean War, when Morningside-born Sergeant Henry Ramage of the 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) galloped to the assistance of a private surrounded by seven Russians whom he duly dispatched, to Cpl Hunter's astonishing Second World War exploits.

Judging whether an act of valour is worthy of a VC is no easy task - the rules stipulate that the event should be witnessed by at least two others and that there should have been a 90 per cent chance of death. And, explains Didy Grahame, joint appeal director of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association, these were no "brainstorm" incidents by battle-scarred men unaware of the risks they were taking. This is why 294 VCs have been deservedly awarded posthumously throughout the UK since the medal was first introduced.

"These awards are only given when it's known they understood the risks," she says. "Usually they are given to people who have already shown this kind of behaviour on frequent occasions, whose colleagues can confirm that he would have been fully aware of what he or she was doing. That is what underlies these awards."

Now is the time, Ms Grahame says, to ensure an appropriate memorial to VC and GC holders is established - it will be a two-foot square inlaid stone which will rest near the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey, along with a fund which will help guarantee their graves are not allowed to be forgotten.

Of course, acts of supreme courage and bravery do not only occur on the battlefield. And for those civilians who put their own lives on the line for others, there is the George Cross.

There can be few better examples that than of David Brown, the West Calder mine overman, when in January 1947, he continually entered Burngrange Shale Mine pits after a massive explosion, braving raging fires and the threat of collapse, in a bid to reach trapped miners. Finally, while few of us would even be called upon once in our lifetime to commit such unselfish acts of bravery, perhaps it's worth remembering the supreme sacrifice of Private Charles Kennedy, 2nd Bn., The Highland Light Infantry.

Born in West Port, Edinburgh, he was just 24 and serving in Dewetsdorp, South Africa, in 1900 when he carried a wounded comrade three-quarters of a mile to hospital. The next day, he volunteered to carry a message across country over which it would be almost certain death to venture. He had gone barely 20 yards when he was severely wounded.

Pvt Kennedy was made of particularly sterling stuff. Seven years after receiving his VC, he was back home in Edinburgh, casually strolling along Leith Walk, when a runaway horse and cart thundered past. Realising it was heading straight for a group of children playing in the street, he again displayed astonishing courage as he tried to prevent disaster. Tragically, that heroic deed cost him his life.

In an age when footballers, pop idols and movie stars are often referred to as "heroes", Pvt Kennedy was the genuine article. Yet the man who put his life on the line for duty no fewer than three times today lies buried on common ground in North Merchiston Cemetery. His grave is unmarked.

Donations or requests for further information to: The VC and GC Memorial Appeal, Horse Guards, Whitehall, London SW1A 2AX.

 

Roll-call of honour for acts of bravery by Edinburgh's finest

VICTORIA CROSS

Captain William Bloomfield, of Broomfield, Edinburgh, 2nd South African Mounted Brigade, braved 400 yards of machine-gun and rifle fire to reach a wounded man in Miali, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), 1916.

Cpt Walter Brodie, Highland Light Infantry, of Belgrave Crescent, Edinburgh, led charge to evict Germans from British trenches in Belgium, 1914. Eighty of the enemy were killed and 51 taken prisoner.

Lieutenant William Bruce, 59th Scinde Rifles, captured an enemy trench near Givenchy, France, 1914. Despite neck wound, encouraged men to hold out against several counter-attacks until he was killed. 

 Lt Thomas Cadell, 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, born in Cockenzie. During siege at Delhi, India, 1857, defied enemy attack to bring in two wounded men.

Cpt John Cook, Bengal Staff Corps, Indian Army, braved heavy fire at Peiwar Kotal, Afghanistan, 1878, charging out of the trenches with such impetuosity that the enemy broke and fled. Fought a hand-to-hand battle to save a major's life.

Lt-Colonel Arthur Cumming, Commander of the 2/12th Frontier Force Regiment, Indian Army. In Kuantan, Malaya in 1942, Japanese soldiers attacked his battalion. Despite two bayonet wounds, led successful counter-attack. Wounded in heavy fire as he collected isolated detachments of men.

Lt William Dick-Cunyngham, Gordon Highlanders, born Prestonfield. Inspired faltering men during an attack on the Sherpur Pass, Afghanistan, 1879, by charging alone into enemy fire.

Pvt James Davis, 42nd Regiment, born in Canongate. At Fort Ruhya, India, 1858, offered to carry the body of a dead lieutenant back to the regiment.

Lt Robert Digby-Jones, Corps of Royal Engineers, at Wagon Hill, Ladysmith in South Africa, 1900. re-occupied a hill just as three leading Boers reached the summit.

Lt James Dundas, Bengal Engineers. At Dewan-Giri, Bhootan, India, in 1865 he climbed a 14ft wall and crawled through a 2ft-wide opening to reach around 200 enemy soldiers barricaded in a blockhouse.

Lt John Graham of the 9th Bn, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. At Istabulat, Mesopotamia, 1917, despite two wounds, insisted on carrying ammunition and operated his gun with fearsome accuracy.

Sergeant-Major John Grieve, 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys), from Musselburgh. In Balaclava, Crimea, 1857, saved life of a Heavy Brigade officer, cutting the head off one Russian and dispersing others.

Surgeon Anthony Home, from Dunbar, 90th Regiment. 1857, Lucknow, India, protected wounded men from attack for more than 22 hours.

Lt William Hope, 7th Regiment. Sebastopol, Crimea, 1855, twice braved open fire to rescue an injured adjutant.

Cpt William Johnston, born Leith, 59th Field Coy, Corps of Royal Engineers. On River Aisne, Missy, France, 1914, worked two rafts with his own hands, returning with wounded from one side and taking back ammunition, while continuously under fire.

Lt Allan Ker, 3rd Bn, The Gordon Highlanders. In St Quentin, France, 1918, used a single Vickers gun to hold up the attack, inflicting many casualties. Surrendered only when out of ammunition and the situation hopeless. Single-handed, he held 500 of the enemy off for three hours.

Lance-Corporal John Mackay, 1st Bn, The Gordon Highlanders. Crow's Nest Hill, Johannesburg, 1900, repeatedly rushed forward under fire at short range to attend to wounded comrades.

Pvt John McDougall, 44th Regiment, born Old Town. Taku Forts, China, 1860, joined two others to swim through ditches to become the first British troops to mount the Fort walls.

Lt David McGregor from Craigs Road, Corstorphine, 6th Bn The Royal Scots. 1918 at Hoogemolen, Belgium, used his own body to successfully protect guns concealed on a limber from enemy fire. Killed in action later that day.

Cpl James McPhie, 416th (Edinburgh) Field Coy, Corps of Royal Engineers, born Rose Street, Edinburgh. In 1918, assisted troops to cross a floating bridge at the Canal de la Sensee near Aubencheul-au-Bac, France, under shell fire when it began to sink. Attempted vital repairs before being fatally wounded.

 

 

Pvt William Reynolds, Scots (Fusilier) Guards. At Battle of the Alma, Crimea in 1854, gallantly rallied the men round the Colours.

Commander Henry Ritchie, Royal Navy, of Melville Gardens, Edinburgh. On board HMS Goliath in command of the search and demolition operations at Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika in 1914 when wounded eight times in 20 minutes. Carried on until fainting from loss of blood. Died at home in Craigroyston House, Davidson's Mains in 1958.

Pvt Same (John) Shaw, 3rd Bn, The Rifle Brigade, from Prestonpans, East Lothian. 1858 at Lucknow, India, confronted and killed an armed rebel, sustaining a sabre wound.

 Quartermaster-Sergeant John Simpson, 42nd Regiment, born Edinburgh. 1858 at Fort Ruhya, India, twice went out under heavy fire to rescue wounded men.

Lt Harcus Strachan, from Bo'ness, served Fort Garry Horse, Canadian Expeditionary Force. Assumed command from dead squadron-leader at Masnieres, France, 1917, leading men through enemy machine gun and killing seven gunners with his sword.

Lance-Corporal Alexander Thompson, 42nd Regiment, born Tolbooth. Fort Ruhya, India, 1858, volunteered to retrieve the body of a lieutenant.

Pvt George Wilson, 2nd Bn, The Highland Light Infantry. 1914, Verneuill, France, located a German machine-gun by shooting six of the enemy and bayoneting the officer.

Cpt David Reginald Younger, 1st Bn, The Gordon Highlanders. Krugersdorp, South Africa, 1900, braved fire to drag an artillery wagon under cover. A later attempt to bring in the guns cost him his life.

 

GEORGE CROSS

John Alexander Fraser was Assistant Attorney General (Colonial Service) in Hong Kong, serving with the British Army Aid Group when the Japanese invaded in 1941. He was interned in the Civil Internment Camp in Stanley and immediately organised escape plans and a clandestine wireless service for his fellow prisoners. Despite being subjected to prolonged torture he refused to utter one word. Unable to break his spirit, the Japanese executed him on October 29, 1943.

David George Montagu Hay, later Marquess of Tweeddale, from Gifford, East Lothian, was serving on SS Eurylochus when it was sunk by an enemy raider 600 miles off Sierra Leone in 1941. He managed to reach a liferaft but - despite sharks infested waters - he dived back in to rescue a radio officer and survived.

Archibald Young, a chartered accountant, was working at Curtis & Harvey Ltd, an explosives factory at Roslin in 1916 when an explosion tore through the building. Aware that four girls were inside, Young and two colleagues defied the risk of explosion to rescue the occupants.

Eric Watt-Bonar, Flight Sergeant RAF (Voluntary Reserve), originally from Edinburgh, was based at a small airfield in Eccles in 1932 when an aircraft crashed and caught fire. From underneath the protection of an asbestos blanket, he unfastened the pilot's straps, released him and dragged him from the burning wreckage before administering first aid.

 

*This was written a while ago now, so it is entirely likely that the figures for medal holders has changed since then. Apologies and perhaps one day I'll get around to updating those figures.
Edinburgh Evening News 3 December 2002
Scotsman Publications.

Talking books... and presidents.

Been a while since I posted anything, so I'll aim to refresh a bit more regularly from now on.

This piece is from a couple of years ago now, but I thought of it as it's Canongate's 40th anniversary this year.

I'd been wondering whether I should revisit it and its boss Jamie Byng... but would I end up with anything different to this piece?

Sometimes there is an element of 'groundhog day' to working the same features patch for so long...

 

 

 

 

 

JAMIE BYNG bursts into the reception area of his Canongate publishing company, mobile phone clenched to his ear, all wild hair, skinny tight jeans and mild panic.

"What do you mean he won't get into the car?" he says, whipping his left hand through long curly locks, then dashing back outside, the door slamming behind him.

A crisis is unfolding with one of his major authors - he won't leave home by taxi for an interview he thought had been cancelled.

The author, a high-profile TV regular with a big contemporary following, isn't budging, but if anyone can smooth things out, it's the charismatic, likeable, easy-going boss of one of Scotland's most successful publishers.

The Honourable Jamie Byng, son of the Earl of Strafford - he is also a descendant of Admiral John Byng, executed by firing squad for failing to prevent the French capture of Minorca in 1756 - and one-time party animal behind a successful Edinburgh club night Chocolate City, is not your run-of-the mill, every day kind of boss.

Today his business is riding high with the publishing scoop of the year - perhaps the decade - after spotting the potential two years ago in a series of memoirs written by a certain little known American called Barack Obama.

Byng read Dreams From My Father and his political biography The Audacity of Hope, thought both were "remarkable books by a remarkable person" and swooped to secure the UK and Commonwealth publishing rights.

One presidential election later and Byng has just overseen a print run of 100,000 more copies of one and 40,000 of the other - brown cardboard boxes stuffed with the paperbacks are piled high around his offices - to add to the astonishing number already sold. He also holds the rights to Obama's just-published third book.

On Canongate's office wall is a mocked-up picture of a smiling Obama, sporting a Santa hat, pointing towards a line of numbers - the movable arm is currently set at around 900,000 - with the words "Obamometer, one million. Sell it - yes we can!".

Obama's arm is almost certainly going to be pointing off the scale before long.

While last year's Canongate turnover was a very respectable GBP 8m, next year's looks set to escalate even further, to an astonishing GBP 13m.

"Those books are two of the best acquisitions we've ever made, but it's about more than that," he nods, hair flopping back into his eyes. "I think these are not only great books but they are extremely important books, and I believe there's a long, long life ahead of them."

Byng, 38, fell for the books before Obama's presidential prospects became clear. He wooed the politician via a succession of complimentary e-mails - and insists he would have battled to bring them to the UK market regardless of the historic events over the past six months.

"It's apparent when you read Dreams From My Father that this is a wise, serious, open-minded, articulate and really visionary human being. This is someone's memoir written back when I was taking over Canongate - and it's amazing what he has done in that period of time, growing in the most extraordinary way," he enthuses. "It's very exciting for us to be on this journey with him."

He speaks with sincere passion about all the books that line the walls of Canongate's offices in a 16th century building off the High Street,

not just those by the President Elect.

For example, he's immensely proud to point out his Booker Prize winning author Yann Martel, whose The Life of Pi has sold over a million copies, and that comedy partnership The Mighty Boosh's GBP 20 hardback has shifted an impressive 225,000.

He's also champing at the bit to talk about David Simon, creator of the US TV series The Wire - acclaimed by many critics as one of the best TV dramas ever - whose 17-year-old book, Homicide, was languishing out of print until he swooped, republished and sold, so far, 65,000 copies.

"That's unbelievable," he grins, turning the book over in his hands, caressing its cover like he's holding a precious jewel. "It's a brilliant book."

His enthusiasm is clearly infectious. Next year, Canongate will mark its 15th anniversary under his dynamic control and his staff appear to be just as hooked on their jobs as he is. Take the heavily pregnant receptionist. She is due to give birth in a fortnight, already she's planning her return to work later in January.

That, it seems, is the Jamie Byng factor. Certainly his striking presence has led to a stunning turnaround for a Canongate. It twice faced financial collapse before he sauntered in for a spell of work experience in an industry he knew little about, and instantly became hooked.

That was back in 1994, when Canongate founder Stephanie Wolfe Murray brought him into the offices. He'd been weighing up what to do as his English literature course at Edinburgh University drew to a close. Until then, his key interest had been in running Chocolate City one night a week, enjoying a party animal lifestyle while cutting his teeth in business, learning how to hard sell, spotting what people wanted and sending them home happy, hopefully with a profit in his pocket. He applies a similar formula as a publishing house boss.

For example, he pulled out of a potential money-spinning deal to publish Sir Sean Connery's Being a Scot after the book swerved in a direction he didn't feel comfortable with.

"You are asking a reader not just to buy a book, you're asking them to give you their time," he says. "If someone makes that investment to give hours of their life to a book you have published, then it's not something to take lightly.

"You have got to publish with complete passion and conviction. Publishing is built on dreams and passion. You've got to say, hand on heart, this is a great book, it will change the way you think, it will enrich your life, make you laugh or cry and stretch yourself and your sense of who you are if you read this book."

He knows his business inside out, yet becoming a publisher was never on his radar when he first walked in back in 1994. His eyes were opened: "I loved books but I didn't know what a beautiful creative process there was in publishing," he explains.

As the business fell on hard times, Byng and business partner Hugh Andrew - who later founded Edinburgh-based Birlinn publishing - pooled resources and contacts and bought out the company. Byng's connections - his step father is Sir Christopher Bland, former chairman of the BBC governors and now Canongate's chairman - certainly helped.

He steered the business into a new direction, remaining true to its Scottish roots but broadening its contemporary appeal. One of his defining moments was snaring the likes of Bono and Nick Cave to provide their take on books of the Bible, guaranteeing news headlines in the process.

While home is in London with his second wife, Elizabeth Sheinkman - he moved to be near his first wife Whitney and theirchildren, Marley, 12 and Leo, ten - Edinburgh is where Canongate will always remain, insists Byng, and even though 2008 has been a remarkable year he says there's no room for complacency.

"This is a very precarious and unpredictable and mercurial business. There's no such thing as a sure-fire winner.

"We're still the small guy. We're the underdog and we live by our wits. But it doesn't stop us."

 

 

A FORCE IN INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING

 

JAMIE BYNG helped save publishers Canongate from bankruptcy in 1994, when he bought the business.

It has grown into an international publishing force, with offices in Melbourne and New York as well as a London base. It employs 20 people in Edinburgh.

Among the titles it publishes are Lanark by Alasdair Gray, 2002 Booker Prize winning The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller.

Canongate authors Kate Grenville and M. J. Hyland were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006.

 

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News 19 December 2008

The Scotsman Publications Limited

PEOPLE: Killer in the family offers real-life case for Taggart star to probe

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

PEOPLE: Still rocking after a lifetime of riffs and hairspray

WITH a wild toss of his flowing bubbly locks and a bass guitar strapped over his shoulder, Neil Murray gazed out over a sea of more than a quarter of a million faces and struck another classic rock god pose.

It was Rio de Janeiro, January 1985 - in the days when trousers were tight, hair was big and rockers Whitesnake were on the cusp of massive international super-stardom.

Nearly 350,000 paying fans - at the time a world record number for a concert - had turned up to see Edinburgh-born Murray and his Whitesnake bandmates, along with Rod Stewart, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Yes and headline act Queen. A staggering 200 million viewers in 60 countries tuned in to watch.

And with their sprayed-on skintight jeans, carefully unbuttoned shirts revealing jangling medallions and the distinct aroma of several cans of hairspray lingering in the air, Whitesnake's bandsmen were the epitome of Eighties' power rock legends.

Today Murray recalls the gig as one of the key moments in a 30-year career and allows himself a gentle smile at the slightly over-hirsute image that the band had so eagerly embraced.

"OK, yes, I did have the big hair," he admits, rather awkwardly. "Well, we all did - it was the mid-80s!

"Really, it wasn't too bad at first, but then it started to get really over the top, we went head over heels for the glam heavy rock look. The hair was getting bigger, there were stylists being brought in to tell us what to wear while we were on the road.

"And there was this hairspray, loads, everywhere."

These days the hair is substantially shorter and definitely greyer. Murray, now 56, and fresh from a trip "home" to Edinburgh to tidy up loose ends of his late mother's estate, remains one of rock music's biggest unsung legends.

Indeed, his professional credentials read like a musical hall of fame.

Apart from providing the throbbing bassline to some of Whitesnake's biggest power rock anthems, Murray has shared his talents with household names from Black Sabbath to Pavarotti, Queen's Brian May to Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green, and performed alongside Eric Clapton, Sting, Robert Palmer, drumming icon Cozy Powell, Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes and even The Chieftains.

He's strutted at Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, provided thumping rhythmic melodies for wildman Ozzy Osbourne at the historic first Live Aid concert and has notched up no fewer than ten million album sales.

Not bad for a musician that few people will have ever heard of, and whose early memories of public performance are of watching operas and classical recitals with his cultured parents at the Edinburgh Festival, and who still regards himself as a full-blooded Scot despite his soft south coast accent.

"I'm absolutely one of Edinburgh's own," he agrees. "People say to me, 'oh you can't be Scottish with that accent' and it really annoys me.

"I was born in the Simpson's, I remember going to see Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes at the Festival - I was taken to all the festivals when I was young. Art, dance, opera . . . I was exposed to it all. And, of course, there was a slight tendency to rebel against that high art and try something a bit more down-to-earth."

While his brother, Andy, followed in their father's footsteps and went to Fettes alongside Tony Blair - eventually becoming a key player in the music industry himself, working at a business level with the likes of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and The Corrs - Neil was sent instead to a progressive, vegetarian boarding school in Hertfordshire.

He had already swapped his piano lessons for the trombone and eventually the drums, when a school friend converted a guitar into a bass and Neil discovered the key to his musical future.

Soon he had figured out a way to plug the guitar into his record player, teaching himself to play by practising along to recordings of some of the best bassists in the world.

Eventually his typographic design studies at London College of Printing couldn't compete with the thrill of playing guitar - even though it was several years of practising in his bedroom before Neil finally emerged on to the public stage.

"I was obsessed with the bass guitar," he remembers. "I was playing on records in my bedroom for five years. Eventually, when I did get on stage, I suddenly realised there was a lot more to it all than I had realised, the nerves came out and the lack of experience. It's not just about playing the notes."

Still, while he's the first to admit he has neither the extrovert character nor inclination to be a frontman, he certainly learned to hold his own on the rock stage. There would be stints strutting alongside guitar maestro Gary Moore, rhythm king Cozy Powell and eventually former Deep Purple frontman David Coverdale in his newly formed rock outfit, Whitesnake.

So did life as a rock star meet all the cliches of wild women, trashed hotel rooms and lunging from country to country in a boozy blur?

"To be honest, touring was more about playing silly practical jokes on each than anything else," he admits.

"Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath's guitarist, has this doom and gloom, very dark image - and to be honest you don't want to get on the wrong side of him - but he's really very humorous, there's a lot of silliness and joking with him.

"In Whitesnake, well we were just a bunch of guys having a good time.

"There was some of the booze and womanising going on but if you look at the likes of Ozzy or Motley Crue, we were much, much tamer than that," he says. "I mean, not exactly choir boys but not doing anything very different from the vast majority of the population.

"It just maybe seems to be a bit more glamorous, but it's not really," he shrugs. "Besides, I'm a bass player and we tend to be more in the background. OK, I had my moments, but I'm not a wild extrovert."

No smashed up rooms, television sets thrown out of 20th-storey hotel windows? "It was more practical jokes, to be honest," he admits.

"Things like covering door handles with shaving foam. And once someone dressed up as a lion from the circus and we had a laugh at that."

A far cry from the thrusting, posturing and drink and drug-fuelled rock star image. As is the notion that all rock stars are worth millions and live a life of luxury.

Although Neil worked on the recording of Whitesnake's US-breakthrough album, 1987, he was out of the band by the time they reached superstar status - missing out on a potential earnings windfall.

Not that he's too bitter - by that time the hair had got even bigger, the trousers even tighter and the on-stage thrusting even more extreme for a lad from the outskirts of Edinburgh.

At least these days there is the comfort of financial security - during the past five years Neil has performed in the Queen tribute musical We Will Rock You, at London's Dominion Theatre, and occasionally appears with the Whitesnake tribute band, M3 Classic Whitesnake.

Soon he will head to Germany with fellow Scot, singer Dougie White from Motherwell, to record with studio-based band Empire - led by rock guitarist Rolf Munkes.

But despite a packed schedule, Neil makes the time for regular visits to his family back in Edinburgh.

His parents have both passed away in recent years but his sister Charlotte, who works as a graphic designer in the Capital always looks forward to welcoming her brother home.

The days of appearing before quarter of a million-plus fans at a sweltering Brazilian rock festival may be in the past; the highlight of playing at the Queen's Jubilee concert then trading Fettes tales about his brother with Tony Blair just a memory - but Neil remains as understated as ever.

"There were good times," he reflects. "It was nice to be part of it."

HEAVY METAL'S CELEBRATED SERPENT

WHITESNAKE was started in 1977 by David Coverdale, formerly of Deep Purple, and found fame in the 1980s.

The line up has changed over the years but has included such legends as Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray, Bernie Marsden, Micky Moody, John Sykes, Adrian Vandenberg, Vivian Campbell, Tommy Aldridge and Steve Vai.

The band has been compared by critics to Deep Purple, not only because three former band members were once in Deep Purple, but also because of their sound and influences.

Current band members David Coverdale, Doug Aldrich, Reb Beach, Uriah Duffy, Tommy Aldridge, and Timothy Drury still tour to this day.
Edinburgh Evening News April 2007

PEOPLE: From Rollers to opera via Springsteen, the tour boss who's seen them all

IT was an ordinary hotel in an ordinary English town on a fairly average day in 1980. Until, that is, Ozzy Osbourne arrived.

As tour manager of the Black Sabbath frontman's series of gigs, Jake Duncan was responsible for making sure things ticked along, - from organising transport to pampering to stars' whims - but Ozzy blew apart his carefully-planned itinerary. "He'd just come out of a heavy divorce - this was before he was with Sharon," says Jake, relaxing in the lounge of his Edinburgh home. "He wasn't in a very good way.

"We arrived at this hotel in Leicester but it must have been the briefest stay in history, because as soon as we got to the reception desk to book in, Ozzy unzipped and urinated in the foyer. Let's just say we checked back out again soon after."

Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and unfortunate toilet incidents are just part of life on the road with some of the world's biggest music legends.

Today, Jake is at home in Balerno surrounded by glittering gold and platinum discs from the likes of George Michael and, most recently, Westlife. It's brief respite after a gruelling tour that has seen him accompany Britain's Got Talent opera sensation Paul Potts across the globe.

"I've been working with Paul since July last year and he's had no more than three weeks at home," says the 56-year-old father of two. "Last year he was selling phones, now we're just back from Australia, where he played the Sydney Opera House.

"In just five months we did the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Korea, and we've done ten shows in Denmark. I don't think I've done ten shows there with anyone, yet his is the biggest selling album in Denmark. That's amazing success."

On the road with the rotund opera star might not sound terribly rock 'n' roll, but who could blame Jake from wanting a little less action after 35 years with some of the biggest names in music? Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Bruce Springsteen, George Michael, Westlife and Franz Ferdinand - all appear on Jake's "been there, done them" list of acts that he has worked with.

It all started with Edinburgh's very own superstars, the Bay City Rollers.

"I was in a music store on the Royal Mile, it was 1973 and I was buying some drumsticks when I started chatting with a guy who was working with the Rollers," Jake recalls.

"He was driving to Bournemouth that night alone after his co-driver pulled out.

"I didn't have a driving licence but he said to come along because he needed someone to help keep him awake. I thought, 'sod it, I'll go'."

Jake was 21 and a trainee manager at a city hotel. Nothing prepared him for the madness that would engulf everyone associated with the tartan-clad popsters as Rollermania took off.

"It was largely down to Tam Paton going through teen magazines that used to have girls writing in asking for penfriends," reveals Jake. "He would note down every one and send them a picture of the band to get them interested.

"Eventually the girls went out of control - nothing had prepared me for the way these girls behaved."

The next group he worked was Aerosmith, the wild men of American rock.

Jake laughs as he remembers touring with Steve Tyler and co at the height of their hedonistic days of excess.

"It was 1976-77 and Aerosmith were totally wired pretty much the whole time," he recalls.

"A lot of artists will stick a list on the stage floor to help them remember the song order, but Steve came on stage one night in Birmingham and started off with what was the last song on the sheet.

"He finished, looked at the sheet and was so out of it that he thought that was it for the night so he yelled 'Thank you, goodnight' to the crowd," grins Jake.

"We had to push him back on and remind him he still had 14 songs to do."

Recently Jake saw the band play in Glasgow and approached guitarist Brad Whitford to say hello. "I said, 'Hi, remember me? I was with you guys in 1977'. He just looked at me blankly and said he couldn't remember anything at all from 1977 - and I'm not surprised."

As a lad growing up in Penicuik and then Abbeyhill, the notion that he'd eventually tour the world rubbing shoulders with the cream of the music industry never entered his head. He was too busy dreaming of football - more precisely, Hearts.

When he left Boroughmuir High for a hotel management course at Napier, he had no idea that his life would eventually revolve around hotels but from the other side of the reception desk.

As his reputation grew, Jake became one of the UK's leading tour managers, working with the biggest names in the business, including George Michael.

"I was with George for eight years," remembers Jake, who runs Showtime International from his home. "There'd be five of us in a private jet - George, his sister, his personal assistant, a security guy and me. So I got to know him pretty well.

"We'd bring in new people and they would wonder why George didn't say anything to them. I'd explain, 'If you're not spoken to, then you're doing fine. The time to worry is when you're spoken to'.

"Barbara Dickson is the same. I remember driving her new Saab 2000 convertible with her in the passenger seat. She said, 'do you like driving my car?', of course I said yes.

"She said, 'why don't you put your f***ing foot down or else we'll never get there'. She's a straight talker, and that's good."

But while it might all sound like the height of glamour, Jake points out that it's tougher than it sounds.

"Touring isn't for everyone, the road finds people out pretty quickly," he says. "You need big reserves of strength to get through it. And there's not many women will put up with you being away for most of the year with a rock band."

Jake's relationship with the mother of his two children didn't survive his career. He's now single, while son, Bradley, 22, is fresh from a marketing degree course and daughter Jade, 19, has just started training to be a speech therapist.

"You're not home, you're with rock stars and all that it involves. Most relationships don't survive," he says, although

he's the first to admit it's been quite a ride.

"Yeah, I suppose the whole idea of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll isn't far off the mark," laughs Jake. "There's been plenty of that on the road, but I'm sworn to secrecy on quite a lot of it.

"So I'm afraid the best bits, well, they'll have to go with me to the grave."

BRUCE ALMOST SHOWN WHO'S THE BOSS

HE'S called The Boss, but when Jake brought Bruce Springsteen to Edinburgh, it nearly landed him in trouble with the law.

"It was 1996 and we went to Queen's Park next to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and parked two people carriers there with blacked out windows," Jake recalls.

"Bruce and his agent walked towards Salisbury Crags while a couple of park rangers drew up, naturally suspicious.

"We said we were waiting for Bruce Springsteen but it didn't go down well. One of them said 'I've had a difficult day and I don't need you pulling my chain', at which point Bruce appeared.

"The guy could hardly believe his eyes."
Edinburgh Evening News September 2008