Paddy Higson – Film producer
Born June 2nd1941; died April 13th 2025
Paddy Higson, who has died aged 83, was a trailblazing film producer who was long regarded as the mother of the Scottish film industry. Over more than forty years she worked closely with several generations of directors, writers and fellow producers in Scotland. She helped foster a series of films that set the tone for a way of contemporary Scottish filmmaking that was witty, urbane and quietly aspirational.
Higson worked with director Bill Forsyth as associate producer on his debut feature, That Sinking Feeling (1979), was production supervisor on Gregory’s Girl (1980) and associate producer on Comfort and Joy (1984). She also worked as line producer on director Michael Hoffman and Ninian Dunnett’s Edinburgh set comedy, Restless Natives (1985).
While she played a crucial role in nurturing all those films, Higson’s first credit as a producer in her own right was Living Apart Together (1982). Charles Gormley’s grown up romance starred pop singer B.A. Robertson as a singer/songwriter whose marriage is falling apart. Higson followed this with Cary Parker’s The Girl in the Picture (1985).
In what was then a tiny Scottish scene, these films transcended their independent shoestring roots to herald in something of a renaissance before eventually becoming regarded as modern classics. This was the case too when Higson executive produced Orphans (1998) and was line producer of The Magdalene Sisters (2002), both produced by daughter Frances and directed by Peter Mullan.
On television, Higson first took the lead as producer on Brond (1987), Frederic Lindsay’s three-part Glasgow set thriller directed by a young Michael Caton Jones on his first professional directing job after film school. Lindsay’s story starred a young John Hannah as a student who witnesses the mysterious Brond – leader of the Scottish Liberation Army – push a boy off a bridge. While some critics were perplexed, it remained mesmerising television, and Higson remembered it as one of her favourite jobs. She went on to work on more quality TV drama, including episodes of Taggart (1993), Cardiac Arrest (1994) and Monarch of the Glen (2000). Other TV credits include Dalzial and Pascoe (1996) with Warren Clarke, and Nice Guy Eddie (2002) with Ricky Tomlinson.
Higson’s unofficial status as mother of the Scottish film industry was bestowed on her by actor and director David Hayman when in 2018 he presented her with a Scottish BAFTA for Outstanding Contribution to the Film Industry. Higson had produced Hayman’s film, Silent Scream (1990), an impressionistic biography of Larry Winters, whose incarceration in HMP Barlinnie saw him become an artist after being introduced to the prison’s experimental Special Unit. As fitting as Hayman’s phrase was in his tribute to Higson, it was something anyone working in film and television in Scotland had known for a long time.
Patricia Anne Frew was the eldest of three sisters to Winifred (néeMcIntyre), a florist, and Gordon Frew. Her father was a partner and surveyor with Kyle and Frew who served with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War. At the start of the war he was briefly stationed in Belfast, where Paddy was born. After the war he continued with his family firm before becoming a hotelier in Stirling.
Paddy grew up in the comforts of Glasgow’s West End and Bearsden. She went to school at Laurel Bank, the prestigious private girls school that later merged with Park School for Girls. Despite her ambitions to study at Glasgow School of Art, her parents insisted their eldest daughter enrol at secretarial college instead.
Higson’s ability to organise ran parallel with her artistic sensibilities in a way that held her in good stead when she became a production secretary with BBC Scotland. It was here she met her first husband, Patrick Higson, a film editor who would go on to co-direct Big Banana Feet (1977), which followed comedian Billy Connolly on his 1975 tour of Ireland. Higson and Frew married in 1965, first living in St. Vincent Crescent in Glasgow before moving to Langshot Farm, where they started raising their family.
Langshot also became a hub of a nascent cottage industry, with the Higsons forming a company – Viz Ltd – with director Murray Grigor to make a series of documentaries for the self explanatory Films of Scotland, founded by John Grierson. Films included The Highlands and Islands: A Royal Tour (1973), directed by photographer Oscar Marzaroli, and The Odd Man (1978), Bill Forsyth’s portrait of three Scottish writers, Edward Boyd, Gordon Williams and Alan Sharp. Higson did the organising as production manager, and even provided the catering from the back of her Citroen 2CV.
By the time of Patrick’s death in 1983, Higson was at the centre of the Caledonian New Wave. This included a thriving grassroots theatre scene, as demonstrated when Higson executive produced Bless My Soul (1984), a musical satire created by Wildcat Theatre Company. Higson also ran BlackCat Studios after purchasing a former cinema in Parkhead, where she executive produced Channel Four’s live music and arts magazine show, Halfway to Paradise (1988). Her personal life saw her briefly married to Graham Harper, and she later had a long-term relationship with artist Norman Kirkham until his death in 2021.
Higson’s generosity, sense of inclusivity and support of younger artists culminated in her involvement with GMAC, the charity set up to remove social barriers and help create opportunities through filmmaking. Higson first joined the board, then became CEO, working tirelessly to bring people from all backgrounds into film. During her BAFTA speech she suggested that compulsory viewing of film credits followed by Q&As should form part of the national curriculum. This was in order to explain what each job actually meant, demystifying them for those who might be put off by seemingly off limits jargon.
Despite being the ‘boss’, Higson remained of the people, happy to muck in on equal terms with everyone she worked alongside. She was a staunch trade unionist and a card-carrying member of ACTT and then BECTU. Given her sense of community and collaboration, it was no surprise she turned down an O.B.E after being offered one in 2022. The idea of Empire was not something she wished to be associated with.
Latterly, Higson returned to painting and sculpture, and was a member of the Southern Art Club and the Glasgow Society of Women Artists, as well as taking up assorted courses at Glasgow School of Art.
Higson’s final credit as executive producer was on a series of GMAC short films under the banner of Little Pictures, a scheme that supported first time film makers.
Higson’s passing comes a few days before the stage version of Restless Natives opens in Perth. Higson’s role in the original film will give the production added resonance. It also becomes another part of a legacy that saw Higson help change Scotland’s artistic landscape forever as she opened the door for several generations of Scottish filmmakers.
She is survived by her three children, Michael, Christopher and Frances, her sisters, Jennifer and Susan, and ger four grandchildren.
The Herald, April 19th 2024
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