Coffee-Table Notes

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 ...

  Jack Vettriano  -  1951–2025    Jack Vettriano, who has died aged 73, was one of the most successful contemporary Scottish artists ever. His often erotically charged studies of brooding figures posed in scenes that seemed to draw from pulp fiction book covers and film noir stills sold in huge amounts. His 1992 painting, The Singing Butler, went at auction in 2004 for £744,500, at the time a record amount for any painting by a Scottish artist, and any painting ever sold in Scotland. It went on to become the best selling art print in the UK.   Celebrity collectors of Vettriano’s work include Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Terence Conran and Tim Rice. Other fans included actor Robbie Coltrane and Scotland’s former First Minister, the late Alex Salmond. In 2010, Salmond used Vettriano’s painting, Let’s Twist Again, as the image of his official Christmas card. When the original was sold a year later, it raised £86,000 for charity.   His 2013 exhibitio...

Marianne Faithfull – Singer, Actress.   Born December 29, 1946; died January 30 2025   Marianne Faithfull, who has died aged 78, was a mercurial singer, who transcended her status as a 1960s swinging London icon and weathered several personal storms to become an elder stateswoman of a very English kind of bohemianism. She became a pop face after scoring a hit with a jaunty rendition of As Tears Go By (1964), composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, who would later put out their own version of the song.    Faithfull released five albums between 1965 and 1967, living a high profile lifestyle exacerbated in part by her relationship with Jagger. As the peace and love hedonism of the 1960s gave way to something darker at the end of the decade, Faithfull dropped out of view. Following several years of homelessness and heroin addiction, she returned to music with a vengeance with Broken English (1979).    With Faithfull’s by now far huskie...

Joanna Tope – Actress Born May 14 th  1944; died December 19 th  2024    Joanna Tope, who has died aged 80, was an actress who combined glamour, sophistication and intelligence over a more than fifty-year career that saw her light up stage and screen. This came in two separate acts, with a ten-year gap between. The first saw her appear on stage alongside the likes of John Gielgud in Edward Bond’s play, Bingo (1973), play Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and take the title role in Hedda Gabler.   On TV she had a regular role as Dr. Clare Scott in twenty-two episodes of what was then Emmerdale Farm (1973), and appeared in guest roles in Z Cars (1974) and children’s science fiction drama, The Tomorrow People (1975). Prior to her sabbatical, Tope also appeared in four episodes of Jack Gerson’s supernatural thriller, The Omega Factor (1979).   When Tope returned to acting in 1994, it was as Jocasta in a new version of Oedipus Rex at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, whe...

Jeff Merrifield – Writer, musician, arts administrator, Seeker   Born March 9 th 1943; died October 31st 2024    Jeff Merrifield, who has died aged 81, was a writer, musician, arts administrator, archivist and publisher who played a key role in assorted underground scenes across more than half a century that a simple job description can’t come close to capturing. Ultimately, Merrifield made things happen. This was the case whether as co-conspirator with theatrical maverick Ken Campbell on his assorted capers, sorting out Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festival enough for it to survive a loss making first year, or setting up an improvising orchestra on Shetland, where he settled in 2008.   To co-opt the title of his brick-sized biography of Campbell, published in 2011, Merrifield was a Seeker. His tireless pursuit of artistic enlightenment saw his free thinking evangelism offset by a practical can-do sense of what was required to bring projects to fruition. There were plays, b...

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Rise Kagona – Guitarist, songwriter, singer Born May 17 th 1963; died September 14 th 2024     Rise Kagona, who has died aged 61, was a trailblazing guitarist, whose tenure leading The Bhundu Boys throughout the 1980s and beyond saw his shimmering guitar lines make waves beyond the band’s Zimbabwe homeland on main stages across the globe. This was done through his use of what became known as the Jiti or Jit Jive style. This was a traditional Zimbabwean musical form, which Kagona fused with more contemporary Western elements to make for a restless effervescent sound that filled dancefloors wherever Kagona and the group played.   After becoming regular chart toppers in Zimbabwe, Kagona and the Bhundu Boys were picked up by Scottish singer Champion Doug Veitch, who co-founded the DiscAfrique record label to showcase contemporary African music beyond its homeland. Veitch brought the band to Scotland, and soon they were being hailed by the likes of Eric Clapton and Elvis Coste...

Garry Robson – Actor, writer, director   Born March 3rd 1952; died July 26th 2024     Garry Robson, who has died aged 72, was a force of nature. This was the case whether as actor, playwright or director, all of which he excelled in with an energy, humour and heart that drove everything he did. While his disability was at the heart of Robson’s art, he transcended any notions of being patronised or ghettoised so his mercurial talent could shine through on its own terms. He did this in his own plays, which included The Irish Giant (2003), for Birds of Paradise; and the Ian Dury inspired Raspberry (2008), initially at Oran Mor in Glasgow, then at the Tron Theatre and on tour.Like Robson, Dury had contracted polio, and became a hero to Robson.    As an actor, Robson worked with key disabled theatre companies such as Graeae, with whom he appeared in Ian Dury based musical, Reasons to be Cheerful (2012), and was in The Who’s Tommy for Ramps on the Moon. Robson also wo...

Roberta Taylor – Actress Born February 26 th , 1948; died July 6 th , 2024   Roberta Taylor, who has died aged 76, was an actress of huge presence and authority, who appeared numerous times at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s. She later became a familiar face on television, with regular roles in BBC soap EastEnders (1997-2000) and ITV police drama, The Bill (1984-2010). Latterly she had a regular role in comedy drama, Shakespeare & Hathaway; Private Investigators (2018-2022).   Taylor brought a husky voiced grandeur to her inherent common touch in all three of her major small screen roles. In EastEnders she was Irene Raymond, the mercurial matriarch romantically entangled with Gavin Richards’s Terry Raymond. Irene and Terry’s marriage ended in the Christmas Day 1999 episode, when Irene’s extra marital affair with a toy boy was discovered. In The Bill, she was Inspector Gina Gold, an iron lady who made Sun Hill police station her fiefdom. In...