Coffee-Table Notes

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...

Françoise Hardy – Singer, songwriter, writer, actress   Born January 17, 1944; died June 11, 2024     Françoise Hardy, who has died aged 80, was a singer and songwriter who first came to prominence in the 1960s, when her downbeat compositions and exotic appearance subverted the British pop charts and made her an international star. Her appearances on Top of the Pops and Ready Steady Go made her an icon, even as she seemed to shy away from the fame that came with having hit singles such as All Over the World (1965), which spent fifteen weeks in the UK charts.    As a singer songwriter, Hardy made more than thirty albums, and sold more than seven million records. She released her debut aged eighteen. As with many of her records, it was titled eponymously, but came to be known as Tous les garçons et les filles (All the Boys and Girls) (1962). ‘I walk down the streets, my soul in sorrow’ she sang on the title track.   Hardy also inadvertently helped define what...

Peter Kelly – Actor Born October 1, 1941; died March 14 2024   Peter Kelly, who has died aged 82, was an actor of sophistication, sensitivity and boundless wit, who went from his early forays on stage as a teenager to become an elder statesman of Scotland’s theatre fraternity. Inbetween, Kelly became an integral part of the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow’s loose knit 1970s ensemble. He also appeared at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in the premieres of Tom McGrath’s Jimmy Boyle inspired play, The Hardman (1977), and new works by C.P. Taylor.   Kelly performed in a succession of musical revues, devised with novelist and playwright Archie Hind. These included a solo turn in I am Cabaret, in which Kelly played a version of Kander and Ebb’s Emcee character, who he would later play in the musical itself. There were stints as a TV and radio presenter, and Kelly became one of the finest dames in pantomime, first at the Citz, then at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, working alongside the like...

Oliver Emanuel – Playwright   Born April 4 th 1980; died December 19th 2023      Oliver Emanuel, who has died aged 43, was a playwright whose every work was an adventure. This wasn’t just the way Emanuel sometimes filled his plays with fantastical creatures. It was how he brought his writing to dramatic life, driven by a sense of wonder and compassion. Whether it was writing a play without actors, as with Flight (2017-2020), or penning a piece without words with Dragon (2013-2015), Emanuel relished the challenge of finding new forms in expansive and playful ways.   He did this both on stage and on radio, where his imagination flew, using the medium as a creative tool. This was used to maximum effect in When the Pips Stop (2019), written for the centenary of the BBC. Emanuel took the idea of the state broadcaster going off air in the event of a nuclear attack and ran with it, to the extent of the play not only interrupting The Archers, but not being listed, adver...

Norman Lear – Television producer, screenwriter Born July 27, 1922; died December 5 2023      Norman Lear, who has died aged 101, was a writer and television producer, whose sitcoms broke taboos to depict warts and all portrayals of working class lives. He did this most notably with All in the Family (1971-1979), in which blue collar New Yorker Archie Bunker offloaded his assorted prejudices onto his infinitely more enlightened family.   Based on Johnny Speight’s British sitcom, Till Death Us Do Part (1965-1975), All in the Family broke more than one mould. Thematically, its depiction of previously no-go areas for TV comedy such as racism, feminism, homosexuality, religion, and the Vietnam War was a daring intervention into the mainstream. Secondly, it was one of the first sit-coms to ditch pre-recorded laughter tracks, with the show taped in front of a live audience.    This combination saw Lear’s creation become regarded as one of the greatest American TV...