January 2018 - The Diary

Happy New Year folks! Laid low with the Australian Flu post-panto and took a few weeks to recover but a hectic month once again. Lots of film and theatre production meetings for upcoming projects and then to the premiere of Purple TV's brilliant and poignant documentary THIRD LANARK at the GFT, followed by a trip to STV to appear on LIVE AT 5 for an interview with Margot McCuag about the film. Here's a couple of screen grabs courtesy of Mark Barrett. Great fun and nice to be invited.

Then off to Manchester for a new COLOPLAST UK live gig and three fun-filled days in this wonderful city with a great bunch of actors (pictured below in Mackie's Meatmarket), followed by yet more live events in London at the end of the month. Also just received news that our web-series

CRIMELORD is also now being shown on Amazon Prime and we have more episodes to shoot in the next few months. Here's a sneak preview of some of the naughty action from my character Ewan Ford's latest exploits...not a man you want to go to a party with methinks! Great fun and am really

pleased that so much of my previous work is finding a home on this platform. It's a game-changer for low budget film and brings a whole new audience which simply would not have existed in previous years. So, well done David Wilde, who has worked tirelessly on this throughout the last year. Also

very pleased to announce that Douglas King's Feature Film SUPER NOVEMBER has been selected to screen at the Glasgow Film Festival, showing on the 3rd March 2018 at the wonderful GFT. Back to Scotland again and another fun shoot with Director David Wilde on his short film BLACK HEART in which I play another rather unsavoury character. The film will be out next month. Photographs below are all courtesy of David Wilde at Showreel Shorts. Another really enjoyable

and fast shoot and turnaround with David and the third film we have done together in the last couple of years and always really good fun shoots with this gang. Check out @ShowreelShorts on Twitter

for their showreel services. Then onto another wonderful project, JAMES 1 - KING OF SCOTLAND, directed by my old pal Carter Ferguson who assembled a brilliant cast for these 4 short films, in which I play King Henry V. Fantastic cast and crew, superb costumes and sets and brilliantly directed by Carter, with whom I have worked on countless productions over the years and always delighted to get a call to work on one of his pictures. Photos below are all courtesy of Carter Ferguson and really looking forward to seeing the finished films!

Huge thanks to Producer Paul Wilson and the James The First team for giving me another belter of a role and to my lovely cast mates, Ryan Fletcher, Jimmy Chisholm, Hannah Donaldson and Tony Greengrass for so many laughs on set on both days, as reflected in the shot below!! It's going to

be a fantastic ongoing project as the tragic story of James The First is once again hitting the headlines due to some recent fascinating archaeological discoveries and there is great excitement in Perth for the possible location of his final resting place. And so a lovely ending to a surprisingly busy January,

usually an actor's quiet month! A couple of interesting self-tape auditions away at the tail end of the month as well, so we shall see what comes of them? Been a great month, full of ttravel, good work and really satisfying characters to play and am booking more work in every week, so this is shaping up to be a really decent first quarter of the new year. #Onwards and #Upwards! The THIRD LANARK documentary I shot at the end of 2017 was also screened this month and went down really well with audiences and a fantastic reaction on social media and am very proud to have been a wee part of it and huge congratulations to all at Purple Tv & BBC Alba for making such a poignant film.

and a special thank you to the talented Penny Sharp who drew the cartoons for this doc, including mine above! Loved it. Right, roll on February and back into pirate mode for even more live gigs!