June 2019 - The Diary

We opened the month in Greenock's Beacon Arts with another sell-out show and a wonderful audience gave the cast a rousing reception. Even met a lovely couple up from Manchester to catch the show! Thanks once again to Bryan & Jim from the Benny Statue Fund who were there on another fantastic night & for some of the cast of River City to support the show.

Delighted with the response and feedback this show is generating and thanks to everyone who came along to see the show this month. All the years of hard work to get this play up and running is beginning to pay off and we are already planning a new tour for early next year.

More auditions and then back into Producer mode to take The Benny Lynch Story to the wonderful Dundee Rep followed by the beautiful Dunfermline Alhambra. More standing ovations and packed houses greeted the cast as the show goes from strength to strength and full credit to our superb cast

and crew on a thoroughly professional job pulled together in record quick time, as we only had 2 weeks of rehearsals before opening this new show in Ayr last month. Thanks to Jim Spence for meeting the cast afterwards and for his wonderful support and praise for the show.

And we had some very special guests at the Alhambra (above) as relatives and family of Benny Lynch came to the show in great numbers and audience members brought along some unbelievably precious pieces of memorabilia which we aim to include in an exhibition on our next tour.

We managed to sneak Bryan Turnbull onstage as well to get his photo taken in the old street where he was born before the show! Delighted to receive our first glowing reviews as well as the show rolled into another full-house in Motherwell and a brilliant audience they were too. Thanks to Holly Jack

for the photo above of our lovely cast pre-show. We had a well-earned week off after Motherwell and headed down to Birmingham for an episode of BBC daytime drama DOCTORS. Absolutely loved working on this long-running show with a brilliant cast and crew and delighted to be back working

with the BBC again at The Drama Village. My episode will air in November so will update nearer the time. Huge thanks to my agent Luc Chaudhary and all at Letherbridge for such a warm welcome and another great character to play! Then raced back to Scotland to shoot another 4 scenes on a major

Bollywood feature film, 83 and a very enjoyable experience all round on this one with a great cast and directed by the fabulous Kabir Khan. The film is shooting all summer and due to be released in April 2020. Wee photo from the set below and a joy to have been a part of and a film which will

find a huge audience on it's release. Loved working with the Indian cast & crew on this and glad I could squeeze it in between filming DOCTORS at the same time. Lots of travel this month but all very worthwhile and another offer in for a telly job later in the summer. Then back to Glasgow for

our final week of THE BENNY LYNCH STORY 2019 Tour and another sold out gig at Eastwood Theatre and finally to The Brunton, Musselburgh and another OV! Huge congratulations to our wonderful cast and crew and a huge thank you to all of you who came along to the shows. We will be

bringing the show back in 2020 as the reaction has been huge to this tour and we have yet to bring it home to Glasgow! A jam-packed and quite brilliant month and more to come this summer!

May 2019 - The Diary

Back to Birmingham for a COLOPLAST live gig with a great bunch of actors and then back up the road to begin rehearsals for THE BENNY LYNCH STORY which tours Scotland in May & June. Absolutely delighted to welcome Steven Duffy to the team as Director and Kat Siebert as Stage Manager in what promises to be a real knockout show!

Delighted to be asked onto the ACSOM podcast again this month to chat about the show and you can watch the interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajegT8dofBY A break from rehearsals to fly to sunny Belfast for another COLOPLAST live event with the usual gang (below) and also

caught up with my old CASE HISTORIES co-star Brian McCardie for an hysterical dinner & a terrifying drive around the Antrim countryside! A brilliant and laughter filled couple of days in Northern Ireland and more events booked in for 2020.

The ACSOM podcast interview was released to a great reaction which will hopefully put some more bums on seats on the tour and took a sore one from Kevin Miles in the promo shot below, c/o Into Creative and Stephen Cameron. Huge thanks to the ACSOM guys for their continuing support.

More hilarity this month with a night of drink & laughter & tall tales with John White and Irvine Welsh in Glasgow for another meeting of The Hellfire Club and great catching up with these wonderful chaps once again! Then back to the hard graft of getting the show on the road after 2

brilliant weeks of rehearsals we moved to Ayr Gaiety for Tech Day and opened THE BENNY LYNCH STORY to a packed house on Saturday 18th May 2019 and utterly delighted by the standing ovation we received after a quite magical evening of new theatre. Huge credit to the cast and crew

who worked so hard to bring this all together & to Davie Carswell for funding & writing this entire production. An amazing night was made even more special by the attendance of the Benny Statue Campaign Group with Steph Bradley bringing along Benny's actual watch & we had a lovely photo shoot afterwards. Thank you to all of the Gaiety staff for their kindness & help in this amazing debut performance. And thanks to Laura Boyd and all at STV for covering the show in their new show

WHAT'S ON SCOTLAND which we filmed at Greenock Beacon and was broadcast the week of our opening show. Then it was on to Kilmarnock Palace Theatre for our second show and a welcome return to a venue I've played many times myself. A smaller but appreciative audience as well as

an appearance by legendary boxing hero Dick McTaggart, whom the cast were delighted to meet  after the show! Huge thanks to Bryan Turnbull of the Statue Group who stood in the town centre handing out flyers all afternoon and presented the cast with more lovely gifts! This week my first

appearance in EMMERDALE also aired to a lovely reception and hopefully I will be back in future as it was one of my favourite television jobs yet! Having spent 1995 - 2003 in HIGH ROAD this show felt really familiar and the cast & crew were an incredibly friendly & hard-working bunch.

Then back for more auditions & self-tapes, followed by a 7th appearance in the Celtic XI v Rangers XI in the Fitba Greats match at Kilbirnie Ladeside. A brilliant experience once again and a hard-fought 3-3 draw resulted in penalties...we missed 3 and lost the cup! But again loved every minute of it and great to be sponsored now by our friends at the ACSOM podcast for this season!

Up and down the country this month promoting the Benny Lynch show and auditioning for some exciting projects and my agent IAM is keeping me very busy once again!And met up with novelist Gary Nolan at Cathkin to help his research into his new children's book, photographed below.

It was off to Dunoon next and The Benny Lynch Story played to a brilliant audience at the Queens Hall and great to meet up with local legend Jimmy McQueen and lots of ex-boxers after the show. Thanks to Tony Gill for the photos on this page. A great month and a fab start to the 2019 Tour.