The Boy from Nowhere
The warm, funny memoir of Gregor Fisher, the much loved Scottish actor best known for Rab C. Nesbitt, told as he uncovers his dramatic family history.Growing up in the Glasgow suburbs, Gregor was 14 when he asked where he was christened and was told that he was adopted. But it wasn’t quite that simple. And so began an unfolding of truths, half-truths and polite cover-ups from his various families. In 2014 Gregor approached Times columnist Melanie Reid to help him tell his story. Together they travelled through the mining villages of central Scotland to uncover the mystery of his birth and early life. What emerged was a story of secrets, deception, tragic accidents and early death, coldness and rejection from the very people who should have cherished him most, but a welcome from the most unexpected of quarters.From the squalor of industrial Coatbridge after WW1 to his own 1950s Glasgow childhood, via a love letter found in the wallet of a dead man and meeting his sister outside lost luggage at Glasgow Central, Gregor shares his family story with warmth and blunt Scottish humour.
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
FIRST EDITION
© Gregor Fisher and Melanie Reid 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Front jacket photograph supplied by the author, background © Shutterstock.com
Cover quote reproduced with kind permission of The Telegraph © Michael Deacon, The Telegraph
All picture section photos provided by Gregor Fisher except where indicated.
The Scotsman extract © The Scotsman
Nancy Banks-Smith/Guardian extract © Nancy Banks-Smith
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Gregor Fisher and Melanie Reid assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 978008150433
Ebook Edition © October 2015 ISBN: 9780008150464
Version: 2015-11-20
To my mother
Contents
1 The Curly-Haired Boy in the Corner
2 Fisher, You’re Playing Pooh-Bar
3 You Don’t Know Me But I’m Your Sister
4 I’d Like You to Move to the Colour Blue
5 Eat the Ice Cream While It’s on Your Plate, Ladies and Gentlemen
6 Aunt Ruby and the Red-Chip Gravel Drive
9 The Deil’s Awa’ Wi’ the Exciseman
‘Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides’
King Lear: Act I, Scene I
A story has to start somewhere, so let it begin with two men, strangers to each other, but with lives that will run in parallel. Matthew Donaldson McKenzie and William Blake Kerr were born in Scotland in 1888 and 1895 respectively. Both survived the slaughter of the Somme, married the same year, had children the same age, found jobs and sought to make their way in the world. Eventually their paths would cross, with far-reaching consequences.
Matthew, the elder of the two, returned from the trenches to witness his sick wife give birth, and two days later he was to see her die. He was left with three motherless children, serious trench fever and a damaged leg.
In 1921 he re-married, to a young dressmaker, and took a job at a whisky distillery in a small village in central Scotland. He moved his family into a tied house – one of the houses under the hills. Remember this place, for we shall return here many times.
William, the younger soldier, returned from war scarred by the sight of filth and disease. Educated and ambitious, he got a job as a customs and excise officer, married and started a family. In 1928 came the move upon which this story hangs. William took a job overseeing three whisky distilleries within a mile of each other. One of them was where Matthew worked.
So the lives of the two men converged at the foot of the stern Ochil Hills. The factory engineer and the feared exciseman were neighbours, briefly, in the houses under the hills, and then work colleagues for the next decade. We have no proof, for time hides such tracks, that they were friends, but it is inconceivable they were not acquainted. William saw Matthew’s small daughters playing outside, on the stone steps or on the drying green. They were much the same age as his own little ones.
Victorians by birth, William and Matthew were God-fearing men of status, pillars of the community. One was a government law officer, the other a church organist and teacher at Sunday school. Freemasons, they abided by the social rules of a different age. One would die soon, but tragedy was to stalk them both. And one day scandalous events would unite them in a long-buried tale of betrayal, love and survival.
Let’s ask, just this once. Is everything random, or do we believe in fate?
CHAPTER 1
‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’
Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire
Thump.
Pause.
Thump.
Pause.
Thump.
Three thumps – never more, never less. No cheery ‘Hallooo!,’ no cry of ‘That’s me, Cis,’ just three dictatorial thuds on the bedroom floor with his foot. John Leckie wanted his breakfast. After a lifetime working the night shift, this was the signal to his wife in the kitchen below to say that he had woken up. It was 5pm, and Cis would prepare tea, toast and marmalade and take it upstairs. Mr Leckie ate upstairs and then came down: a tall, stern, well-built man, ready to go to work. The child, sitting silently, for it was best to keep quiet, would look up and see the great long legs of his boiler suit appearing down the stairs.
