#dunoon

Puck's Glen

Happy Birthday Percy James Patrick, AKA Scottish actor, Sylvester McCoy who was born 20th August 1943, in Dunoon.

His father was killed in the Second World War a couple of months before he was born, and he was brought up by his mother, his grandmother and aunts.

He attended St. Mun’s, primary School in the town and as Percy Smith he trained as a priest, joining Blair’s College, a seminary in Aberdeen, for boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen he then gave it up and applied to become a Monk! This was rejected, as he was too young, so Percy returned to Dunoon and finished his education at Dunoon Grammar School.

On leaving school he took a holiday to the bright lights of London and ended up staying, taking a number of jobs, he sold insurance, acted as a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones, then gained a job selling tickets and keeping the books in a theatre box office. Eventually, he joined the Ken Campbell Roadshow. Along with Bob Hoskins, Jane Wood, and Dave Hill, McCoy started performing a range of sketches with the umbrella theme of “modern myths.”

McCoy found himself for a while in a double-act with Hoskins before Hoskins left to pursue his film career. When working with Ken Campbell in an improvised a circus-based act about a fictitious stuntman called Sylvester McCoy he thought it would be amusing if the program stated that this character was played by “Sylvester McCoy”. While at the Royal Court Theatre, one of the critics missed the joke and assumed that Sylvester McCoy was a real person. McCoy liked the irony of this and adopted the name of his stage identity

His big break came when McCoy was starring at the National Theatre in “The Pied Piper”, a musical play written especially for him, when he learned that the BBC was looking for a new lead actor to replace Colin Baker in “Doctor Who”. He later won the role as the seventh Doctor and the first Scottish one!

Following “Doctor Who,” McCoy continues to work extensively in theatre, films, radio, opera, and on television.He sees himself as an all round entertainer, his talents include,playing the xylophone and the spoons. He can also juggle and once gained a reputation for stuffing live ferrets down his trousers.

McCoy was considered for the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and must have made a lasting impression on the filmmakers as they were later to cast him as Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit films.

Now in his 80's Sylvester has no less than seven projects on the go just now, he was last on our screens this year in Father Brown ,but has also appeared in 10 episodes on a podcast series calle Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor Adventures.

Do 20 new job adverts at Ubisoft Dunoon indicate a new next generation console Assassin's Creed game set in the Highlands of Scotland?

Speculation ran rife earlier today, when gaming giant Ubisoft posted 20 vacancies at the publisher’s previously unknown studio in Ubisoft Dunoon, Scotland. Posted to the company’s jobs page on the Talentify recruitment website, the roles promise total immersion in Ubisoft’s commitment to creating ‘original & memorable entertainment experiences’, building worlds that are ‘a playground for the…