February 21st 1935 the actor Mark McManus was born.
In many ways, McManus’s life was a classic ‘rags to riches’ story. From impeccable working-class stock - his father was a miner at Hamilton, he emigrated to Australia in 1963 and worked as a docker and a boxer (which no doubt contributed to his lived-in features). There he fell into acting via an amateur production of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow.
Professional work followed - notably a supporting role to Mick Jagger in Ned Kelly - but it was not always of the highest order (for all its other merits, Skippy, a children’s television series about a Bush kangaroo, could not be counted quality drama). He said in an interview: ‘I had no great talent as an actor, but I learned the techniques and applied myself.’
Returning home in 1971, McManus appeared in productions at the Royal Court and the National Theatre, playing alongside such actors as Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. But it was not until 1983 that he found the role which he was born to play, Tough Glasgow polisman, Jim Taggart. To some critics, the character veered into the danger zone of caricature: the sort of Glaswegian hardnut who could be summed up by all those cliched epithets: 'dour’, 'gruff’, 'gritty’, 'stony-faced’, he certainly carried off the part with ease.
He may have come across all of them, but in real life Mark loved a wee laugh to himself, one anecdote I found to confirm this relates to last weeks birthday girl, Annette Crosbie, who indecently attended Edinburgh’s Boroughmuir School with my Uncle Edmund!.
Anyway Annette featured in a 1987 edition of Taggart. Being a perfectionist, she kept asking McManus to rehearse together. McManus, who usually read over his lines just once before filming, became so annoyed that during one scene he went to light her cigarette and “accidentally” burnt away part of her wig with an extra-long flame (a gaff which later featured on It’ll be Alright on the Night). While making the next episode, McManus quipped to a co-star, “I hope you’re not gonna be any trouble or I’ll set you on fire like the last one!”
McManus was a graduate summa cum laude of the 'Less Is More’ School of Acting. An average of 13 million viewers (including, it is said, the Queen Mother) agreed. Taggart became as synonymous with Glasgow as Inspector Morse is with Oxford. The programme is now Scottish Television’s biggest money-earner, playing in over 60 countries, including Afghanistan, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Brunei and Bosnia. Wonder how they all translated the word “murd'rrr”?!!?
