Scottish stars share some of their favourite festive gifts

Actor and writer

One year ago (quite recently!) my wife bought me a haunted house Lego set. I hadn’t messed about with Lego for years but I opened this thing and was instantly hooked. It came with a massive instruction book and on Boxing Day I started to assemble it. I was instantly nine years old again.

I sat hunched over this house, which I literally built one brick at a time as memories came flooding back. It was like I was in some meditative state.  I felt like my entire life was compressed into a moment. It was a lovely feeling. Four days later it was finished. My neck was totally stiff from staring down so intensely for six hours a day (the only evidence of my true age). It sits on a sideboard. I look at it every single day. 

(Image: BBC Studios/BBC Scotland)

GRANT STOTT

Actor and presenter
When I was wee, Christmas really started weeks before the big day. And I always knew Santa was coming when I got up on Saturday morning to watch Tiswas and the ad breaks were full of adverts for all the amazing toys that were out that year. As soon as I saw the Evel Knievel bike I was obsessed. When he duly arrived on Christmas Day, I was beside myself. I set him up to do stunts, wheelies, jump over toy cars the lot. I played with him for years. The only downside was, contrary to the image portrayed in the advert and on the side of the box, Evel did not sit down properly on his bike. Months I tried to get him to sit but the design was having none of it. Best Christmas toy ever. He’s still somewhere in my loft. And he’s still not sitting on his bike.

(Image: Mike Soutar)

MIKE SOUTAR

Entrepreneur (and now Non-Executive Director on the Board of Scottish Rugby)
Christmas Day 1977, Glenrothes, Fife. I’m 11, rugby mad, and inspired by Scotland’s full-back and captain Andy Irvine, whose attacking prowess has made him a global star. Replica strips aren’t yet widely available but I’m thrilled to unwrap a dark blue rugby kit, almost black, which I wear until it falls apart. There’s also a dodgy headband I wear only for the photo, and a comically oversized rugby ball that’s impossible to handle. I suspect even Andy would have struggled with it!

(Image: Leonie Bell)

LEONIE BELL

Director, V&A Dundee
Every gift at Christmas is wonderful. As my daughters have grown, their gifts have evolved from sparkly homemade creations to perfect additions to shelves, garden, wardrobe and make-up bag. 

There is one thing that my partner and I bought ourselves in 2020 that really stands out. We sold our family home in Glasgow for a new home in Dundee between lockdowns. We were lucky enough to be able to buy ourselves a painting for our new home. My Mum had introduced us to Norman Gilbert at the Tatha Gallery in Newport. We loved his paintings immediately. Now that painting acts as a bond between homes, hometowns, and my Mum.

(Image: Horse)

HORSE

Singer-songwriter
My best Christmas present was also a real punch in the stomach. It was not what I wanted at all. I was about 10. I had a guitar catalogue and I had set my heart on an Eko Ranger 12-string guitar. I would leave the catalogue open at the page, with the guitar circled. Nothing was said. 
Before Christmas, what did I do? I went into my parents’ wardrobe and there was a guitar in the case, but it wasn’t the Eko. My parents were wise. If I hadn’t touched it, then at least it wouldn’t have been as big a waste of money. But that classical guitar... it was the best present. I learned how to play on it. I wrote some early songs on it. I had it until the neck was warping and I had a pencil in there, held by an elastic band.

(Image: Kirsty Anderson)

DAVID SCOTT

The Pearlfishers
Am I allowed two? It’s Christmas, after all, and they are related. I got Roy Carr and Tony Tyler’s The Beatles: An Illustrated Record at Christmas 1978. It brilliantly reviewed Fabs and solo records in a gorgeous 12” picture book format. It supercharged my obsession so that when I got McCartney’s The Lyrics 43 years later, I was already gone. I spent two full weeks of the holiday poring over every beautiful scrap of it. It’s one of the greatest books ever written about songwriting, full of surprises and visual treats – a masterpiece that made my Christmas.

(Image: Ross Gilmore)

ROSS WILSON

Blue Rose Code
I’d had a long-distance love affair with NYC since I was a kid.  I’d grown up watching Spike Lee movies, loving the Knicks, listening to and reading about the jazz scene in Harlem, MoMA, Spider-Man comics. I was smitten, but had never been. Circa 2010, the woman who would go on to become my ex-wife bought us tickets to go to Manhattan for the week as a Christmas present. It was everything I’d hoped for, the dive bars, Brooklyn, Blue Note brunch. “Growing up on a diet of US telly and movies, I think there’s an immediate nostalgia from even the street signs, the crossings, and the vehicles. It was a special trip and one I won’t forget. 
My only regret was not getting to the Garden to see the Knicks. Next time.

(Image: Fred Macauly)

FRED MACAULAY

Comedian and presenter
I can’t remember the exact year, but it was probably 1967 or 1968 when I would have been just coming up for my 11th or 12th birthday. I’d started skiing at the age of 10 and in those days my equipment consisted of lace-up ski boots – a bit like a decent hiking boot these days – and wooden skis with screw-in edges. The edges were replaced regularly after hitting rocks on Glenshee’s Sunnyside run. Clothing was an anorak, but my ski-pants were just a pair of denims with a bit of elastic added to the bottom of the legs to stop them riding up out of my boots.
On Christmas morning we three MacAulay kids had our present piles, and I was happy with my ‘haul’ . . . but there was an unopened box under my chair. My folks suggested I should open it in case it was for me. It was a pair of Kastinger ski boots WITH CLIPS! I knew how much these would have cost my parents and I can still remember the tears of joy and gratitude.

AMINA SHAH

National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland
My most memorable Christmas present was the Petit Elite typewriter I opened on Christmas morning 1982. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my luck and spent the rest of the holidays with ribbon ink-stained fingers, battering out letters, newspaper columns, TV scripts, comics and poems to imagined friends, for imaginary jobs and makey-uppy assignments. 
Just like all the best gifts for kids, it helped me create and created a hunger and curiosity for the printed word and even for typewriters themselves. 

(Image: Lynn Ferguson)

LYNN FERGUSON

Actor and writer
Even now I remember the thrill of waking up on Christmas morning and seeing Santa had left me an orange table and chair made from thick corrugated cardboard. Admittedly, it doesn’t sound great, but it was the 1970s and orange was very de rigueur. 

I remember my feet not touching the floor when I sat on the chair and, even though I hadn’t learned to write yet, I used to sit there and pretend I could (pretty much like I do at my own desk now). When I could write I asked Santa for a Katie Copycat: a doll that could copy writing. I thought this would be a great money-making idea because then I could do other people’s homework for them while doing my own. I sat on the orange chair, and she sat on the desk, and I wrote. Turned out that wasn’t to be because Katie Copycat was a complete fraud.

(Image: Nicola Meighan)

NICOLA MEIGHAN

Broadcaster and creator/host of A Kick Up the Arts podcast
All the best presents spring to mind immediately: the Mr Men Post Office, circa 1982, the perfect bike (A racer! A boy’s racer!) around 1987, and then, in 1988, a stereo. Cream-coloured, two tape decks, FM/AM/LW radio, and a turntable, which wasn’t big enough to accommodate 12” vinyl, but the lid had plastic cut-outs on every side to compensate. It had a turquoise “graphic equaliser” with three levels, but it was fake, and so they moved in unison. It was the greatest thing I’d ever heard, and ever seen, and remains so to this day. That Christmas morning, I plugged it in, tuned the radio to the first station I could find, and it was playing Boy Meets Girl’s Waiting for A Star To Fall, like absolute magic. It’s still my favourite song.