THE action starts in a plush, metropolitan hotel long after the lunchtime rush.

The restaurant is now empty with the exception of a table of four where a well-spoken, white-haired gentleman is holding court. His back is turned so his words are lost to the casual observer but he is telling a tale. He's a big mover and shaker in the British film and television industry and his fellow diners are listening intently.

Suddenly, the frame goes hazy. It's 1960. We see a precocious young boy in an Edinburgh classroom. The lesson is English – his favourite – and he's becoming increasingly animated as he reads out the fantastical story he has written. "I don't know where he gets it all from," says the English teacher, smiling.

The image fades out and back in. Here he is again. It's the mid-1960s. He's a teenager now, still at school but working as a newspaper copy boy despite his mother's hopes for a university education. He's at a football match, phoning in copy. He's slightly miffed because the words are those of the football reporter and he thinks he can do better. In fact, truth be told, he reckons he ought to be writing the front page story. It's our first hint of the ambition which will propel him to the top of the notoriously fickle television industry.

But wait, keep watching. He must have made it because it's a decade later and the face is familiar but now he's all seventies hair and tight T-shirt – a children's TV presenter on Magpie. He's smiling wryly because he always wanted to go into serious journalism but an opportunity knocked and he's now got eight million kids as fans and gets invited to open shops.

Douglas Rae, now 65, has always loved a good yarn. Even as he runs through his early career his narrative verve ropes you in. Now as managing director of Ecosse Films he brings to life arresting stories penned by others.

He brought Mistresses, a series following the love lives of four thirty-something friends, to British television screens (it's now heading Stateside, snapped up by US network ABC) and was the behind the TV gift which kept on giving in the shape of Monarch of the Glen. He also cast Scotland's best-loved comedian, Billy Connolly, as the lead in a love story in the hit movie Mrs Brown.

But back to the present, and I'm here in the plush hotel scene where he is explaining the secret to great TV. "Essentially, what we do as film-makers is that we are story-tellers, and television too, and it all comes down to the quality of the script. You can't make a great programme out of a bad script, even if you've got big stars, lots of special effects, it just doesn't work. That's where I guess I've got an advantage, because I come from a writing background so I'm reading through it thinking about the punctuation."

So, can he spot TV gold coming? He shakes his head. "I know Julian Fellows very well and I said, 'With Downton (Abbey), did you see that coming?' and he replied: 'How can you?'"

Rae expands: "You're not putting it in front of an audience until you put it on. With film, you do test screenings so you get 400 people into a cinema and ask what they liked and didn't. With TV it's out there."

To date, Ecosse Films has made a dozen films including Nowhere Boy and Becoming Jane. There are currently 30 projects in production. "You couldn't say there is a line going through them. They're all different," says Rae, a father-of-three. "It's a bit like having 30 children, you love them all for different things."

What does he make of David Cameron's recent comments that film-makers ought to concentrate on mainstream, commercially viable films? "I think what he was trying to say was: 'Can you produce more films which are successful?' but that's a bit like saying: 'Everything has got to work' which is a bit naive. Because Britain has had a phenomenal success recently at the Oscars –the King's Speech, Slumdog Millionaire – the expectation of the politician is, 'Why can't we have more of these? Why are we doing these low-budget art house films? Nobody goes to see them.' If I thought like that we'd never make a film like Wuthering Heights with Andrea Arnold directing and no music and people saying, 'This is extraordinary'. The Film Council has an obligation to promote young filmmakers whether their film is commercially viable or not, but equally it should be supporting producers who do make more commercial films."

While he has enjoyed great success, Rae has also experienced a mauling – for the series Brideshead Revisited. "All the critics hated it, which they were wrong about, but the trouble is they'd all grown up with the TV show and had got into middle age and it was: 'How dare you attempt to touch this sacred cow'. They were very vicious so that was a hard time but you bounce back. You have to."

Indeed tenacity and ambition have shaped his career from the start. After 18 months as a trainee reporter he got bored with the trainee element and, after putting in calls claiming to be a fully-fledged reporter, secured a job as editor of the Kirriemuir Herald.

"I set off on my scooter to Kirriemuir and arrived in this Dickensian shed where they had the print room over there and in the corner there was a desk. I said; 'Where are the other journalists?' The publisher pointed at me and said: 'You're it'. That was a great baptism of fire.".

From there he went to the Daily Mail and at the annual staff meal clocked George Reid, who went on to become Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament but was at that time a TV producer. "As soon as I heard that he was on television I focussed in and told him he needed me. He uttered the memorable words: 'You should be in television' because obviously he was looking for someone with a sense of energy and ambition."

Rae was promptly offered a job on a new STV news programme. "Within two weeks I was reading the news on Scottish television. I must have looked about 12. I thought it was Hollywood."

He loved it, but it was the end of the 1960s and London was where it was at so when he was offered a job at Thames TV presenting Magpie, he jumped at it. "It was like being given a huge train set," he says. After five years on Magpie he realised he wanted to be a director, an ambition he traces back to watching the French film Un Homme et Une Femme. After a three-month crash course at the National Film School, his first project was creating a series based on Bamber Gascoigne's book The Great Moghuls for Channel, 4 which involved spending a year in India with Gascoigne.

He followed this with Harry Enfield's Guide to Opera. "It was at the time of the World Cup when Pavarotti was singing Nessun Dorma and that got a huge audience. I thought: 'This really works; getting personalities to appear in documentaries'."

So next up was Billy Connolly doing a series on Scottish art called The Bigger Picture. It was shortly after the release of Rob Roy and Braveheart and Rae found himself witness to a Connolly rant which went along the lines of: 'Why are all these bleep bleep foreigners playing Scotsmen?' And so Mrs Brown, based on the play about Queen Victoria and her servant and starring Connolly and Judi Dench, was born and London-based Ecosse Films was on the map.

Earlier this month Alex Salmond said Scotland had the potential to become a film production powerhouse. Rae argues the economic effect of the industry is already massive. "Over 50% of tourists to Scotland have come because of watching a film or television series. Monarch of the Glen had a huge following in English-speaking countries," he says, before acknowledging the film industry in Scotland does needs encouragement to grow.

"At the moment three of the top producers are all based in London; myself, Andrea Calderwood and Andrew MacDonald. I personally as a Scot would like to see there being a more indigenous production base here, which is why we've opened a Scottish office in Glasgow. It means we can spot talent much quicker than if we were 500 miles further south."

Fittingly, his latest film Decoy Bride, described as Bridget Jones meets Local Hero, is set on a Scottish island and stars Kelly MacDonald and David Tennant. It was filmed in Arkinglas and the Isle of Man. It will be followed in the summer by the release of Love Bite, a light-hearted horror filmed in Largs, North Berwick and Margate, which takes the current fascination with all things werewolf and adds great big dollops of Inbetweeners-style humour.

Also in the pipeline are two films with a distinctly royal theme – Girl's Night Out – about princesses Margaret and Elizabeth celebrating VE day and Caught in Flight, an Oliver Hirschbiegel film about the last two years of Diana, Princess of Wales.

But they, of course, are a whole other story and it's there we must leave Douglas Rae as the scene pans out from the plush metropolitan hotel. Definitely, to be continued...

The Decoy Bride is in cinemas on March 9 and DVD on March 12.

Douglas Rae Film & TV producer