W Gordon Smith, born December 13, 1928, died August 13, 1996.
``FOR that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forbears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.''
- Robert Louis Stevenson.
THIS was Gordon's perfect prologue to his play Jock, first performed at Clyde Fair International and then the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1972. Its final performance under the Cacciatore Fabbro banner (we had been accused of being a two-man Scottish Mafia, and ``Scotia Nostra'' didn't quite fit!) was at the 1980 festival. Ten years, on and off, was a long life for a one-man play. I do hope it will have many more productions. I was getting a bit long in the tooth to play it any longer, so Big Gordon wrote Mr Jock, the same man later in life but out in Civvy Street, with the same attitudes, if a little more mellow (a little, but not much!).
After Jock came a string of Festival successes, Knox, Xanadu, What a Way to Go, Mr Carnegie's Lantern Lecture, Vincent, and between times other plays - Marie of Scotland, Sweeter than All the Roses, and Going for a Love Song, plus more than a dozen lunchtime and late night revues and daft entertainments. His last was Couples, which he wrote for Una McLean and myself.
He was many things in his life - in fact almost all things. A renaissance man, a polymath in an age of ``you must specialise'' (he did - in everything he tackled). He was poet, photographer, song writer (Come By The Hills is a bonny, bonny song), newspaper man on Dalkeith Advertiser and Edinburgh Evening Dispatch, BBC Radio and TV producer, playwright, freelance journalist, theatre critic, art critic for Scotland on Sunday. Yet I believe his greatest regret was for the demise of Observer Scotland, for which he truly enjoyed writing and to which he often referred in saddened tones.
He was a Big Man in all ways - a true Scot, a life-long socialist, a staunch friend, an implacable foe and, in his own words, an ineluctable Hibs supporter.
His work published in book form included: Edinburgh - photographed by Douglas Corrance, publisher Collins;
W G Gillies - a Very Still Life, Atelier Books; Fallen Angels, 35 paintings by Jack Vettriano with essays by various hands, Pavilion Books; Robin Philipson, Atelier Books 1995; David Donaldson, Mainstream Publishing 1996.
He was the first chairman of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.
He had two sons and two daughters, all successful in their various professions as journalist, law lecturer, French language lecturer and tutor, and nursing specialist. After the death of his first wife in 1988, he married Jay (his long time PA while he was at the BBC) in 1991.
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