Charlie Gormley Pioneering Scottish film director and writer

Gormley and Forsyth were among the few to do so, though Gormley's introduction to features came from a most surprising source.

While making sober little documentaries for Paisley Town Council and the Highlands and Islands Development Board, he pursued a second, parallel career, writing scripts forDutch sex movies.

He went on to write and direct the comedy Heavenly Pursuits (1986), which starred Tom Conti, Helen Mirren and a schoolboy Ewen Bremner, shot in Glasgow and provided valuable work and experience for local cast and crew.

It was one of two full-length films Gormley made forChannel 4, whose vigorous policy of producing their own films had a major impact on the development of film infrastructure in Scotland, even though Gormley's first effort Living Apart Together (1982) did not get a cinema release.

In the 1990s he worked for the BBC, directing The Bogie Man (1992), a comic film noir, with Robbie Coltrane as the escaped mental patient who thinks he is Bogie, and Down Among the Big Boys (1993), a black comedy-drama, written by Gormley's close friend Peter McDougall and starring Billy Connolly as a crookwhose daughter is about to marry a cop.

Gormley, who died last week, was diagnosed with cancer more than a year ago, but as recently as April he was still working, directing The Prisoner, a short play by another friend, William McIlvanney, at Oran Mor in Glasgow.

Born into a working-class family in Rutherglen in 1937, Charles Gormley was the son of a sheetmetal worker and union activist. He was educated at Our Lady's High School in Motherwell, where he showed a talent forwriting, though he trained and worked as an optician, which was thought a more practical career choice.

However, he remained desperate to write for a living and got the chance at Laurence Henson and Eddie McConnell's company IFA (Scotland), which rather grandly stood for International Film Associates, though it did have links with John Grierson in the US.

Its work was largely documentary, though Gormley did co-write The Big Catch (1968), an hour-long children's film, which revolved around a visit to the Highlands by an American boy and a foolhardy attempt to catch a wild pony.

"The Children's Film Foundation offered a crack at a minutely budgeted 35mm 'theatrical' production, the kind they showed at the Saturday morning matinees, " Gormley once wrote. "But it was 'pictures' and we littered the Scottish landscape with young Londoners, holidaying with uncles and aunts in the Highlands, learning to guddle salmon and befriend sheepdogs."

In 1972, Gormley formed Tree Films with Forsyth and Nick Lewis and made a string of documentaries, including If Only We Had the Space (1974), an information film about home improvement grants, and The Cromarty Bridge (1979), a film about the construction of the bridge and measures to safeguard the environment.

The films remain of social and cultural interest, but in film terms perhaps their greatest importance was as a training ground for many people who would go on to work on features and television drama.

One of theirmost ambitious films was The Legend of Los Tayos, forwhich Gormley and Forsyth spent a month in the Ecuadorian jungle in 1976 assessing the belief that caves there were the work of aliens.

Gormley also wrote or cowrote sexploitation and adventure films for Dutch film-makers Wim Verstappen and Pim de la Parra. Blue Movie (1971), which documented the sexual exploits of an ex-con, was one of the most commercially successful Dutch films ever and was released in the UK in 1973.

Gormley was not the only one to go on to more auspicious projects, for cinematographer Jan de Bont became a successful Hollywood director and directed Speed (1994).

Tree Films wound up at the end of the 1970s, and Gormley's Dutch work petered out at the much the same time, but the new decade brought with it a new television channel and fresh opportunities.

He wrote and directed Living Apart Together forChannel 4, with BA Robertson as a rock star returning to Glasgow for a funeral and facing up to various personal problems. It cost less than [GBP]500,000 and went out as part of Channel 4's first ground-breaking Film on Four season in 1983.

Heavenly Pursuits was his second film forChannel 4. This time he had two established film stars in Tom Conti and Helen Mirren and double the budget, though he did have to use Glasgow to double for Rome, with the city chambers serving as the Vatican.

Of the documentary directors of the 1970s, Forsyth was the most successful at making that leap to feature films, and his whimsical comedies resulted in several imitations.

Heavenly Pursuits was a comedy, too, set in a Roman Catholic school. It dealt with faith and miracles and Gormley shared the same gentle touch as Forsyth, but he avoided Forsyth's trademark whimsy, treated his subject with a seriousness that bordered on reverence and shied away from easy answers.

It was released in cinemas in both the UK and US, where it was renamed The Gospel According to Vic, and when it finally screened on Channel 4 in 1988 it attracted five and a half million viewers. Nevertheless it was to be Gormley's only genuine feature film, as a writerdirector, and he subsequently worked largely in television.

Gormley helped the careers of numerous aspiring youngsters, including several in his own family. He married Martina Coulter in 1963 and got her younger brotherMichael started with a job as a "gofor" on a documentary about a computeroperated lathe. Michael later served as cinematographer on Heavenly Pursuits and was Oscar-nominated for Sense and Sensibility in 1996.

The Coulters are now one of Scotland's leading film industry families, while one of Gormley's three sons, Tommy, is an internationally-renowned assistant director. But his advice was not restricted to family. He could often be found in The Ubiquitous Chip bar, in Glasgow's West End, with the likes of McDougall and McIlvanney, ready to share his experiences with anyone who might find it useful. Many did.

Charlie Gormley, film director and writer; born December 19, 1937, died September 22, 2005.