AS a kid, I thought I was sporty and I was certainly very competitive but I was too frenetic. I had the energy and the desire but I didn’t have the temperament you needed to be good at sport.
My earliest memories of sport were your stereotypical school sports day – I was a very excited, fast runner, but I could never run for very long. At primary school I was, as you can probably imagine, a somewhat over-enthusiastic child and so I’d get involved in whatever games were going on. And I played a bit of netball at high school as well.
Every Saturday afternoon in my house as I was growing up, we’d have either horse racing or snooker on the telly, it was never football. I grew up in Ayr and football was never a big thing throughout my childhood – the only time we ever watched football in the house was when Scotland played.
My dad was brought up around horses and that’s where his interest came from – his grandfather was the head stable man in Ayr so my dad’s side of the family were absolutely horse daft. My sister is horse crazy, but I was always a bit scared of them and when I was a kid, I didn’t really like being on a horse. B
ut snooker, snooker was different – I loved the peaceful feeling I got when I was watching snooker. It was on the telly all the time in our house and when I was really young and I’d be completely fascinated that my dad could predict the score the referee was about to call out. Later I realised it was called knowing the rules of the game!
As I got older and began going to pubs and clubs, and I started playing pool and a little known sporting fact about me is that when I was 19, I played pool for the Scottish women’s team. I did, so there you go.
It was the British Championships and it took place at Butlins in Ayr. The way everything worked out was pretty surreal because I had been working at Butlins as a face-painter – something else of a less sporting nature you might not know –and so to then be representing Scotland at pool there was amazing.
We played against England and Wales and I won my game but we lost the tournament – England won – but it was a brilliant weekend. I’d got to that level at pool because one of my best friend’s parents owned a small hotel in Ayr and sometimes I’d work behind the bar, or do some cabaret at the hotel.
She was women’s world pool champion and there was a really good pool table through the back in the hotel and so she’d tutor me. Around then I was also playing pool on the Ayrshire circuit – yes, Ayrshire has a pool circuit – and I was captain of the Brewery Bar women’s team.
This was partly due to the fact I wasn’t a bad player, but also partly because nobody else wanted to be captain. It sounds a better position than it really was. While I loved pool then, I don’t play as much anymore these days, mostly because I just don’t have the time and it’s like anything, if you don’t keep at it, you lose your touch.
But to this day, if I pick up a pool cue, it still evokes so many feelings and I reckon that, and I’m not boasting, but I think with a few weeks of decent practice I could get back to a reasonable level because I still remember all the strategies that my friend taught me.
Funnily enough, I was doing a spoof weather report a couple of weeks ago at the BBC and Judith Ralston, the weather presenter, randomly challenged me to a game of snooker, having no idea that I might be quite good. So we’re trying to set up a match when the Scottish Open comes to Glasgow in December.
Another huge sporting event I was involved with was performing at the Opening Ceremony of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014 – that was big. When I was asked to be involved with the Games, it was a pretty crazy few days.
I’d also auditioned for Phyllida Lloyd’s ‘Shakespeare Trilogy’ in London’s West End and in the space of a few days, I found out I’d got the part in the Shakespeare Trilogy and I was asked to be involved in the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony. And I couldn’t tell anyone that I was doing the Commonwealth Games because with the Queen being there, there was huge issues around confidentiality. I’m quite good at keeping secrets though, so I managed it ok.
In the lead-up to the Games, I was doing a play in Belfast and so I wasn’t there to see all the preparations that were happening in Glasgow but my wife, Linda, was phoning me in Belfast and was telling me everything that was going on. I was gutted to be missing all of the build-up.
The actual ceremony was a once in a lifetime experience – how could anything like that ever happen again?
I’ve had so many phenomenal jobs but my top three are Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare trilogy, the play I’m doing just now which is the first play I’ve ever written, #71 ,and the Commonwealth Games – that Opening Ceremony is right up there with anything I’ve ever done.
A billion people were watching on television and it was just great to be a part of – it’s hard to put into words quite what that was like.
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