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From National Galleries Scotland<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to my well-worn copy of the Collins Pocket Scots Dictionary<\/em>, the word \u2018gallus\u2019 means \u2018self-confident, daring and often slightly cheeky or reckless.\u2019\u00a0 Furthermore: \u201cIn Glasgow, the word is often used approvingly to indicate that something is noticeably stylish or impressive\u2026\u00a0 The word was originally derogatory and often meant wild, rascally and deserving to be hanged from a gallows.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, self-confident, daring, cheeky, reckless, stylish, impressive, wild and rascally?\u00a0 \u2018Gallus\u2019, then, is surely the ideal word to describe the work of John Byrne, the Scottish artist, playwright and screenwriter who died at the end of last month aged 83.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Byrne\u2019s art was bright, bold and always good fun. \u00a0When depicting human subjects, which it usually did, it wasn\u2019t afraid to tip into the realm of caricature.\u00a0 I suppose he could be accused of being a little narcissistic, seeing as his most common subject for portraiture was himself \u2013 a retrospective of his work in 2022 exhibited no fewer than 42 self-portraits \u2013 but then again, if you\u2019re an artist with an interest in the human visage, your own visage, the one that stares back at you from every mirror, is the most readily available material to work on.\u00a0 Also, Byrne happily treated his own features to the same caricature he did with other subjects, and didn\u2019t flinch from detailing the ravages of time as he passed from youth into middle and then old age.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I particularly like this grizzled and extravagantly moustached self-portrait, which has a skeleton attempting a Muay<\/em> Thai<\/em>-type kick against his forehead, presumably in response to the sizeable cigarette he\u2019s smoking.\u00a0 Incidentally, a nicotine yellowness seems to tinge his white whiskers in places.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From wooarts.com<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n His sense of humour is also apparent in Red<\/em> and<\/em> Unread<\/em>, a portrait of actress Tilda Swinton, who was his partner from 1990 to 2004.\u00a0 At first sight, it looks like Swinton is dancing a hornpipe in a traditional sailor\u2019s outfit.\u00a0 Then you notice the large stack of papers her posterior is resting on and the much smaller stack below her right foot.\u00a0 Byrne meant the big stack to represent the scripts she\u2019d turned down during her career, and the little stack to represent the scripts she\u2019d agreed to do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From National Galleries Scotland<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I wonder how differently Byrne\u2019s own career would have gone if a commission he received in the late 1960s had worked out.\u00a0 His early work caught the eye of the Beatles<\/a> and they asked him to create the cover of their next album, to be called A Doll\u2019s House<\/em>.\u00a0 Alas, A Doll\u2019s House<\/em> eventually morphed into 1968\u2019s The White Album<\/em> and Byrne\u2019s cover was set aside in favour of the famously plain, white one designed by Richard Hamilton and Paul McCartney<\/a>.\u00a0 At least, a dozen years later, Byrne\u2019s composition was<\/em> used on the cover of a Fab Four album, the 1980 compilation The Beatles Ballads<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From wooarts.com<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, shortly afterwards, plenty of other album-work came Byrne\u2019s way, thanks to the patronage of various Scottish musicians: Gerry Rafferty, both solo and with his band Stealers Wheel; Billy Connolly, who started off as a musician who did a little comedy between songs and ended up as a comedian who did a little music between routines; and Donovan.\u00a0 I particularly like this cover for the eponymous 1969 album by the folk-rock band the Humblebums, a partnership between Rafferty and Connolly.\u00a0 This contains the song Her Father Didn\u2019t Like Me Anyway<\/em>, which I mentioned in my previous post about Shane MacGowan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Transatlantic Records<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Actually, Billy Connolly was a subject who, over the years, would be depicted several times on Byrne\u2019s canvases.\u00a0 Just three months ago, a mural based on a painting Byrne made of a now bespectacled and white-haired Connolly, and placed on the end of a building in Glasgow\u2019s Osbourne Street in honour of the comedian\u2019s 75th<\/sup> birthday, made the headlines<\/a>.\u00a0 Developers want to build a new block of 270 students\u2019 flats on the site and plan to cover up the much-loved mural.\u00a0 Aye, students\u2019 flats.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll look lovely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From twitter.com\/Lost Glasgow<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n From arthur.io<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like the Glaswegian artist and writer Alasdair Gray<\/a>, Byrne was a man of letters as well as one of images and he wrote for the stage and screen.\u00a0 Perhaps he got a taste for stage-writing while working as a designer for Scotland\u2019s legendary 7:84 theatre company during the early 1970s.\u00a0 His best-known plays were the Slab<\/em> Boys<\/em> trilogy, whose instalments were first performed in 1978, 1979 and 1982, based on Byrne\u2019s experiences working in a carpet factory<\/a> near his hometown of Paisley after he\u2019d left school in the 1950s.\u00a0 In 1979, the original Slab Boys<\/em> also became an episode of the BBC\u2019s Play for Today<\/em> (1970-84) drama-anthology series, with Gerald Kelly, Joseph McKenna and Billy McColl as the titular slab boys relentlessly flinging jokes, patter and insults at each other in an effort to prevent their work \u2013 having to grind and mix colours in a factory basement \u2013 from driving them crazy with boredom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For television, he penned 1987\u2019s tragi-comedy series Tutti<\/em> Frutti, <\/em>which helped make a star of Robbie Coltrane.\u00a0 Coltrane plays Danny McGlone, drafted in to sing for an aging Scottish rock \u2018n\u2019 roll band called the Majestics after their original singer, Danny\u2019s older brother, dies in a car accident.\u00a0 The Majestics are truly on their last legs, thanks to their delusional guitarist Vincent Driver (Maurice Ro\u00ebves), who believes himself to be \u2018the iron man of Scottish rock\u2019 but whose personal life is a vicious shambles, and the uselessness of the band\u2019s shifty manager Eddie Clockerty (Richard Wilson).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At least Danny finds solace with another new band-member, guitarist Suzy Kettles (played by an also-up-and-coming talent at the time, Emma Thomson).\u00a0 As Danny gradually falls for Suzy, the Majestics go from bad to worse and to beyond worse, with in-fighting, humiliation, depression, knifings, suicide and dental violence \u2013 Danny ends up taking a drill to Suzy\u2019s abusive ex-husband, who\u2019s a dentist.\u00a0 Despite the show’s darkness, Byrne\u2019s witty writing makes it hilarious.\u00a0 Tutti Frutti<\/em> is surely the best thing BBC Scotland has ever produced.\u00a0 Looking at the channel’s woeful output nowadays, it\u2019s probably the best thing it ever will<\/em> produce too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 BBC \/ Estate of John Byrne<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Byrne-scripted follow-up to Tutti<\/em> Frutti<\/em>, 1989\u2019s Your<\/em> Cheatin\u2019<\/em> Heart<\/em>, wasn\u2019t as well-received as the previous show, though it did acquaint him with its star, Tilda Swinton, who’d be his partner for the next 14 years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, reading the obituaries for Byrne, I\u2019ve only just discovered that he also wrote scripts for the comedy sketch show Scotch<\/em> and<\/em> Wry<\/em>, which showcased the talents of comedian and actor Rikki Fulton and featured such memorable comic characters as insufferable and incompetent Glasgow traffic policeman Andy Ross, aka \u2018Supercop\u2019 (\u201cOkay, Stirling! \u00a0Oot the car!\u201d), and unremittingly miserable Church of Scotland minister the Reverend I.M. Jolly.\u00a0 Scotch<\/em> and<\/em> Wry<\/em> ran for two full seasons from 1978 to 79, its popularity then spawned a series of specials that were broadcast every New Year\u2019s Eve until 1992, and it became a Scottish institution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And no doubt this Hogmanay, I\u2019ll be raising a glass to the memory of the creative powerhouse that was the gallus John Byrne.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/JB-SP-2-240x300.jpg\")
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