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| Actor Robbie Coltrane |
The sad news that actor Robbie Coltrane died yesterday cast my mind back to the fact that we had a family connection to him (of sorts), which is perhaps worth recounting again in this repeat of an old post. I never knew Robbie himself, but I remember his father (our doctor) coming to my house, and my mother taking me to his Practice in Rutherglen (where she and her parents were from). Anyway, rest in peace, Robbie, and if you were even half the gentleman your dad was, then you must've been a very fine gentleman indeed.
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Isn't it funny the things that stick in your head as the years go by? I remember one day, back in the late 1960s, my brother asking our parents about his middle name. It turned out that he shared the same middle name as our grandfather on my mother's side. This led me to ask from whom mine had come. "You're named after Doctor McMillan", I was told.
DOCTOR McMILLAN - Doctor IAN McMillan - (now sadly deceased) was our family doctor whose Practice was in Rutherglen. I remember him as a tall, thin, kindly-faced gentleman, with grey or white receding hair and spectacles (or maybe that was his partner, though I'd have seen both of them, I'm sure). I also recall sitting in his waiting room on occasion, and, before that, him coming out to our house to attend to me when my mother splashed a kettle of boiling water on me when I was an infant. Don't worry, it was an accident. (Well... that first time anyway.)
Doctor McMillan was the kind of doctor that older people often lament doesn't exist anymore. On many an occasion, I'd hear my mother extolling his virtues as a doctor and as a person to visiting friends. Both of my parents thought extremely highly of him and were much saddened when he died. They held him in such genuine regard and affection that he must've been a very fine man indeed. It's safe to say that, as far as my parents (and doubtless his other patients) were concerned, a lot of doctors have since been measured against him - with no doubt quite a few found to be severely wanting.
Imagine my surprise then, when, sometime in the early '80s, I read a profile about actor ROBBIE COLTRANE in a local newspaper and discovered that he was the son of our old family doctor. Robbie's real surname is actually McMillan - he took the name Coltrane from the famous jazz saxophonist JOHN COLTRANE. I wonder if John put up much of a fight? (Little joke there.)
So there you go. I'm named after Robbie Coltrane's dad. What's even more strange is that my father was called Robbie. Thoughts of a NEW GENESIS-APOKOLIPS 'pact' spring to mind, but as to which one of us is ORION and which is MISTER MIRACLE I'll leave for others to decide.
(You must've known I'd squeeze some kind of tenuous comicbook link in there somehow.)
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Got a favourite Robbie Coltrane movie or TV performance? Pay tribute to the big man in our comments section, should you feel so inclined.
8 comments:
My girlfriend sent me the information about Coltrane this morning and it was all of these kinds of notes, a sad reminder of mortality. Most will talk about his Harry Potter connection, but I best remember him as a most unlikable character on "Cracker". He was a lout with a huge intellect but little caring for those around him, until it was too late. I admired how they never really tried to redeem him really.
Cracker was a good show, RJ, and there was also an American version, though I've never seen it. I also enjoyed his turn in Tutti Frutti.
Robbie Coltrane also played the Spirit Of Christmas in 'Blackadder's Christmas Carol'.
And he also played Samuel Johnson in another episode, CJ.
I didn't realise Robbie was from Rutherglen .
My favourite show was Tutto Frutti he was excellent in the that. I also liked his work on those Mason Boyne sketches from the "Naked Video" tv show in the mid 1980as that showed the absurdity of the Orange order (and other similar so called religious groups) - for its time it was quite risky and he even received a death threat for doing that seires. Robbie was a big man and a big character .
D'you know, McS, I'm not sure whether he was from Rutherglen or not (too lazy to research it), but his father's medical Practice was in Rutherglen, so Robbie's family might've lived there.
He was a very charismatic actor; not a false note in any of his performances. His performance as Fitz in Cracker was a standout, with no quarter given to making the character likeable. I also recall him in 'The Comic Strip Presents' on UK Channel 4 in the eighties.
I remember him in a sketch with Billy Connolly in, I think, a Hogmanay TV show sometime in the '80s, and he was very funny in that. 72, eh? He wasn't even old.
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