ROBBIE COLTRANE, R.I.P.

Actor Robbie Coltrane

The sad news that actor Robbie Coltrane died yesterday cast my mind back to the fact 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 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 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 he must've been a very fine man indeed.  It's safe to say, 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 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 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.