“The  youth employment officer who I went to see to discuss possible ‘career’ choices and my desire to work in the theatre, said to me “now laddie, hae some common sense, you’ve got to stop all this pie in the sky nonsense. It’s no feasible, you couldn’t be an actor,” and I suppose from his position it was a nonsensical notion, but then there is a part of the Scottish character that is prepared to embrace the nonsensical. It’s like a brilliant engineer who says “you cannot build a damn across that water, it will not work. it is not going to happen, you can’t create hydroelectric power”, and a Scots engineer comes along and says “if you do this, this, this and this, with a modicum of that, it will work”. And that’s the unique Scottish character.”