Visit list.co.uk for daily arts & entertainment news
Noticeboard NewsGossipOpinion O P I N I O N Ambitious outsider
As Morrissey prepares to take to the stage in a town near you, FOUND singer Ziggy Campbell reveals what the great man means to him
THERE’S BEEN A MURDER: RIP
After 26 years, Glasgow’s Mean City bids farewell, as Taggart gets axed. To celebrate the demise of one of Scotland’s greatest exports, we showcase the great and the good of the guest stars who helped to light up our screens
ROBERT CARLYLE Long before he was ball-breaking Begbie, or leaving his hat on in
The Full Monty, our
Bobby was flexing his acting muscles as a fresh-faced, ambitious, pro-hanging politician in 1990’s episode Hostile Witness, opposite the incomparable Mark McManus.
HENRY IAN CUSICK We know him best as the dude from Lost but Scots-Peruvian actor Cusick, fresh from his
appearances on the stage at
Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre, landed a guest slot on 1993, playing Ian Gowrie in Fatal Inheritance.
BARBARA DICKSON Ah Babs, we know her so well as a singer, but that didn’t stop her
using her acting talents as Marie McDonald in 1995 Taggart episode Legends. She was on site to help Inspector Jardine infiltrate the seedy world of rock‘n’roll.
ASHLEY JENSEN When a caustic restaurant critic was found murdered in
Taggart’s 2005 episode
A Taste of Money, Ugly Betty and Extras actress Jensen was on hand to help find the ‘murdurer’. Figures really, having been primed for the part with previous roles in Scottish gems such as Rab C Nesbitt and City Lights.
DOUGRAY SCOTT Mr Scott undoubtedly guest-starred in one of Taggart’s scarier
episodes (we didn’t sleep for weeks), when he
played Colin Murphy in the terrifying Nest of Vipers in 1992. A role that would catch producers’ eyes for a role in The Crow Road before Hollywood superstardom (well, almost).
S omeone approached me after a FOUND gig recently and informed me that Morrissey was playing in Hawick town hall. Perfect, I thought. If ever there was a humdrum town that the rain fell hard on, it has to be Hawick. I know this because I grew up in a block of flats in the Burnfoot area of Hawick and by the time I had reached my mid-teens the provincial blinkeredness and lack of opportunity there had become painfully apparent. My Dad, Mum and sister were all working in big, grey textile factories and it looked like I’d probably do the same. At the time I felt like a hopeless underdog caught in the tractor beam of the factories. That’s the same time I discovered Morrissey, the ultimate misfit, with his corpus of songs that seemed to champion my grim backdrop and offer a chorus for all the underdogs to sing along to.
Back then I was in a band called The Sunbirds with some older guys who were really into The Smiths. I was almost immediately hooked after they gave me a ‘biased best of’ compilation. Whenever we were drunk it only became a matter of time before we’d start singing songs by The Smiths in Mozza’s 12 THE LIST 26 May–23 June 2011
trademark whispery whine. I still indulge in this even now. It seems to be fairly common practice amongst Mozza fans to start mimicking his singing style, usually quite uncannily, at any given opportunity. Morrissey’s world might well have been a bleak one but there was an optimistic and occasionally hilarious core to it all that I still find encouraging and very funny. Everything is going to be fine because you’re not alone: there’s a buck-tooth girl in Luxemburg and someone out there is the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. Who else writes about these people?
The main character in his 1995 single ‘Boxers’ is doomed from the opener ‘losing in front of your home crowd’, yet somehow hope spills out through lines like ‘your nephew is true, he still thinks the world of you’. Although the imagery deals with boxing, it’s done with literary grace, typical of Morrissey, which makes you feel like he’s talking to you about your own struggle. Some people find him obnoxious for that very reason but I think they’re missing the humour of it all. So of course I’m going to the gig in Hawick. It’s only right that I go and support the Ambitious Outsider as he takes on my hometown.
‘HIS WORLD MIGHT HAVE BEEN A BLEAK ONE BUT THERE WAS
OPTIMISM THERE’