Life according to…. Colin McCredie: Taggart actor on new St Johnstone stage show

Taggart actor Colin McCredie chats football, his home city, and the Moors Murders.

What’s your new play, Oh When The Saints, about?

It’s a play celebrating St Johnstone, based around the first time they won the Scottish Cup in 2014. But it’s also a play about families and about community. People who don’t like football will enjoy it, as it’s about universal themes.

Who do you play?

I’m Bobby, who instead of going to the Scottish Cup Final, decides to climb Ben Lomond because he thinks he’s a curse. He meets a woman who doesn’t know anything about football and explains to her what the club means to him. The genesis of the story came from my brother, who decided to climb Berwick Law rather than watch last year’s League Cup Final on the telly, because he couldn’t bear it. He didn’t know we’d won until he came down.

Are you a football fan?

My first St Johnstone game was a midweek game against Dundee. I was seven years old and found it all a bit scary and terrifying. This was when people were still drinking inside the grounds and there was no segregation. But I got really into it from that point onwards. I left Perth at 18 and don’t have any family there anymore, but St Johnstone is what draws me back.

Did you attend the 2014 final or were you like your character in the play?

I was there with my daughter and all my pals and folk from school – it was great. I was excited about it, but as the first half went on I got more and more nervous. Five minutes before half-time, I went to get a coffee and St Johnstone scored and I missed it, along with another hundred folk. I came back and all my friends were laughing at me. Luckily, we scored a goal in the second half, so I saw that one at least. And then there was the surrealism of last year, when we won the two cups and no fans were there to see it because of the pandemic. That was such a Saints thing to do.

Have you performed at Perth Theatre before?

I wouldn’t be an actor if it wasn’t for Perth Theatre. I went along as a child and watched actors like Andy Gray, but I also worked backstage and I was in the Saturday morning youth theatre. I was in shows like Oliver, and the Peter Pan panto with Rikki Fulton, Maureen Carr and Forbes Masson. That was in 1985 and I was 13. Scotch & Wry was at its height and Rikki was one of the most famous people in Scotland at the time. I’ve only worked there once as a professional, in 2005. Years earlier, when I came out of drama school, I thought I would come back and work at the theatre, because normally Perth actors were given a chance if they’d gone to drama school. But Joan Knight, who ran the theatre, had left, and a new director came in. I auditioned but I didn’t even get a yes or a no. I was really upset at the time, but I went and got another job, and that’s life.

We open #OhWhenTheSaints tonight @HorsecrossPerth

2 years of work comes down to tonight. 2 years of talking to fans & sharing memories about @StJohnstone. Putting Perth voices on stage. Not an interview went by where someone didn’t shed a tear for their love of saints 🥹1/4 pic.twitter.com/WRVAShVeNM

— Katie Mitchell (@mitchkatie_) June 3, 2022

How did it feel voicing Ian Brady for the recent Moors Murders documentary?

That was something a bit different for me. It was a three-part series from Channel 4 and I recorded the voice-over for some unpublished letters he had written. A lot of the content was about Glasgow and growing up there and his childhood. People often don’t think of him being a Glaswegian because everything was so linked to the Manchester area. It was an interesting job, really challenging. He was very intelligent and had a lot of arrogance – he thought he was better than everyone. He never mentioned the murders but about things around them, and Hindley. The day I recorded the voice-overs, I came out on to Argyle Street and saw places he talked about in the letters. A chill ran through me to think he’d walked those streets.

Colin McCredie stars in Oh When The Saints, Perth Theatre, June 8-11, 15-18