Peter McDougall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Peter McDougall (born Greenock, Scotland, 1947) is a television playwright whose major success was in the 1970s.

McDougall claims to have had very little schooling and barely even read books, and began working in the shipyards of Glasgow when he was fourteen. Here he worked alongside future comedian and actor Billy Connolly. Depressed by the harsh conditions and unfulfilled by the menial work, he left Scotland and moved to London where he worked as a house-painter.

It was while painting Colin Welland's house that McDougall impressed the actor and writer when relating tales of being the drum major in the Orange parade as a teenager. He was advised to try writing a television play about this and the result was Just Another Saturday, which McDougall wrote in secret and hid even from his wife. Once completed, the script was sent to the BBC Play for Today team, who were enormously impressed but rejected the play because of the sensitive subject matter. McDougall was however asked to try again, and wrote a more intimate piece Just your Luck based on his sister's wedding, and again exploring sectarian divide in its story of a Protestant girl who finds herself pregnant by a Catholic boy.

The play caused a furore in Scotland, many people appalled by its portrayal of the people's earthiness and prejudice. However, there was much positive praise too, one viewer even going so far as to say it was "the most exciting debut since Look Back in Anger."

At this point the director John MacKenzie began enquiring after the script of Just Another Saturday and managed to get the play into production, only to then find the piece banned after the head of the Glasgow police said that the script would cause "bloodshed on the streets in the making and in the showing". After a year MacKenzie managed to persuade Head of Television Alasdair Milne to press ahead with the play, although some scenes were eventually filmed in Edinburgh to minimise controversy.

The finished film, the script of which was barely changed from the first draft, proved to be a televisual masterpiece. It won massive acclaim, was repeated several times, and won its author the Prix Italia. McDougall followed this success up with a short kitchen comedy for BBC2, A Wily Couple and another Play for Today, The Elephants' Graveyard.

Several other television projects ensued, including an aborted sitcom, until McDougall and MacKenzie collaborated again on their final Play for Today, Just a Boys' Game. Starring blues singer Frankie Miller this was the story of Greenock razor gangs and specifically of one man's life of alcohol and violence over a twenty-four hour period. His most violent piece, Just A Boy's Game the film was also notable for supporting performances from a then unknown Gregor Fisher, Ken Hutchison, comedian Hector Nicol and Jean Taylor Smith.

McKenzie and McDougall's last collaboration was on the STV film A Sense of Freedom, based on the autobiography of Glaswegian gangster Jimmy Boyle, detailing his crimes and subsequent reform.

McDougall's subsequent plays Shoot For The Sun, a BBC drama about Edinburgh's heroin problem, and Down Where The Buffalo Go starring Harvey Keitel, and Down Among The Big Boys did not meet with as significant critical acclaim.

In 2004 McDougall wrote three short dramas for the stage starring- amongst others- Robbie Coltrane and Sean Scanlan, which were presented at the Oran Mor in Glasgow as part of the lunchtime theatre event A Play, A Pie and A Pint. He was at this point working on remakes of The Maggie and Whisky Galore but spoke out furiously when his proposed casting of Robbie Coltrane and Robert Carlyle was passed on in favour of English actors.