Hector Nicol

Hector Nichol was a Paisley comedian, actor and singer. He recorded football songs for Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Dundee United and Dundee, but his other lasting legacy, as well as a spate of video releases of his stand up routines, is in a very different vein. In 1979 he took on the role of a dying gangster in the shocking Peter McDougall drama Just a Boy's Game for the BBC. His performance was a remarkable study of stubborn, hollow disregard for life around him, and despite a few tell-tale signs of his comic skill in his perfectly timed insults, this was a brilliant transformation. Sadly his potential career as a straight actor was cut short by his death in the early eighties.