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John Byrne

John Byrne

Writing

Biography

John Byrne was an artist, writer and playwright. He was best known for the BBC television series Tutti Frutti and the play Slab Boys.

Known For

ScreenPlay
6.0

Screenplay was a drama anthology television series, broadcast on BBC between 1986 and 1993. Numerous episodes were produced including one named "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" starring Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie.

ScreenPlay

1986
Your Cheatin' Heart
6.0

In this fondly remembered mini series John Byrne, creator of Tutti Frutti, explores the country music scene in an unsentimental portrait of Glaswegian life and culture. Local food and wine correspondent Frank McClusky falls in love with waitress Cissie Crouch. Unfortunately for him, she’s the wife of a convict, who is serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. As Frank’s life becomes more embroiled with Cissie’s he goes on a mission to track down the guilty men.

Your Cheatin' Heart

1990
Tutti Frutti
7.1

Trouble ensues for the Majestics, Scotland's "Kings of Rock", when a good-looking redhead joins the band on tour.

Tutti Frutti

1987
Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon
6.0

In the 1960s, British painter Francis Bacon surprises a burglar and invites him to share his bed. The burglar, a working class man named George Dyer, accepts. After the unique beginning to their love affair, the well-connected and volatile artist assimilates Dyer into his circle of eccentric friends, as Dyer's struggle with addiction strains their bond.

Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

1998
Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland
8.4

Two-part series with intimate interviews with Billy Connolly, providing unique insight into the early influences and motivations that made this comedy legend the man he is today.

Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland

2018
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil
8.0

In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

1974
American Cousins
5.3

Two American mafiosi, Gino and Settimo, take refuge in the Glasgow cafe owned by their Scottish/Italian cousin, but he isn't the tough guy they'd expected. Gino and Settimo try to repay Roberto's hospitality by chasing off a debt collector who wants his property, but their strong arm tactics alarm him and he realises they aren't the PR consultants they claimed to be.

American Cousins

2003
Your Cheatin' Heart
8.0

In this fondly remembered mini series John Byrne, creator of Tutti Frutti, explores the country music scene in an unsentimental portrait of Glaswegian life and culture. Local food and wine correspondent Frank McClusky falls in love with waitress Cissie Crouch. Unfortunately for him, she’s the wife of a convict, who is serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. As Frank’s life becomes more embroiled with Cissie’s he goes on a mission to track down the guilty men.

Your Cheatin' Heart

1990
Gerry Rafferty: Right Down the Line
N/A

Gerry Rafferty, who died in January 2011, was one of Scotland's best-loved singer/songwriters, famous around the world for hits such as "Baker Street" and "Stuck in the Middle With You". This ArtWorks Scotland film, narrated by David Tennant, tells the story of Rafferty's life through his often autobiographical songs and includes contributions from Gerry's daughter Martha and brother Jim, friends and colleagues including Billy Connolly, John Byrne, and Joe Egan, admirers such as Tom Robinson and La Roux, and words and music from Rafferty himself.

Gerry Rafferty: Right Down the Line

2011
Normal Service
10.0

It's General Election day 1964, and the resources of Forth and Clyde Television are under stress. Too many shows want too many things done too quickly. Some of the design and graphics staff are intent on not getting involved. Others won't survive the strain.

Normal Service

1988
The Slab Boys
8.5

Paisley, Scotland, in 1957. Three likely lads look forward to the staff dance at the local carpet factory where they work

The Slab Boys

1997
Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles
N/A

In the autumn of 1773, the English writer Samuel Johnson visits the Hebrides, or Western Isles, off the North-West coast of Scotland. With him are his friend, the Scotsman James Boswell, and his black servant Francis Barber. Staying with a series of hosts, including elderly Jacobite heroine Flora McDonald, Johnson and Boswell encounter traditional Scottish hospitality at first-hand, all the time arguing about politics (and in Boswell's case losing his head over every pretty woman he meets). Meanwhile, Francis and another black servant they encounter provide evidence of the new consciousness emerging in Britain's soon-to-be-independent American colonies.

Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles

1993
Billy Connolly: Portrait of a Lifetime
6.0

Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.

Billy Connolly: Portrait of a Lifetime

2017
Byrne About Byrne
N/A

In this diverse and inventive autobiography, painter and author John Byrne travels from his youth, through his art school years to the period of his stage and TV plays, and on to his death, sometime in the future. With him is Robbie Coltrane as himself and as a shamus invented by Byrne, who discovers there are as many aspects to the author as there are actors playing him.

Byrne About Byrne

1988
Clydescope
7.0

A panorama of the Clyde, from Biggar to Brodick, with Billy Connolly as your guide. Directed by Murray Grigor for the Films of Scotland Committee.

Clydescope

1974
Scotch & Wry
9.0

Video Compilation of the Scottish TV Comedy Sketch Show. Stand out characters include Supercop, an idiot motorcycle policeman whose catchphrase was 'Alright Stirling, oot the car' and whose goggles would spring off his helmet; Dirty Dickie Dandruff; Gallowgate Gourmet, the unbelievably unhygienic TV chef; and McGlinchey, a colourful wide-boy.

Scotch & Wry

1986
Double Scotch & Wry
8.5

Rikki Fulton and friends return with another selection of sketches and comedy characters, including the Reverend I.M. Jolly, Supercop, dirty barber Alky Broon and Big Chief Swift Half.

Double Scotch & Wry

1987
The Slab Boys
N/A

Paisley, Scotland, in 1957. Three working-class lads look forward to the staff dance at the local carpet factory.

The Slab Boys

1979
No image
N/A

Sequence of animations and random footage (Olympic torch lighting, rituals etc) which were "based on ideas of Hans Hollein; created for the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Museum's opening exhibition: Man transForms", 1976. Nine designers worked with Hans Hollein in the "MAN TRANSFORMs" exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design: Nader Ardalan, Peter Bode, Buckminster Fuller, Murray Grigor, Arata Isozaki, Richard Meier, Karl Schlamminger, Ettore Sottsass, and Oswald Ungers.

Oasis

1976
John Byrne
N/A

An STV documentary about the life and work of artist John Byrne.

John Byrne

1975