Angus Lennie

Born: April 18, 1930; Died: September 14, 2014

ANGUS Lennie, who has died aged 84, was a stalwart of Scottish theatre, ­television and film for more than half a century. He was Steve McQueen's buddie in The Great Escape (1963) and Shughie McFee, the bagpipes-playing chef, in the soap opera Crossroads in the late 1970s.

More recently he played Badger, loyal valet to Earl Kilwillie (Julian Fellowes) in the later series of the popular BBC Sunday night comedy-drama Monarch of the Glen (2001-03), indulging his lordship's every whim and making sure he had his favourite toys at bath-time.

Born in Glasgow in 1930, Lennie attended Eastbank Academy in Shettleston and began his acting career at Perth Theatre in the late 1940s.

He worked with several repertory companies in Scotland and England and was Sunny Jim, the "cabin boy", in the first of the three television adaptations of Neil Munro's stories about the Clyde puffer The Vital Spark, although Lennie was about 30 at the time, which was always part of the joke.

In the first series, which was entitled Para Handy: Master Mariner and was broadcast in 1959-60, Duncan Macrae played the skipper Para Handy, Roddy McMillan was the mate Dougie and John Grieve was the engineer Dan Macphail. In subsequent versions the role of Para Handy was played by Roddy McMillan and most recently Gregor Fisher.

Other television and film roles followed, including appearances in Tunes of Glory (1960) and The Saint (1963). Often Lennie would seem to typify the diminutive but plucky wee Scot. But The Great Escape marked a significant step up in his career and saw him rubbing shoulders with some of Britain and America's biggest stars, including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Richard Attenborough.

He played Flying Officer Archibald Ives, nickname The Mole. He works on various escape plans with the American officer Virgil Hilts, played by McQueen. Ives was prone to mood swings and could get a little wistful at times.

In "the cooler" after the failure of their latest plan, Ives reminisces to Hilts about his days as a jockey. "They were the days - some of these Saturday nights in towns like Musselburgh and Hamilton you had to fight off the birds," he says.

The American prisoners manage to produce some moonshine liquor to celebrate American Independence Day. Flight Lt Andrew MacDonald (Gordon Jackson) assures Ives that he will be back walking down Argyle Street in a few weeks and they dance a wee jig, singing about marching through the Broomielaw.

But Ives becomes despondent after the discovery of one of the escape tunnels. With a dead look in his eyes, he walks steadily forward and begins to climb the perimeter fence. The guards prepare to shoot. Hilts comes racing forward and stops one of them. But Ives is machine-gunned by another in the look-out tower, his body left lifeless on the wire.

Despite criticism about many i­naccuracies in the film, Lennie's character was based on a real prisoner, who climbed the fence in broad daylight, seemingly knowing it was suicide. The film was a huge international hit.

Lennie was back in RAF uniform the following year in the film 633 Squadron and this time he was one of the few characters to survive. He was Mr Tumnus, the faun, in a 1967 television adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and for a while he seemed to be first choice whenever television producers had a Scottish supporting role to fill.

He also had the distinction of f­eaturing in the original stories about not one, but two of Doctor Who's deadliest enemies, appearing in The Ice Warriors in 1967, when Patrick Troughton was the Doctor, and Terror of the Zygons in 1975, with Tom Baker.

In the latter, The Doctor is in the north of Scotland, where Lennie runs a local hostelry and relates a tale about people going missing on the misty moor that would have fitted nicely into Private Frazer's routine. Subsequently Lennie's character discovers they are being spied on by the aliens and is killed, but in due course the Doctor defeats the Zygons and reveals that the Loch Ness Monster is their cyborg creation.

Lennie appeared in the famous production of David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estates at Edinburgh Festival in 1985 and figured in various different pantomimes in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Many, however, will remember him best from Crossroads, on which he was a regular as the temperamental chef Shughie in the second half of the 1970s. Shughie told a lot of tall tales and lied about having worked on a luxury cruise ship to get the job, when really it was a West of Scotland ferry. The show attracted up to 18 million viewers per episode.

Shughie suffered a breakdown in 1980. After his mother said she wanted to be cremated, because she did not want spiders in her coffin, he made a trifle with spiders in it. He also smashed up his kitchen.

The producers had decided by this juncture that they had had enough storylines revolving around the kitchen. One of the writers began working on a departure story for Shughie, but then left with it unfinished.

The kitchen set was dismantled and Lennie moved on, though he was not actually written out.

Effectively Shughie was still there, out of sight, in the non-existent kitchen. He was sometimes referred to, but never seen. He made one final appearance in 1985, more than ten years after his first appearance.