Iain McColl

IAIN McColl, who has died of cancer aged 59, was a comedy actor best known for his roles in the BBC Scotland sitcoms, City Lights and Rab C Nesbitt.

It's fair to say McColl excelled at playing exotics, creatures who were of this world but never entirely part of it. His comedic face, described as a cross between Desperate Dan and Tommy Cooper, conveyed great bewilderment, and it was no surprise producers spotted his potential for playing the fool.

However, Iain McColl didn't grow up in Glasgow's Kinning Park area looking to become a thespian, although he did love theatre. His Hebridean mother and Glaswegian father (they met while working on the Glasgow trams – he a driver, she a clippie) were theatre fans and young Iain and his sister Martha would follow them "like wee chickens" to the likes of the Metropole and the Alhambra.

When McColl left school, he worked as a roustabout on North Sea and Persian Gulf oil rigs, then became a band roadie. As incongruous as it sounds, the young man with the mad hair and, on occasion, mad stare, made his entry into "showbiz" as a male stripper.

"It came about playing a miners' club in Fife," he once recalled. "As I was carrying the bass drum on my shoulder into the club I overheard the committee man desperately pleading on the phone for a male stripper. Quick as a flash, I lied to him with 'I'm a male stripper to trade'. And I was hired to do a turn that night. I borrowed a suit and an umbrella and went down a bomb as Mr Executive."

Fortified by his success, and now aged 25, McColl thought about acting and had some family encouragement. His cousin Mick McNeil and friend Jim Kerr of Simple Minds nagged him into going to drama college. He not only made it through Glasgow's RSAMD ("I hadn't a single O-level to my name") but also went on to win the acting gold medal, the James Bridie Memorial Award.

On leaving college, he landed a meeting with Comedy Unit boss Colin Gilbert in a bid to secure acting work. But he didn't appear just to chat. He brought a bag of props and proceeded to perform a Chic Murray and a Tommy Cooper routine. He then put a pair of black tights over his head and "became" Ray Charles. How could Gilbert not employ such an eccentric creature?

Soon after, McColl was signed to appear in the sketch show, Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee, and played Big Tam in City Lights. He later moved on to become a Rab C Nesbitt regular, playing the ever-so-stupid Doddie, but also worked extensively with Channel 4, with roles in Halfway To Paradise and Tumbledown.

Meanwhile, he appeared in a cultish TV bank advertising campaign in which he played a street newspaper vendor, based, he said, on the men who sell the Evening Times.

But McColl's success was not confined to playing "dafties". He worked alongside Brian Pettifer in An Inspector Calls at the Almeida Theatre in London, and had a great panto career, starring alongside Gerard Kelly in Babes In The Wood at the King's Theatre in Glasgow. He also landed roles in films such as Comfort and Joy (1984), Restless Natives (1985) and Gangs Of New York (2002). At one point he toured as a magician and a hypnotist.

However, it's fair to say that his personal life was every bit as colourful as the characters he played on screen. He drank far too much and often consumed recreational pharmaceuticals – and the price he paid was breaking up with his wife and three children. Over the years, the comedy actor appeared on police charge sheets almost as often as he appeared on cast lists.

One day, Brian Pettifer arrived on the set of Rab C Nesbitt to hear his friend declare he had moved into his car. "He had bought a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit and announced he was living in it in the west end of Glasgow, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Later, the car was repossessed, and I said: 'Why didn't you tell me? I would have bought it from you.' But he said selling it had never occurred to him."

But those who worked alongside him, such as Jonathan Watson in City Lights, said he was a model professional. Andy Gray, who played Chancer in City Lights, said McColl lit up each scene. "I only had to look at him, at his astonished stares, and I'd laugh. He was slightly bonkers, of course. I remember him telling me he'd turned up for an audition once dressed as Tommy Cooper, the fez and everything. The part, of course, had nothing to do with Cooper."

McColl was certainly intelligent, often reflective, and aware of his addictions. "When I was on the sauce," he said, "I was lost and taking life for granted."

But when he did perform on stage, TV or film, no-one could deny he was an exceptional talent. Martin Scorsese once described the Scot as a brilliant method actor. "He was brilliant," said Andy Gray. "They don't make actors like him any more. He was unique."

Iain McColl conquered his demons, but couldn't defeat the cancer he'd contracted a few years ago. In recent months he was undertaking chemotherapy at the Beatson hospital in Glasgow – but he didn't stop performing.

"Just last week he put on a show for the patients and staff at the hospital and he was hilarious," said his sister, Martha.

"He was doing impersonations of Chic Murray and Tommy Cooper and he had people in stitches. He couldn't not make people laugh and the hospital staff, who have been fantastic, loved him."

She added: "Iain lived life at 100 miles per hour. He was like that since he was a baby. But he was always his own man."

Iain McColl is survived by his children Rhianan, Ciaran and Maurice and brother Donny.