IS THIS really Muriel Gray who sits next to me in Glasgow’s Oran Mor theatre bar? Having never met the woman before, the impression gained from her media appearances over the years on the likes of The Tube and The Media Show is of a rather serious, dry creature, intense and often as spiky as her blonde hair. Laughter, you imagine, could emerge only if laced with cynicism. Even when Munroing was on the telly she seemed to be channelling the rather self-aware voice of the late Fyfe Robertson. 

You would also guess that given her success – frontwoman in a punk band, head of design in a leading museum, national television presenter, Doctor of Letters, TV production company mogul, millionaire, best-selling author, award-winning columnist, the only woman Rector of Edinburgh University, mother of three children (and let’s not forget an appearance in The Broons) – Gray is more driven than the Queen.

“I’m not really ambitious,” she says. “It’s an art school thing, constantly trying to express yourself in different areas.” 

Right now, she’s adding playwright to her CV, having written a new play for Oran Mor’s lunchtime theatre, more of which later. But what is Muriel Gray, you ask? She laughs aloud at the question. “I guess I’m across-the-board mediocrity. Jack of all trades, master of none.” Come on. Stop the self-deprecating silliness, Muriel. 

“I didn’t plan it,” she maintains. “You know, life is just a mindf***. For example, I’ve just come from the Glasgow School of Art and I’ve been saying to myself: how can I be responsible for the governance of a place in which I used to write graffiti on the walls, and carve my initials into woodwork?

“I’m also on the board of the British Museum, which is also weird, because I used to be the punk designer who would take the phone off the hook and fall asleep under my drawing board with a pencil next to me in case someone came in, which always made an indent in my face.”

Gray maintains she never set out to be famous, and indeed her appearances on Channel 4’s The Tube from 1982 came about as an accident after her punk band auditioned. Indeed, she throws a critical voice at her younger self. “Oh man, I was awful. And so snooty. But I certainly wasn’t after fame. In fact, the 1980s was all about anti-fame, which is the opposite of the way life is now.”

Even the less-than-shy Paula Yates wasn’t keen on doing interviews. I mention the story of how Yates eventually agreed to be interviewed by me, but, just for the fun of it, tried to distract me by flashing her breasts.
“Can I say right now that is not going to happen here,” says Gray, howling with laughter. “It was my 58th birthday yesterday and I don’t think they stand scrutiny.”

A devilish look crosses her face. “Although I did flash once.” 

Eh? Muriel Gray? Feminist, politically right-on? “Our rather fey punk band [The Family Von Trapp] was booked to play at a bikers’ bar in Kinghorn in Fife once. Anyway, I got on stage with my wee cherry red guitar and someone shouted out: ‘Show us your tits.’” 

And she did, now miming how the stick-slim punk chick pulled up her T-shirt to reveal Gray’s anatomy to the boys in leather.  “Then I heard this shout from the audience [uninterested voice]: ‘No, you’re all right.’” She laughs hard at her own folly. “That was 30 years ago. It’s not for now.” 

Gray is a grafter (“I haven’t  stopped working since I was 14 and washed dishes”) but success seemed unlikely during her upbringing in a cash-strapped family in East Kilbride. Did she see a glass ceiling? “That’s a good question. I didn’t see it, but came up against it with my first job on leaving art school, at a printers. The two most qualified women in the place [Gray being one of them] were always told to make the tea when the reps came in. But I never encountered this sexism in television.”

What did her parents expect her to become? “They barely noticed me,” she says. “They were so busy putting bread on the table. Everything we got came from the Embassy catalogue.” 

She seems to have taken personal fancy and turned it into professional opportunity. “Yes, that was the case when I started Gallus Besom,” she says of the TV production company she founded in 1989. “We would 
say: ‘Let’s make a show where we go up mountains every day or go skiing for two months.’ 

But there’s a different TV landscape now.”

Gray must have been awfully clever to come up with her production company idea. “Not at all,” she admits. “When I was doing The Media Show [in 1987] I met a gorgeous man called Andy Lipman who suggested I start a company. It was Andy who realised the potential in a Scottish company.” Gray adds, in more serious voice, “What kept us alive was the attention to detail, sitting up all night until 7am the next morning editing a programme.”

How could she do this and bring up three children with her husband, the director and producer Hamish Barbour? “Two words: really badly,” she says, laughing. “When I had the children I had to give up presenting. I made the deal with Hamish I would be around and, thankfully, his career as a director was going gangbusters.”

She adds, in a poignant voice: “The most flattering thing I ever heard was when I eavesdropped on my son once. He said to pals: ‘Well, my mum has never worked,’ and I thought this was brilliant. He assumed this because I was at the school gates every day.”

Between the school runs, Gray wrote prodigiously, contributing newspaper columns and authoring best-selling novels (earning the approval of Stephen King). Her production company, renamed Ideal World, merged with another, Wark Clements, and the resulting company IWC was sold to RDF in a 
deal estimated to be worth £12 million. How did having huge money sit with the Embassy catalogue upbringing?

“I didn’t feel like the Kardashians and I had a lot of commitments at the time. There was my daughter [who suffered brain damage as a result of a drowning accident]. But I’d also say the business success didn’t happen overnight. It was 30 years of sleepless nights, of nearly going to the wall.”

There’s no doubt Gray values what she has. “We’re not bobbing around in a dinghy trying to reach shores to stay alive,” she says. “If you don’t appreciate what we have in Scotland you must be off your head.”

What of the reported fallout with Wark Clements, whose co-director Alan Clements was alleged to have hacked into their company files on moving to STV? “It [the schism] was made up by the press,” she says, dismissively. “I saw Kirsty [Wark, Clements’ wife and business partner] not so long ago. And while we were never huge mates, I don’t have any problems with them.”
Was she surprised at the success of the likes of her Munro shows? “Yes, still,” she says, the laughter returning to her voice. “Every single taxi driver since says to me: ‘Are you no’ up the hills?’ tempting me to say: ‘Yes, 
I am. What you see here is just a f****** illusion.’”

Making the Broons cartoon must have been a thrill. “Oh, yes, it was so exciting,” she says, “but one of my regrets is that my dad didn’t live long enough to see it. It must have been a dark period in the Broons’ history when 

they decided to featured D-list Scottish celebrities, but let’s just keep that bit quiet.” 

Does she always cope well with the public eye? “I’ve been on TV since I was 24 and recognised for most of my life, and had torrents of abuse. I once called U2 British by mistake and was sent a card with used condoms used as the writing stapled on, telling me off.” 

Muriel Gray still has a voice. Right now, she worries why the media has become so anodyne. She’s unsure of Jeremy Corbyn, and says he should declare his position on Jews. She says she’s become more left wing as she’s aged. And her TV days are over. “I couldn’t present TV now. It’s 
a young person’s medium. Older women have the right to do it, but I struggle to understand why they would want to.”

With all her success, the writing, the TV ideas, the awards, and especially making the Broons, what’s her greatest achievement? For once, her response doesn’t feature a laugh. 

“Getting my daughter to the age of 21 after she almost died when she was two,” she says, softly.

This theme of dealing with challenges is reflected in her new play, The Barrier, which features two spectators at the finish of a marathon race who are there for different reasons. Given her very dramatic and funny voice, it should pack Oran Mor.

“I hope so,” she says. “But I’m terrified audiences will sit be looking at their watches. The only talent I have is I hang around with friends who are amazing. Basically, I’m crap.”

Not a bit of it. The Face to Face panel asks for ideal dinner guests. Mine would have to include the very entertaining, and funny, Muriel Gray.