Actor, writer and athlete

Born: September 10, 1920;

Died: July 28, 2016

JAMIE Stuart, who has died aged 95 after a series of strokes, was an actor, writer, athlete, vacuum cleaner salesman, social worker, tour guide and Herald and Evening Times paperboy in his late Sixties.

Anyone who ever met the man will be stunned that he did not reach 100 because the man defined the word energy - a runner from an early age he never stopped racing towards his next challenge.

Born in Carntyne in Glasgow’s East End, he and his three brothers shared a bedroom and a coping strategy for endemic poverty. The small ginger-haired boy watched his father battle through the Depression by trailing a horse and cart around the streets selling vegetables, and helped out where he could.

Meanwhile, little Jamie realised he loved to run. Anywhere. Any time. And he loved to attend Bible Class, believing that being good would set him up for life. "But I wasn't always good," he once revealed in an interview with The Herald. "One Friday night I requested to be excused from the Boys Brigade drill squad, feigning a sore ankle. However, the next day I went out and won a three-mile cross country race. When I went back to the BBs I was reduced in rank from corporal. I resigned in protest. I thought the punishment too steep."

The schoolboy worked a 6am paper round and appeared in local amateur dramatics at night, hoping to make acting a career. He left school at 15 however to work as a sales assistant in a department store and then no sooner had he joined Molly Urquhart's rep theatre company in Rutherglen, war intervened and he was cast in the role of Wireless Operator in the Royal Air Force.

Not surprisingly, he became a champion runner with his regiment - and also found the time to produce plays and concerts. Back home on leave in March, 1945 however, disappointment fell upon him like a Luftwaffe bomb. Stuart discovered the girl he had "loved from the age of ten", May Kelt from Carntyne, had married his friend Duncan McVey, and the couple had a baby daughter. However, a short time later when Mr Stuart was flying over the Rhine, his soldier friend was killed fighting on the ground below.

With war over,Mr Stuart returned to Glasgow and grabbed at the baton of his previous life. Just five feet three inches tall, he ran for Shettleston Harriers and won the Scottish cross country five mile novice championships. He returned to the professional stage and in 1947 joined the Citizens' Theatre Company, working alongside acting greats such as Andrew Keir, Stanley Baxter and Roddie McMillan.

He managed to combine acting and running. In June 1948, he appeared in a Saturday afternoon matinee of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard at the Citz, got permission from the producer to miss the curtain call and sprinted from the stage - still in costume and make-up - into a waiting taxi where he changed into his running gear, all the time rubbing olive oil frantically into stiff legs. He won the race by ten yards.

Acting work continued, with Dundee Rep and Perth Theatre - however now aged 30, the young man reckoned his next role in life should be Ideal Husband. In 1953 he married his true love, May Kelt. “One night I said to her 'May, I don't consider this friendship of ours to be just a platonic affair.' And she said 'Does this mean we're engaged?' And suddenly we were."

Mr Stuart’s meagre acting income could not sustain a family so he sold vacuum cleaners by day and trod the boards at night. "Walking along the streets some days I'd pray and say; 'Lord, you must know that I don't feel madly fulfilled knocking on doors. Please let it be that one day I will do something worthwhile in my life.' But I was prepared to be patient."

And to study. He went to night school and took Highers and aged 54 became a social worker with Strathclyde Region, working with young miscreants.

In the early Eighties however, the runner ran off in yet another new direction, presenting the Gospel in Scots tongue on stage. But the period also brought devastation, with the death of May in 1983. Jamie Stuart was bereft, but he kept focus for his three daughters. And he continued to run for charity, taking part in the Glasgow marathon.

In 1988, now retired, he took on a new morning job. Paper boy. His daughters reckoned he was ‘off his head’. "Yes, they did, but pushing the last Herald through a letterbox and then having breakfast was a lovely experience."

Four years later, Jamie Stuart moved from being the deliverer of the printed word to the writer. His book The Glasgow Gospel flew off the shelves faster than David's slingshot could bring down his nemesis. By 1995, it re-emerged as The Glasgow Bible, and readers delighted to realise David had once challenged the mighty Goliath with "Weel, come oan then, ya big scrawny plook!"

But of course, life as a successful author was not enough. Mr Stuart went on to become a voluntary tour guide at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall, performed at Burns Suppers, worked for Meals On Wheels and set up an anti-smoking charity. He also wrote his autobiography, aged 94. Only a stroke, suffered while in a pulpit in Wishaw, could slow Jamie Stuart down.

"I've tried not to wave the faith banner, but tried to show by example," he once said of his life. "Because like vinegar seepin' aboot the mooth, and smoke reekin', the lazy lout is a pain in the bahouchie."

Jamie Stuart is survived by his two daughters, Elizabeth and Fiona, four granddaughters, Kirsty, Shona, Gillian and Alison and two great grandchildren.

Granddaughter Kirsty Black points out there will be a special service for Jamie Stuart at Carntyne Parish Church on Thursday. “It will be a celebration of his life,” she says. “With an incredible life like that, how could it be anything else?”

BRIAN BEACOM