JACK Milroy was the multi-talented performer who, together with his great china Rikki Fulton, formed the funniest and most enduring comic partnership in Scottish entertainment. Everyone laughed with Jack.
The man who liked to tell folk that he was born in
''nineteen-hundred-and-
wheesht'' was 85. He was the old-fashioned comic who never went out of fashion. His distinctly Glasgow brand of humour sprang from the shipyards, the factories, the shops, and the pubs.
Jack was a Shawlands Academy boy called Jackie Cruden. By the time he was a teenager he knew he wanted to be in show business. In those days you couldn't move for
theatres in Glasgow. Jack, at 14, went to them all - the Alhambra, the Empire, the Metropole - and sat up there in the cheap seats, enthralled by the variety on display.
However, it was not until 1946, when he was demobbed from the Army, that he finally got the opportunity to step into the limelight. In those early days he was an Astaire-like song-and-dance man in top hat and tails.
His agent eventually found him a spot on the Irish circuit, teaming him up in Belfast with Mary Lee, a Kinning Park-born performer who had been singing with big bands since she was 14. It was Mary who spotted Jack's potential to be a stage comic.
And so began a perfect partnership, both private and professional. They married in 1953 and, remarkable in showbiz, their marriage lasted a lifetime. They have two children, Jim and Diane.
From Belfast, the Mary Lee and Jack Milroy double-act moved back to Scotland. They topped the bill at Aberdeen's Tivoli for three long seasons. ''That was when I really learned my craft,'' Jack once said.
There was, of course, another partner in the life and times of Jack Milroy. His name is Fulton and tonight he will surely shed a tear for his old chum.
Together they were Francie and Josie, the lurid-suited gormless Glasgow wide boys with a gift for the patter. The act started as a 10-minute sketch and was to last a
lifetime.
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