RUSSELL Hunter was one of Scotland’s most talented and versatile actors. He “graced virtually every landmark of Scottish theatre for more than half a century”, one obituary noted upon his death in February 2004, his career having ranged across pantomime through Sean O’Casey to television drama and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Hunter had worked in John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank before turning to acting. As a member of Glasgow Unity Theatre he took part in no fewer than four plays at the first International Edinburgh Festival, in 1947.

He went on to have a long association with the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Both photographs date from April-May1960, from, respectively, the productions Sixes an’ Sevens (right: Hunter is with Clarke Tait and Roy Boutcher) and Wedding Day (alongside Beth Boyd, and Una McLean, whom Hunter would later marry).

The Glasgow Herald’s drama critic, Christopher Small, was especially taken with the revue, Sixes an’ Sevens, observing that it had lots of Glasgow colour, and a “touching elegy for the last of the trams”.

The revue’s “happy irreverence” peaked, Small added, in a monologue delivered by Hunter in which he celebrated “with unkind satire and mounting effect the conjectural 50th anniversary of the F-lc-n Th--tre [the Falcon Theatre].

“This is really wickedly funny and alone worth a visit to Gorbals Street. It is the best of a number of things in which Mr Hunter, taking the best chance the Citizens’ have yet given him, shows what a remarkably good and versatile comic he is”.

By 1967 Hunter had begun appearing as Lonely, a memorable character in the TV series, Callan, opposite Edward Woodward. “The series took off”, said Hunter’s obituary in this newspaper, “with Hunter’s weasely physiognomy stealing the show, and tapping into the public consciousness with a performance full of vulnerability and pathos that went on to define him beyond the panto turns he was equally adept at”.

In August 1969 an Edinburgh theatre critic said of Hunter: “It takes a Glasgow man to bring out the best in Edinburgh” after watching a one-man show, Cocky, about the 19th century Scottish lawyer , Lord Cockburn. Hunter himself, recalling his long involvement with the Festival and the Fringe. would recall: “For the first time, I was on my own in Jack Ronder’s one-man play, Cocky. The total production budget was £120. That’s what the author, director and actor had put in the kitty. The rest had to come from ticket sales. It worked: nine performances a week and an extra week after the Festival. I had been bitten”.

Hunter’s distinguished CV later included everything from W Gordon Smith’s Jock to Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, as well as numerous film and TV roles.