Bill Paterson

This afternoon I spent a wonderful couple of hours at The Hill House being interviewed by the renowned Scottish actor Bill Paterson as part of a new documentary series for Channel Four.

Born in Dennistoun, Bill Paterson’s long and successful career has embraced film, television, radio and theatre, from John McGrath's ceilidh play for 7:84, The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil, to Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Comfort And Joy and The Killing Fields to The Singing Detective, Little Dorrit, Truly, Madly, Deeply and Doctor Who. During the mid nineties, he co-starred in the BBC award winning adaptation of Iain Bank's The Crow Road as Kenneth McHoan. In 2001, he played D.I. Neil Sleightholme in The Whistleblower’ opposite Amanda Burton. Since 2003, he has played Dr. Douglass Monaghan, head of a parapsychology unit in the BBC supernatural series Sea of Souls. He has recently been filming for the new Dad's Army film and the drama series, Outlander.

He has also written a childhood memoir, Tales From The Back Green (2008), about his memories “suspended in amber like Jurassic Park’s mosquito” of growing up in Glasgow in the 1950s. It began life as a radio script because he longed to hear his own words in the voice of another. “To experience the pleasure or pain of hearing those words either enhanced or mangled by another actor.”