Taggart 40 years: Scottish university launches archive devoted to Glasgow-set crime series

The Scotsman

Taggart 40 years: Scottish university launches archive devoted to Glasgow-set crime series.  Now, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek nod to the show’s roots, archivists at the Glasgow Caledonian University are celebrating the show’s 40th anniversary by urging members of the public with experience working on the show to come forward and provide a ‘witness statement’.  Anyone involved in playing an extra on the show, playing a corpse, participating in location shoots, providing props for scenes, or with memorabilia from the show has been invited to come forward to share their stories from September 6-8. The interviews, which will take place in the Sir Alex Ferguson Library at the Glasgow Caledonian University, will give members of the public a chance to act out a piece of Glasgow’s beloved show.  ‘Taggart: The People’s Archive’ marks a collaboration between university archivists and Taggart star Blythe Duff, known in the series as Detective Inspector Jackie Reid.  Duff, who herself donated a treasure trove of memorabilia in 2018, including scripts and photos from the set, said: “Everyone I meet has a Taggart story … such testimonies capture not only the wide-reaching impact of the show on the local community, but also the direct involvement of the Glaswegians themselves in its production. The archive is dedicated to those whose lives were touched by the show.”  Duff, who is an honorary graduate and cultural fellow of the university, said of Taggart’s legacy: “I’ve worked with so many people who watched us film and it inspired them to become directors, writers, or join the police.”  Carole McCallum, archivist at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "Giving people the chance to add their stories to the program’s legacy ensures they too have the ownership of Taggart’s proud heritage. What better way is there to give Glasgow, and Scotland, a voice in the Taggart story than through the people who loved and supported it?”

Transcript

00:00 Hello, my name is Colin McCready and I played the part of DC Stuart Fraser in Taggart.

00:18 It's very strange, it's the first time I've been down to the archives so I'm really looking

00:22 forward to getting in for a nosy.

00:24 It's weird to think that you yourself are part of an archive.

00:28 I was just at primary school in P7 when Taggart and the first episode Killer aired, I remember

00:33 watching it.

00:34 It was totally weird maybe 10, 12 years later playing a part in Taggart and now even more

00:39 weird 40 years later we're celebrating the 40th anniversary.

00:43 But I think it's great for the show and it's great for Glasgow and it's great for all the

00:47 fans of the show that they can come and share their memories and stories.

00:50 It's quite a funny story actually, when I was 14 I was in a Taggart as a child which

00:55 no one really knows, which is the episode Death Call and I smashed up a Mercedes.

01:00 Then I was also in two episodes, one as a car thief and one as a fat farmer and then

01:05 I joined the show as DC Fraser.

01:07 We started filming that in 94 and I think it went on screen in 95.

01:12 So yeah nearly 30 years ago I would have been 21, 22.

01:15 Well the infamous story which we all claim that we were there but in fact I was there,

01:19 we were filming outside Central Station and we were doing scene after scene, getting out

01:23 of the car running in, getting out of the car running in and there was this wee old

01:26 lady watching and she watched for ages and ages and she eventually came up to us and

01:30 said "Are you, is this Taggart?

01:33 Are you filming Taggart?"

01:34 And we went "Yeah, yeah, that's what we're doing, we've got to do it lots of times."

01:36 She goes "Oh brilliant."

01:37 She said "Is it a new one or is it a repeat?"

01:41 Which was quite a weird thing to think.

01:46 I was in it for 15 years, which you get less for murder around here so yeah it was a bit

01:51 of a life sentence but yeah it was great fun.

01:53 Yeah it was one of my main jobs, maybe a year, just over a year out of drama school and then

01:57 doing it for 15 years.

01:58 What was brilliant about the show was that for maybe 6, 7 months of the year you turned

02:03 up and you were on screen filming in front of a camera and it was great experience doing

02:07 it every day and learning about your craft and learning how things work.

02:11 So you know the best way that you learn anything, certainly acting on film or TV, is doing it.

02:16 And often you can go a couple of years or do one days filming and then wait five months

02:20 for another day so it was great to do it every day.

02:22 It really trained you up and got you quite good at your craft I think.

02:27 The city itself was a character wasn't it?

02:29 Yeah I think there's so many places that we filmed in that are not there.

02:33 You know you think about places like the big granary on South Street, that's gone, that

02:37 was in loads of episodes.

02:38 You've got lots of buildings being built, whether it's the Armadillo or the SEC.

02:44 It was just great seeing the changes in Glasgow and even seeing the buildings getting cleaned

02:47 up from 1983 onwards.

02:49 Yeah and it is, it's a social documentation of all the shops and pubs and buildings that

02:55 are maybe not there anymore.

02:56 And even better, they were all captured on film and you can still watch them all and

03:02 reminisce back to those days.

03:04 Glasgow was pretty gallus back then wasn't it?

03:06 Yeah Glasgow's always been pretty gallus.

03:09 Having grown up in Perth, I always feel as if I'm a kind of ornery Glaswegian so it's

03:15 so great to be part of a show that's so linked to Glasgow and Glasgow people and Glasgow

03:20 murders.

03:21 So I'm Carol McCallum, the University Archivist at Glasgow Caledonian University.

03:25 Blythe gave us all her papers in 2018 but Blythe had always felt that Glasgow and Scotland

03:31 had a part to play in the whole Taggart story.

03:33 So over the years we kept on discussing it and the 40th anniversary came up and we thought

03:37 Taggart, the people's archive, brilliant, let's get the public telling their story,

03:43 let's get the public coming into our university, seeing an archive, being part of an archive,

03:47 saving their story so that they're part of the whole legacy of Taggart, they're part

03:52 of the heritage going forward.

03:54 Come up to the archive centre at the university today until four o'clock, tomorrow between

03:58 11 and seven and Friday between 11 and three and there's retired detectives that will take

04:04 your witness statement and they will be preserved in the archive centre.

04:08 However, if you can't come because you're physically not able or you're somewhere else

04:12 in the world, please do go onto our website, there's an online forum, your statement will

04:17 be there, we will not let the world not be involved in this story.

04:21 Many actors have gone through Taggart and many of them go on to do great things but

04:25 we cannot forget the people and places that have made Taggart so wonderful and that's

04:29 why we all feel connected to it because we see a street or a shop or we see somebody

04:33 we know that's been in Taggart.

04:35 It's an incredible thing that a television drama can be so close to so many people's

04:39 hearts.

04:40 Hello, I'm Dr Blythe Duff and I'm going to give you my full title because I'm at the

04:44 GCU.

04:45 Well it's been a long time coming actually, since 2018 Carol and I have been wondering

04:50 what else can happen with my archive up here and it just felt all of a sudden that in 40

04:56 years anniversary of Taggart being shown tonight on the 6th of September, it felt like as if

05:00 this was the right time to actually launch Taggart the People's Archive because they've

05:04 had such an extraordinary part in the series over the years.

05:07 The city has played an extraordinary part as the people have and we've been all over

05:12 Scotland so it's actually Scotland wide rather than it being Glasgow centric.

05:16 When I was asked to bring my archive up here it felt like as if it was a natural home for

05:22 it to go to and then, you know, and it has been here and people have come up to see my

05:26 scripts and that's all been lovely but it feels like as if this is a nice way to just

05:29 bring the public into a building that they might not have been in before but also to

05:33 an archive centre which is really, you know, maybe most folk would be a wee bit worried

05:37 about coming in but today they've just shown up which is just lovely.

05:40 I think since we launched this which was two weeks ago with the idea that people could

05:45 come up and give their witness statement, they've already wanted to tell me and I'm

05:48 saying no, no, no, hold out, come to the archive and tell me up there but actually there's

05:53 a lot of beautiful stories, a lot of stories that have made me quite emotional and I think

05:58 that's important to families who maybe don't have their loved ones anymore but had some

06:03 kind of link to Taggart so it's just, that's really quite important to me and I'm sure

06:07 I'm going to find an awful lot more of those.

06:09 In streets of San Francisco they used to thank the people of San Francisco for their input

06:14 and I always wanted Taggart to do that at the end, thank you to the people of Glasgow

06:19 because actually, you know, they took us to their heart and it seemed to be, you know,

06:24 they want to be part of it still so that's nice.

06:27 We filmed the city when it was going through change in the 1990s when we had the City of

06:33 Culture in '88 when they had the Garden Festival and we documented all those moments that were

06:37 important to Glasgow when it looked European, when it had cafe culture, when it had a bit

06:42 of money injected into it and that was really important and we caught all of that and when

06:46 we got up to the rooftops and see extraordinary buildings from the top and domes, it was amazing.

06:52 So I'm Louise Brownlee, I retired as a Chief Inspector, I served from 2000 until 2023.

06:59 Did the police kind of talk about Taggart, did they watch it?

07:01 All the time, all the time, so I joined in 2000 so it was the latter stages of Taggart,

07:08 you know, the kind of old school had already passed and it was coming into that new millennium

07:13 but yeah we talked about Taggart all the time, you know, young officers, not that we would

07:18 base many of our cases on the episodes of Taggart but you would certainly in your downtime

07:22 draw on the episodes that had gone and you know there's not many quotes more iconic than

07:28 there's been a murder so you know certainly if we turned up at something that was relatively

07:31 serious somebody would coin the phrase and it would get us all thinking so yeah, iconic,

07:36 yes, you get into the storylines, you know, it was almost a documentary and some of the

07:43 gritty storylines were so real it was a true reflection of Glasgow.

07:47 Do you think the Glaswegian public sometimes got the two mixed up?

07:50 I imagine that they absolutely did get them mixed up, you know, life does blend into art

07:55 and the other way around so yes it was very popular with the public as well and you know

08:00 I dare say the public would be watching an ongoing incident in the street and you know

08:04 perhaps wondering if it was part of a sequence from Taggart rather than actual life.

08:08 [laughter]

08:09 [silence]

Category

Transcript

Recommended