Suits You Sir

He’s Behind You

I always feel a bit sad when pantomime season is over for another year so you can imagine my delight when I was asked to photograph stage star and panto legend Johnny McKnight. Johnny was giving The Cameron Lecture at the University of Glasgow’s Bute Hall. The lecture, The Panto Dame (She’s Behind You), celebrated the magic of Scottish theatre. Johnny was certainly  ‘dame for a laugh’ dressed dressed in full panto dame costume and as one of his favourite characters, Dorothy Blawna-Gale. The audience were in stitches I had tears in my eyes trying to take the photos.

The Cameron Lecture is delivered through a partnership between the University of Glasgow and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It was established in 2019 by John Tiffany, the multi-award-winning theatre director and University of Glasgow alumnus, to honour his life-changing tutor, Dr Alasdair Cameron. I photographed Johnny and John and the pair were in great form. It was a packed hall.

Running Up That Hill

I was at the top of North Portland Street in Glasgow, which is a huge hill on the  Strathclyde University campus for the annual Glasgow Taxis Cup photo call. Glasgow Taxis Cup is an event, which has more than 700 student athletes from Glasgow Caledonian, Strathclyde, and Glasgow universities competing across 15 sports in the biggest one-day student inter-varsity competition across Scotland. It’s huge competition. The students alway pick the venue for the picture from the Peoples Palace to The Riverside Museum. The year we had Rottenrow Park on the sight of the old Rottenrow maternity hospital. Its a great space but unfortunately we could not get the taxi into the park so we thought we would have picture of the students racing up the hill past the taxi stopped at the top with the team captains holding the trophy. We had to do it a couple of times and the students where getting a bit out of breath as it is a pretty steep hill. I was out of breath watching them.