Norman Maclean is one of the great heroes of the Gaidhealtachd, a singer, musician, comedian, actor, novelist, writer and composer who is admired by an army of fans, which includes Sean Connery and Billy Connolly and transcends languages and generations
Norman was born in Glasgow on December 26, 1936 and following the outbreak of the Second World War was evacuated at the age of three to Lochaber, where he learned to speak Gaelic from his great uncle Seamas, a Gael who spoke little English. Later Norman moved to South Uist where he took up the pipes and quickly proved to be a player of considerable talent.
On leaving school he studied at Glasgow University and trained to be a teacher. He took up a series of teaching posts and began a career in music and entertainment that includes such diverse experiences as a two year spell with Strathaven & District Pipe Band and gigs as a piper with a mariachi band in Mexico. In 1957, as he recalled in his autobiography, he almost became the official piper to French heart-throb Brigitte Bardot. Having caroused his way to St Tropez and chatted up the film star in front of her then husband, Roger Vadim, he decided he didn’t like their attitude and returned to Scotland.
Always a master of words as well as a fine singer, in 1967 Norman earned the distinction of becoming the only person ever to win the Bardic Crown and a Gold Medal for singing at the Royal National Mod in the same year. His singing success, along with his ready wit, earned him more and more gigs around the Highlands and one night in 1975 he was booked to sing at a hotel in Oban. It was to prove a watershed moment as the English tourists he was playing to were clearly not interested in his Gaelic songs and realising he was losing their attention, Norman regaled them with jokes instead.
As had happened with Billy Connolly, the gaps between songs in Norman’s sets grew bigger and bigger as he got into his comic stride and before long he was becoming better known for his comic routines than his music. His gigs became mad and often unpredictable but hilarious pantomimes during which Norman would run around the stage – or lie flat on his back – playing his pipes, always perfectly in tune. He also developed an alter ego called Marietta, a mother hen-cum-agony aunt, whose advice to the young village girls would earn him laughs in Gaelic and then more laughs when he repeated the gags in English.
In 1987, Norman recorded his classic live album, Fully Wrapped and Standing, at the Royal Hotel in Oban. He later recorded with Karen Matheson on his Fooling Around album before his wanderlust took him to Mexico, from where he had to extricate himself in the few garments he was wearing at the time after another of his many amorous adventures led him into trouble.
As a broadcaster Norman wrote and starred in his own television show, Tormod Air Telly and dubbed the voice-overs for several children’s programmes, most notably the Gaelic version of Dangermouse, Donnie Murdo, thus becoming a hero to another generation. As well as composing tunes, including the session favourite Scarce o’ Tatties, he has written a series of popular novels in Gaelic and English and in 2009 he published his autobiography, The Leper’s Bell: The Autobiography of a Changeling, an account of a life lived to the full with few details spared.