Andy Gray
Scottish pantomime favourite who became an annual fixture at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre and turned his talents to a series of darker stage and screen roles
Andy Gray will long be remembered among Edinburgh’s panto-goers for his near annual turn on the King’s Theatre stage in the ‘daft laddie’ role, which he made his own with his lugubrious drawl of “I’m no’ very weil” and a hang-dog look up into the house.
But he had more to his acting chops than the ability to turn any innocent word into a stomach-quaking laughter-bomb by simple repetition. He brought his considerable talents to a series of characters during the early 2000s that allowed him to explore a darker, more rounded sides to the roles, even if laughter was never far away.
Born in Perth, Gray learned the art of banter in his father’s kilt shop. When he was taken to his first panto – at Perth Theatre – he was smitten and knew that “playing the idiot” in panto was what he wanted to do.
After school, Gray moved to Edinburgh in 1976 to study drama at Queen Margaret College before returning home to start his acting career at Perth Rep, where the directing-by-numbers style of classical revivals produced rather stilted results.
That all changed in 1982 when Gray got the part of Jack Hogg in the premiere of Still Life, the final play in John Byrne’s Slab Boys trilogy, at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. In 1985 he performed in Borderline’s production of Trumpets and Raspberries that Dario Fo declared: “The best my play’s ever been done outside Italy!”
He came to national prominence in 1986 when he joined the BBC Scotland sitcom City Lights as the loveable rogue Chancer. It ran for six seasons to 1991 and he returned to regular TV in 2016 as Pete Galloway in the BBC’s Scottish soap River City.
His first panto at the Edinburgh King’s was in 1995 and he became a regular from 1999. He formed partnerships with Allan Stewart as dame and Grant Stott as the baddie, and they became known as Edinburgh’s panto triumvirate.
Gray performed in several successful fringe productions, often with Stott, which allowed him to explore more serious subjects. In 2015 he won The Stage Award for Acting Excellence for his performance as William Donaldson in Willie and Sebastian at the Gilded Balloon.
Gray was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2018, forcing him to pull out of that year’s fringe show and panto. On his return to the King’s in 2019 his character stepped out from behind pink feathers to see his name in lights – and spontaneous standing ovations at every single performance.
In 2020, the pandemic forced the cancellation of both a fringe play based on his experiences of chemotherapy, and the King’s panto. He and Stewart went down to Milton Keynes to guest-star in its panto in December 2020. It was pulled on December 17 and, a week later, Gray tested positive for Covid-19. He was in an induced coma at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee when he died.
He is survived by Annie McCredie, to whom he was married for 10 years from 1987, their daughter Clare and granddaughter Anna, as well as his current partner, Tamara Kennedy.
Andy Gray was born on September 13, 1959, and died on January 18, aged 61.
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