John Cairney BA, MLITT, PHD is a man of many parts, actor, writer, painter and storyteller since beginning as an actor at the age of 17 with the Park Theatre Company in Glasgow in 1947. After National Service with the RAF in Germany he made his return to theatre, training at the College of Drama in Glasgow. In a career that has lasted more than 60 years, he has played Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth, Cyrano de Bergerac, Robert Louis Stevenson, William McGonagall and Ivor Novello but mainly he is remembered for his solo Robert Burns. This began in 1965 with Tom Wright’s play There Was a Man which he performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and the Arts Theatre, London. The play was televised twice, recorded as an album for REL Records, Edinburgh, and produced as a video for Green Place Productions, Glasgow.
Cairney made many film and television appearances throughout the 1960s and ’70s as well as writing and recording his own songs for EMI at Abbey Road in London. However, his career has since been taken over by Burns with the only a two year break for BBC2’s This Man Craig. The Burns trail brought him a good living, extensive world travel, good friends and his wife Alannah O’Sullivan, the New Zealand actress and writer whom he married in 1980. After nearly 20 years of living in New Zealand the couple are now returned to Scotland.
As well as his books on Burns, Cairney has published 18 other titles, including three volumes of autobiography, two novels, three football books, a book of essays about Glasgow, a book about theatre practice and another about solo performers.
Cairney’s paintings have been exhibited in New Zealand and in Scotland. His Nine Lives of Burns were shown at the Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway in 2012 and more recently his Stations of the Cross were displayed in Glasgow as part of the Lentfest Festival 2014 and at St Bride’s Church in Bothwell. His most recent project, a series of paintings called The Marian Way, was exhibited in St Patrick’s Church, Glasgow during October 2015. John still finds time for solo appearances and book shows.
