The Guardian 1 December 2023

If John Byrne had been known only for The Slab Boys, he would be considered one of Scotland’s great cultural figures. But Byrne, who died on Thursday aged 83, was responsible for so much more than the trilogy of plays that helped put Robbie Coltrane on the map. He created the TV series Tutti Frutti, also starring Coltrane, and was a celebrated artist, screenwriter, illustrator and stage adapter.

His prolific output was varied, but if there were a unifying factor it was self-portraiture. “You’re here on Earth to ask why you’re here on Earth, not to avoid the question,” he told me in 2008. “The great many of my self-portraits aren’t the most flattering.”

The Slab Boys trilogy (1978–1982), the first part of which premiered at Edinburgh’s Traverse theatre, directed by David Hayman, was a thinly disguised autobiography, recalling his formative days grinding colours in the paint-mixing room of a Paisley carpet factory in the 1950s. He fictionalised the real-life Stoddard’s as AF Stobo & Co, but it was otherwise a theatrical self-portrait. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).