FRANCIE AND JOSIE Hullawrerr, chinas (and fair middens). F and J, the pattering Glasgow wide boys played by Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy, were essential TV viewing in the Sixties.
They were still "perspiring together", laughing at their jokes while playing gallus teddy boys before an "expectorant public" at their finally final stage performance in 1996.
FRAN AND ANNA The Coatbridge sisters played the music halls for decades
with their song-and-dance routines before, in the Seventies and in their fifties, they were made nationally famous by Jack McLaughlin on STV's Thingummyjig, a terrifying update of the White Heather Club. The kenspeckle pair, heavily rouged, dressed in matching mini-kilts and fishnet tights, later worked the cruise ships, appeared on Wogan and retired in 2001.
SYLVANDER AND CLARINDA In intervals between Excise duties, farming, philandering, poetry and marriage, Robert Burns had a four-year, largely epistolary and platonic courtship of the married – but separated – Agnes McLehose. He was Sylvander. She was Clarinda, "mistress of my soul". Burns's letters, mixing literary allusions and revelatory frankness, have attracted admiration and scorn. Their last meeting inspired the genuinely felt song of parting, Ae Fond Kiss.
JOHN KNOX AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS Short-lived double act which relied on conflict between opposites. Mary was a tall, beautiful, fun-loving, fancy-dress-wearing dancing queen. Knox was stern and intolerant, thought dancing was of the devil and women unfit to rule. Knox harangued and hectored. Mary resisted and riposted. After seven performances, it ended in tears as Mary announced the show was over.
KIM AND AGGIE The celebrity cleaners – Aggie MacKenzie, Scottish, ice-dancing, ex-MI5 employee, and Kim Woodburn. Shoot the cockroaches, scrape off the mould, shovel up the stoor, before inviting the dust-busting duo to your low-maintenance cosy domicile, or they'll be down on you like a ton of Marigolds. If domestic cleanliness is next to godliness, they're a pair of scavenging angels.
The full article contains 327 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
