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Times
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The awful final chapter of Fred Goodwin's story is yet to be told
There is a moment in Make It Happen, the National Theatre of Scotland's new production about the fall of RBS, when a furious Gordon Brown demands that Fred Goodwin be dragged from the bank's headquarters in Gogarburn in handcuffs. I wanted to stand up and punch the air. Obviously, I didn't. Such behaviour is frowned upon in the dress circle of the Festival Theatre. My fellow audience members would have been black affronted. But still, the thought was there. I can understand why some London theatre critics gave this show only three stars. They must have felt like interlopers in a mass act of therapy, with the Edinburgh audience wrestling with one of the most shameful episodes in Scottish history. I know someone who worked at a senior level of the Royal Bank at the peak of the crisis. The day it all came to a head he stepped outside his office in the City to clear his head. On a street corner a news vendor was selling the London Evening Standard, its banner headline predicting calamity. My friend asked for a copy and offered an RBS fiver in payment. 'Nah, mate, that's worthless,' said the vendor. 'They've gone bust.' Many of the 1,900 folk in the audience on Monday night lived through the hubris and nemesis of Goodwin's folly, myself included. For us, for me, this evening at the theatre was a catharsis. Middle-class Edinburgh shared in the glory of the Royal Bank of Scotland in its pomp. The money poured in. House prices soared. Michelin stars were sprinkled on the city's eateries. This was a company town and the company was doing rather well. We watched it all happen in real time. The rise of the Royal to be the biggest bank in the world. The Cupertino-like HQ which opened with a Red Arrows fly-past. Northern Rock. A banking system on the brink of collapse. The bailout by Brown and Alistair Darling. Make it Happen lands the message that this was a crisis created by Scottish bankers, using a dead Scottish economist as a lodestar, and solved by Scottish politicians. Their hubris was our hubris, pressing all our buttons. Goodwin was the pawky boy from Ferguslie Park who took on the toffs of the establishment. The backdrop to the rise of RBS was the backslapping and self-mythologising of the birth of devolution. Brown's rescue represented what we like to think of as national characteristics: canniness, integrity, smeddum. There was a moment in Monday night's performance when a woebegone Brown lamented a political age where seriousness was not a prized virtue. Some guy in the stalls shouted: 'Hear, hear!' My main reaction to the show was anger. In fact I am writing this column the morning after the performance and I am still angry. Why? In part because Goodwin never was never dragged from his well-appointed office in handcuffs, despite Brown's wishes. It was reported a few months ago that the disgraced former chief executive continues to live in Edinburgh on an annual pension estimated at £600,000. Apparently he enjoys golf at Archerfield in East Lothian, as well as indulging his fondness for classic cars. That he lives in luxury while the rest of us live with the consequences of his greed sticks in my craw. Our hollowed-out public realm is the price of a decade of austerity caused by the banking bailout. But the core of my anger is to do with Nigel Farage. Every analysis of the rise of insurgent populist nationalism in this country starts with the banking crisis in 2008. This was the key rupture in the relationship between the public and the political elite. In fact not just the political elite, all elites. Any public confidence that the country's institutions were run by competent people of goodwill was damaged, perhaps irreparably. Sure, much else has happened since. Brexit. Covid. Truss. But this is where it started. This was the seed. The populist harvest we reap today was sown in Gogarburn. Make It Happen was written by James Graham, a playwright showered with plaudits for dramatising the mores of contemporary Britain. For TV he wrote the political dramas Coalition and Brexit: The Uncivil War. For the National Theatre he wrote This House, about the fall of the Labour government in 1979, and Dear England, about Sir Gareth Southgate's management of the England men's football squad. Yes, Graham is English, born in Nottinghamshire and educated at the University of Hull. Some Scots might resent our national flaws being picked apart by an Englishman. I believe we owe him a debt of gratitude. If I have a criticism of the play it is that the consequences — economic, political, social — are not given their full weight. Perhaps Graham thought he could take them as read. Perhaps he is right. Personally, I wanted to see the enormity of the human cost acknowledged. I wanted Goodwin to look, metaphorically, in the eye of every child whose life chances have been diminished as a result of his actions. RBS was the Darien of our age. Two decades on, Scotland is only beginning to emerge from this Greek tragedy. Edinburgh has dusted itself down and begun to perk up a little. The city's financial sector has ditched the wide-oh swagger and instead embraced once more the notion that banking should be dull. RBS is now NatWest.
BBC News
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Brian Cox returns to the Scottish stage as Edinburgh festivals begin
It was the banking disaster which brought a Scottish institution to its knees and sent shockwaves around the world. Now the story of the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been brought home to Edinburgh in the major new production Make it Happen. Veteran actor Brian Cox, who is starring as the ghost of economist Adam Smith, says at the age of 79 he is focused on protest to "give people a better break".The "biting satire" may be the Edinburgh International Festival's most anticipated play, but it's just one of thousands of shows opening this weekend as the city turns into the world's biggest arts venue for another year. Cox is one of 2,000 artists from 42 countries appearing at this year's International Festival, and there are another 4,000 shows in The Fringe, including 500 not registered in time for the publication of the 2025 he played megalomaniac billionaire Logan Roy in TV drama Succession, the actor says his Dundee childhood has given him a focus on the other end of the wealth spectrum. "People forget their roots," Cox told me as he joined EIF director Nicola Benedetti for the world premiere of Make It Happen - a collaboration between the National Theatre of Scotland, Dundee Rep and the festival. "Your roots are so important to you, and that's why I prize my upbringing in Dundee," he asked to play the role of the 18th Century Scot, regarded as the father of modern economics thanks to his book The Wealth of the play suggests it's an earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that was more representative of his philosophy. "There's a line in the play where he says, 'capitalism, I don't even know what that means'," Cox explained. "He saw himself as a moral philosopher. He did not see himself as other people saw him. It was the conditions in which people lived that concerned him."Reflecting on his tough upbringing in Dundee, Cox rejects the suggestion it was "terrible"."No, it wasn't - it was a learning experience. Yeah, it was tough. It was as tough as hell."You know, when your dad's dead when you're eight, and then you've got a mum who goes through a series of nervous breakdowns and has electric shock treatment, I mean, when she goes from a healthy 10-stone down to just over five-stone, you know, it's just appalling."But you live with it. You learn. But you do need people to say, 'let's give people the best advantage'. And that is not happening." At the age of 79, Cox shows no signs of easing up. After the play, he will embark on a national tour of a one man show based around his memoir and he has just directed his first film. Glenrothan - a family drama about a Scots whisky company starring Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson - will be released next year."I'm a certain age now," he admits. "The end is much nearer than the beginning. So I just feel that all I can do is protest."I can't do much more than protest, but I do protest because I believe that we need to give people a better break than we give them."Cox first committed himself to this play about the financial crisis several years ago, when Andrew Panton was appointed as director of Dundee Rep."We first spoke at the opening of V&A Dundee," Cox said. "He was keen to return to the Rep and do a play but we didn't know what that would be."Then Covid happened, which put a pause on everything, and we realised we needed a play which would bring people flocking back to the theatre." Make it Happen was suggested by Dundee Rep's chairman Dr Susan Hetrick, who'd worked at RBS just before the financial crisis and is now an expert in toxic culture in the workplace."You don't imagine that you're going to be working in an organisation, particularly one that was as well regarded as RBS, and 15 years later that you'd be looking at this on stage," she said."How something so successful, that was so lauded by academics and by business schools, could collapse."Trying to understand what happened in the organisation, but also within the economy and society, is so important and I think there's a lot of lessons and a lot of insights that we can take from it."At the centre of the play is Fred Goodwin, played by Sandy Grierson. A former accountant from Paisley nicknamed Fred the Shred, Goodwin was headhunted to RBS to help build the biggest bank in the world. And for a time, it was. He shifted the bank's traditional New Town headquarters to a greenfield site at Gogarburn near Edinburgh Airport which housed 3,000 staff, tennis courts, a medical centre and a corporate jet."The character that James Graham has written is fascinating," Sandy said."It shifts from the bespectacled auditor to that Reservoir Dogs style, strutting around Gogarburn."He's a product of the times, especially for a working class lad from Paisley."It would be easy to present Goodwin, who was stripped of his knighthood but retained his pension, as a pantomime villain. Or as a scapegoat. But Sandy believes the play asks wider questions of society."To what extent does it get caught up in a mood and a time? People thought that the bankers in the high finance tribe had solved it."They thought it was like alchemy. They were on top of the world until the alchemy came crashing down."
BBC News
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Writer James Graham welcomes 'beast of an actor' to latest play
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham has spoken of his delight that actor Brian Cox will star in his latest It Happen, which charts the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in will play the ghost of Scottish economist Adam who lives in Pulborough, West Sussex, has previously had hits with Dear England and the stage version of Boys from the Blackstuff, which opens in Brighton on Tuesday. Graham said of Brian Cox: "He is a beast of an actor. I have admired him for years and years."People know him from television but he's a theatre actor at heart."You feel so presumptuous and at times you pinch yourself – the 11-year-old boy who was making up stories in his room gets to work with these Hollywood actors, these legends. "You feel incredibly lucky."Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, the play will preview in Cox's home town Dundee before moving on to Edinburgh. The playwright said his passion for writing was fuelled by his mother who bought him a typewriter at the age of just said: "I loved writing stories and I was very lucky that my mother – rather than rolling her eyes and saying 'get a proper job', really encouraged me from a young age."Dear England, the story of Gareth Southgate and his England football redemption, picked up the Olivier Award for Best New Play in is set to go on tour from September, as well as becoming a BBC television series with Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as the former England manager. Meanwhile his adaptation of the 1980s television series Boys from the Blackstuff opens at the Brighton Theatre Royal on Tuesday."To work with Alan Bleasdale- someone I grew up watching on the sofa with my mum when I was eight or nine – to actually spend time in a room with him building this for the stage was one of the honours of my life to be honest," he said that living in Sussex helped to provide a peaceful base for his writing."I need the peace and quiet to be able to write and to hear my own thoughts and from the first time I arrived in West Sussex I just could not believe it – the beauty of it," he said."I got taken there by friends and just fell in love with it and just knew it was going to be a really inspiring place to live and work."
Daily Mail
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Go to anti-misogyny lessons? Succession star Brian Cox channels his inner Logan Roy as he says he is 'f****** sick' of woke sensitivity training
It's not hard to imagine what Logan Roy's response would be if he was asked to attend anti- misogyny training. And it seems Brian Cox thought much the same as his Succession character would as he gave typically short shrift to lessons that he is required to take before his upcoming play. The Scottish actor, 79, told The Mail on Sunday: 'It's all so proper, and I'm so f****** sick of proper. It's all very conditioned and it's about as deep as a blackhead, quite frankly. 'I'm a bit long in the tooth to do any anti-misogyny training. It's for much younger people than me.' Cox is returning to the stage in his home country for the first time in a decade to star in Make It Happen, a satire of the downfall of the Royal Bank of Scotland during the 2008 financial crisis. He will star as the ghost of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in the play, written by James Graham and directed by Adam Panton. The National Theatre of Scotland, which is staging the production, also asked white actors to attend anti-racism training – saying it was 'not compulsory for people of colour or from the global majority [which includes anyone who is not white]'. However, following a complaint from the Free Speech Union that the policy treated 'members of one racial group less favourably', the theatre ordered a review. It is now understood that black actors have been told to attend the training as well. The Free Speech Union reported the theatre to the UK equality watchdog under the Equality Act, which prohibits employers from treating staff differently based on race, skin colour, nationality and ethnic origin. Cox told the MoS he was feeling 'all right' about starting rehearsals for the play, which will open at the Edinburgh International Festival on July 30. He celebrated his birthday last week at the Berkshire Film Festival in Massachusetts, where he was a guest of honour. The National Theatre of Scotland said: 'We acknowledge that use of the correct language around the offer of this training is important and this is currently under review.'
BBC News
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson board return flight of The High Life
It's 30 years since Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson last portrayed Air Scotia's bumbling cabin crew in the cult TV sitcom The High BBC show ran for just one short season before both actors, who had met at drama school, went off in different directions to pursue solo reuniting to write a book about their first stage partnership, playing Victor and Barry, made them realise that The High Life was ripe for a revival."We had talked about it but we'd both gone off to do other things and it just didn't happen," says Forbes, now an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. "We had so much fun writing the book, that we thought it would be great to do this."Alan and Forbes first met as students in 1982 and formed the double act Victor and Barry which became a staple of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When they killed off the characters at a last benefit night in the London Palladium 10 years later, they transformed them into Steve and the last year, they've been working with the National Theatre of Scotland to revive them, along with long-suffering stewardess Shona Spurtle and the unhinged Captain Hilary Duff. Both Siobhan Redmond and Patrick Ryecart will reprise their roles on show's director Andrew Panton, who now heads Dundee Rep where the show will open next spring, was a dancer in the original opening title sequence. Jonny McKnight, who co-wrote the show, grew up with the TV series."I never believed that a reunion show would happen, let alone that I would get to be part of the team working on it," he workshops have been taking place in Glasgow over the past few months, with one full, rehearsed run-through. "It's bonkers," says Alan Cumming, who last autumn took over as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival now divides his time between Scotland and his home in the United States, where he hosts the US version of the TV show The Traitors."For so long, we've been imagining all the crazy things we wanted them to do so to have them doing it with gusto was quite surreal. "The fact we're all back doing this - the fact we're still alive - is a cause for celebration."The musical picks up where the series left off. Sebastian Flight and Steve McCracken are still on duty in the cabin of Air Scotia's limited services. Only this time, dearie me, the end could be in sight as the airline has just been sold."It could be the end," says Alan, who plays Sebastian."The last flight as we know it and all sorts of supernatural ginger things are about to happen.""The High Life came from that Scottish surreal comedy tradition," says Forbes, "and we've tried to recreate that in the musical. "But it's also rooted in the truth of two guys who work together and have been forced to be together for years and years. "Life has gone on and they've still been dreaming of other things. They're now in their 60s and they're asking, is that it?"As two guys in their 60s, who have achieved plenty of things in their separate careers, this is born out of love, not necessity. And they can't wait to get back on the road, just as they did in the 1980s as young graduates of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama."It's exactly what we did when we first left drama school except we're in big theatres now," says Alan."The fun of being on tour, there's nothing like it. "Strange cities, with a bunch of people you love, working on it as you go along. It's such a great experience."The High Life is presented by National Theatre of Scotland and Dundee Rep Theatre in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts and Capital Theatres. The world premiere is at Dundee Rep on 28 March 2026, touring to HMT Aberdeen, Edinburgh Festival Theatre and Kings Theatre Glasgow.
