Chic Murray was a Scottish comedy legend, renowned for his razor-sharp wit and unforgettable one-liners that entertained generations of audiences.
Long before Billy Connolly transformed British stand-up, Chic Murray was doing something on stage that must have seemed almost impossible to categorise.
There were stories, songs and strange observations. There were long pauses, sudden changes of direction and punchlines that appeared to have wandered in from an entirely different conversation.
Delivered in Murray’s dry, deadpan style, they helped establish the Greenock-born comic as one of the great originals of Scottish entertainment.
Charles Thomas McKinnon Murray was born in Greenock on 6 November 1919 and did not initially appear destined for a life in showbusiness.
He left school as a teenager and became an apprentice engineer at Kincaid’s shipyard, while indulging his interest in music through amateur groups including the Whinhillbillies and Chic and His Chicks.
He met Maidie Dickson, an experienced performer who was appearing at the Greenock Empire, and would later become Murray’s wife.
Performing as Maidie and Murray, and memorably billed as “The Tall Droll with the Small Doll”, they worked their way through Scotland’s theatres before breaking into the wider British variety circuit.
By the mid-1950s, Murray’s peculiar comic style was beginning to attract attention. The couple appeared at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre and toured major music halls around Britain.
Tall, often wearing his trademark bunnet, and apparently slightly bewildered by whatever was happening around him, he could make an audience laugh simply by taking an ordinary sentence somewhere completely unexpected.
He moved into some acting, later delivering one of his best remembered screen performances as the eccentric headmaster in Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl.
Murray died in Edinburgh on 29 January 1985, aged 65.
Here are some of Chic Murray’s finest jokes and most memorable one-liners as we remember a great of Scottish comedy.
Chic Murray on simple people:
“My father was a simple man; my mother was a simple woman; you see the result standing in front of you, a simpleton.”
Chic Murray on cigarettes:
“We were so poor; the ultimate luxury in our house at the time was ashtrays without advertisements.”
Chic Murray on spots:
“The police stopped me when I was out in my car. They told me it was a spot check. I admitted to two pimples and a boil.”
Chic Murray on marriage:
“If it weren’t for marriage, husband and wives would have to fight with strangers.”
Chic Murray on cowboys:
“I met this cowboy with a brown paper hat, paper waistcoat and paper trousers. He was wanted for rustling.”
Chic Murray on falling:
“So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked ‘”What’s the matter? Did you fall over?” So I said “No. I’ve a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it.”