John Hannah has got Scots talking childhood street games after he shared one he grew up playing in East Kilbride - a game he attributes his first connection to acting with.
Best Man’s Fall, also knows as Dead Man’s Fall, was a game the Four Weddings and a Funeral star used to play as a youngster living on a council estate in the Westwood area of the South Lanarkshire town.
While speaking on the Scottish Geek Guy podcast, Hannah wondered if the childhood game was one only Scots - or people from East Kilbride - know.
He said: “I wonder if it’s something that just strangely developed in East Kilbride. I want to just say a funny thing about East Kilbride I’ve said my whole life. We used to play a game in the summer, all the kids in the street, we used to play a game called ‘Best Man’s Fall’.
“I’ve asked actors around the world if they’ve ever heard of this, and they’ve never ever heard of it.
A young John with pal Peter Hickey aka Batman and Robin in Chalmers Drive in 1965
“So you get your crowd of guys, somebody’s in and then everybody else is at the far end of the grass and they say ‘I want a spear in the throat’. So they run up towards it and you throw a spear [feigning a brutal choking death] and then you die pretending you’ve just had a spear in the throat.
“Somebody else says right I want a machine gun, you die like you’ve seen in the movies, and at the end of everybody having gone, the person who was in says ‘right that was the best’ and then they’re in and you do it all again.”
He went from Westwood to Hollywood, but Hannah says he “wouldn’t swap a second” of his childhood with children today.
John as a teenager sitting at the bar with his late mum Susan
Looking back on his upbringing with great fondness, one of East Kilbride’s most famous sons shared memories of the “brave new world of the New Town”.
Hannah had previously told his local newspaper the East Kilbride News: “I loved my upbringing and neighbourhood. The adventures, the schools, the brave new world of the New Town. I think my parents, moving to that environment from a Gorbals tenement to back and front garden must’ve been bliss. They certainly had a good time.”
The Sliding Doors and Spartacus star grew up in a Murray council house in Chalmers Drive with his sisters, Joan and Elizabeth, and now lives in London with his wife, Danish actress Joanna Roth, and their two children.
In 2015 he bid an emotional farewell to his childhood home following the death of his dad John Sr, followed by his mum Susan.
Hannah added: “It’s been a long time now, and a while since I’ve been back. My own kids are going through school in London.
“I wouldn’t swap a second with children today. You can keep your Internet, give me conkers and crossy, two-man hunt and bulldog.
“Oh and a game we played called Best Man’s Fall - now that might be my first connection to acting.
“Anyway I wouldn’t change a minute of it. Keep your PlayStation - get outside and play!
“Course it’s a different world now isn’t it. Happy days.”
John Hannah, who tread the boards with East Kilbride Rep Theatre Club before being accepted to Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, came to prominence in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as Matthew. His other film appearances include Sliding Doors, The Hurricane, and The Mummy quadrilogy.
Hannah will return as Jonathan Carnahan in the upcoming fourth installment of The Mummy franchise, titled The Mummy: Book of the Dead, scheduled for release on October 15, 2027.