Five facts you didn't know about Rikki Fulton... 

1 Rikki Fulton will forever be known as one of Scotland’s finest entertainers, whether walking the walk with fellow star Jack Milroy as Francie and Josie, or talking the (gloomy) talk as the Reverend I M Jolly. He was born in Dennistoun in 1924 and died in 2004 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

2 Rikki’s introduction to theatre came in his early childhood, when his mother would take him along to concert parties at the Alexandra Parade Pavilion. He loved the pierrots, and became enchanted by the idea of performing on stage. In 1938 he joined a concert party to raise money for the Red Cross.

3 In 1939, Rikki worked as a clerk in a coal company and he joined the navy two years later. While completing his training at HMS Ganges, near Harwich, he entered a talent competition and played his own arrangement of the Warsaw Concerto. After demob from the war, he returned to Glasgow and joined the Pantheon amateur dramatic club and applied for an audition with BBC Scotland.

4 Rikki’s first role for the BBC was on January 15, 1947, in the play for schools, The Gowrie Conspiracy. In the early 1950s, he had a small part in Laxdale Hall, a film about a small Hebridean island which refuses to pay its road tax, but it was as one half of Francie and Josie in the celebrated Five past Eight Show, that he really hit the heights of stardom. The duo became one of Scotland’s best-loved double acts.

5 Rikki appeared in BBC Scotland’s Scotch and Wry in 1978 for the first time, playing a range of characters including Rev I M Jolly. The show ran for 15 years and became a Hogmanay institution. The entertainer received a BAFTA lifetime achievement award in 1993.