Tag: Forth Bridge

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Dog Soldier

SOURCE: SFX
AUTHOR: Will Salmon
DATE: January 2013, see Note below
ORIGINAL: Print-only, no online original.
ARCHIVE: Nothing on Internet Archive since no online original.
NOTE: I had seen this around as a screenshot or a scan in various places on Pinterest. As of July ’23, I no longer remember where I finally found the entire article. It might have been a very clear screenshot, or perhaps I found the magazine this hails from. Whatever the case, there seems to be no online version of the article. Except possibly here and in a couple other places where fans put it up so it would be readable.

—–

He ain’t nuthin’ but the Hound. Will Salmon meets Rory McCann to talk Thrones, werewolves and being “Yarp”…

Rory McCann sounds a bit gruff today. You might not be surprised to hear that about Sandor Clegane aka the Hound — one of the toughest men in Westeros — but there is a practical reason.

“There was a fight scene that I was involved in — a sword fight. We were training with the stuntmen for over three weeks to do this thing. I was training really hard. There’s a lot of screaming and shouting.” That explains the two days of ADR (additional dialogue recording) he’s just completed. “It’s been the longest session I’ve ever done. Normally you’re done in half a day with my character, but this time… I think it’s a reflection of the fact that I’ve got a bigger part this year, I dunno.”

So, more to do for the Hound, a big impressive sword fight… It sounds like circumstances have drastically changed for the man who we last saw leaving King’s Landing under a cloud. “It’s expanding, and I’m coming into my own, character-wise,” he says. “I’ve moved away from this big staffed castle, with hundreds of people, and it’s turning into almost a road trip — with a few skirmishes along the way!” I’m now imagining Dude, Where’s My Car? with decapitations.

“It’s great fun. I reveal my character a little bit more now. I mean there’s even a chance of humour for the Hound this year. You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s true! I only saw that in playbacks last week. There were some people laughing, but it was okay to laugh. It’s all good.”

Rory McCann had an unconventional introduction to acting. The 6ft 6in Scotsman left school and joined the Forestry Commission. After working as a tree surgeon, he moved into rope access jobs, one of which was painting the Forth Rail Bridge [sic: Forth Bridge], west of Edinburgh. A documentary was made on the men who abseil off the bridge every day, and Rory was there, singing away. Someone spotted him, and offered him an ad for Scott’s Porage Oats. That, in turn, led to a number of small roles (you can spot him in the second episode of the rebooted Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) playing a bouncer, and he was an extra in Willow [sic: you will never see him in Willow, as he was fired from set for laughing during takes]), before his breakthrough performance as wheelchair-bound Kenny McLeod in The Book Group — a role that earned him a Scottish Bafta. Hollywood beckoned, and he has since carved out a bit of a niche for himself as a sword-wielding warrior, appearing in Alexander, Solomon Kane, Clash of the Titans, and, er, Season Of The Witch.

But perhaps his most memorable movie role, at least for SFX readers, was 2007’s Hot Fuzz, where he played Michael “Yarp” Armstrong. “That was a pleasure,” he smiles. “I remember them going, ‘He really is Yarp!’ because I was the custodian of a castle.” Wait… what?

“For a while, I was living in a mock castle in front of a real castle. There was a giant wheel in the lounge. All I had was a chair, a grand piano, a giant German Shepherd and a fully dressed Highland dummy called Rab. He was my only friend. My job was to see who was calling before I opened those two giant oak doors. I was the guy that would open a smaller door within the big door and say, ‘YOU RANG?'”

Er… okay. “So I got the call. I didn’t really understand how big the part was. I thought, ‘Well, you never know, John Mills won an Oscar playing a village idiot.’ I went along and I heard who was in the cast and it was fantastic. And I knew that I wouldn’t be up worrying about my lines, because it would just be ‘yarp’. Simon and Nick were really good fun, and all the old characters… Edward Woodward! And lovely Jim Broadbent. That was an easy job. It was great.” So he’d work with Edgar Wright again? “The last time I saw him was in Iceland and he was dancing with Björk — I’d jump through any hoop for him.”

BLOOD AND WATER

But back to the Hound. Sandor was last seen departing the battle of the Blackwater, having made everyone cheer with his declaration, “Fuck the Kingsguard, fuck the city, fuck the king!” So how is he going to cope away from King’s Landing? “He might hit the bottle hard after leaving,” Rory says. “That [the episode ‘Blackwater’] was incredible. It was a night shoot for a start, and it went on for at least a couple of weeks. Night shoots are hard enough for a few days, but when it lasts for weeks… The weather was atrocious, but the DOPs loved that. Armour and rain really work, apparently. They like the glow and the sparkle and the water, but it led to problems. There were rivers that weren’t there before, and extras lying in pools of mud and blood and water… People were half hypothermic. It was wild.”

That episode was directed by Neil Marshall, best known for his horror movies The Descent and Dog Soldiers. “I’m terrified of werewolves,” Rory says with a chuckle. “I understand some people find it very funny, but I can’t watch it! Neil’s known for very good blood and gore and I think that’s why he was brought in. He was great to work with.”

It’s becoming ever clearer as the series progresses that there’s a streak of nobility in the Hound. “Well, it’s a thought that he’s more of a true knight than any of the others. Even though he’d never want to be a knight — he can’t bear them — he believes in their values. But listen, he’s not all good. He’s done some terrible things. Mostly under orders, though…”

Ah yes, orders from Westeros’s demented boy king. “He doesn’t like Joffrey, but he does what he’s told. But maybe that’s changed now… the Hound at the moment is an outlaw.” But while Sandor may hate Joffrey, Rory is full of praise for the man who plays him, Jack Gleeson. “He’s a very clever, witty, fun guy. He’s a good magician, y’know? He likes slight [sic] of hand and stuff like that. Quite old-fashioned in some ways. The first time I met him he was smoking a pipe! He’s such a great actor, a nice guy and he plays, so convincingly, a little shit!” So convincing, I’ve heard rumours that he occasionally gets grief from angry viewers. “If I knew someone was giving him hassle, I’d rip their bloody head off,” Rory growls. Yikes.

But what about Sansa, the young Stark who Joffrey has specialised in tormenting. It’s fair to say that the Hound has a soft spot for her. But why? Is it paternal? “He’s seeing the similarity to his own upbringing,” Rory says, referring to Sandor’s troubled backstory. “There are memories being brought back of being bullied by his brother, and he hates that. And she’s everything that he isn’t — there’s a purity there.”

Some fans have speculated that he might have a romantic interest in her. “A fondness and stuff… I don’t think there’s any of that, really. He’s protective and frustrated at seeing her living in airy-fairy land.”

GETTING INTO CHARACTER

In reality, Rory is a genial, funny and charming man, very different to his taciturn character. Today he’s wearing a natty red scarf and navy beret that you can’t imagine the Hound ever going near. Getting into character is a long process of physical exercise, hours in the make-up chair and concentration. “It still takes about an hour and three quarters to put on all my stuff, so I’m usually the first in actor-wise.” Not that he’s complaining. “We haven’t got the longest shifts. People like make-up and wardrobe, anyone like that… they’re the first in and the last out. They’re the hard workers really. We’re still pampered.”

In terms of exercise, Rory foregoes a personal trainer, preferring to run five or six miles a day and hit the gym in the evenings. “And I don’t smoke, and don’t drink for at least three months before a job. I’ll phone up my friends and tell them not to speak to me until I’ve finished, because they drink too much! I’m quite reclusive at the best of times but when I’m working, you never see me. I feel like a soldier training, or something — it’s all about the job. I had to bulk up this year because I knew it would be particularly physical. That fight was the hardest thing I’ve done so far. We did it in intense heat and I’m carrying so much armour with this costume. But it paid off.”

Ah yes, back to the fight. It must be tough wearing that much clobber. “Yeah, yeah… I can’t pick it up. The wardrobe department needs a wheelbarrow to carry my costume around! There’s so many layers and ropes and stuff, and a big cloak. It’s all good fun!”

And being on the road brings its own set of problems for the Hound. “The main thing is that I’ve got very rusty armour, so everybody can hear me coming! I think there was some page oiling and cleaning his armour every night, before. There ain’t no page in the countryside. You can hear him before you see him now: squeak, squeak, squeak! I think that’s why I’ve been in the sound studio for so long.”

Can he tell us who he meets along the way? “That’s a total spoiler. I’d have my bollocks cut off if I told you,” he grins, and says no more.

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Scots film star Rory McCann returns for gangster flick

SOURCE: Daily Record
AUTHOR: Steve Hendry
DATE: 11 January 2009
ORIGINAL: Click here
ARCHIVE: Click here

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MOVIE star Rory McCann has played gangsters, warriors and demon slayers.

But he has played it for laughs on every one of his films – by stocking up on pranks.

Even Hollywood film-maker Oliver Stone has fallen victim to one of his practical jokes, after Rory put snakes under his hat.

The 6ft 7in lumberjack-turned-actor crossed swords with the movie mogul for epic Alexander.

The prolific prankster said: “Every time I go on a job I spend £100 at Tam Shepherd’s joke shop in Glasgow, although Oliver Stone didn’t like the snakes.

“Tying people’s swords together with fishing line before a take is a favourite and I superglued an actor’s flip flops together as he slept on a plane. The trick is not to get caught.”

The jokes served him well while filming the sex scenes in his latest movie, Brit gangster flick The Crew.

Rory, 39, said: “I do awful things in a brothel. It’s shocking.

“I relieved the stress by hiding a remote control fart machine on set. If it got tense I pressed the button.”

Rory needs a sense of humour to pursue his dream. Since he gave up painting the Forth Bridge after getting his big break as the Scott’s Porage Oats man 10 years ago he has amassed a string of credits.

He picked up a Scottish Bafta for his role as a wheelchair-bound ex-climber in Channel 4’s The Book Group. He was in Rockface, State of Play, Shameless and played Attila The Hun on TV. His films include Young Adam with Ewan McGregor and Hot Fuzz with Simon Pegg.

But his most important job is his next one and he is back working as a lumberjack to pay the bills.

He said: “Workwise it’s been a horrendous couple of years. But this is my path. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Rory has streamlined his life to allow him to take what jobs come up.

He said: “Scotland is home now, it was Iceland last year. I have two caravans, a boat and a few dosses. I don’t want a base, I want the work.”

Rory has cause for optimism. One of his films awaiting release – comic adaptation Solomon Kane – could be part of a trilogy. In the meantime, he is delighted with The Crew.

He said: “It’s like Goodfellas or The Sopranos set in Liverpool.”

The Crew is out on DVD tomorrow.

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HULK RORY LEAVES NO STONE UNTURNED; SCOTT’S PORAGE OATS STAR RORY McCANN SPILLS THE BEANS ON HOW HE WON A PART IN OLIVER STONE’S MOVIE ALEXANDER BY TELLING THE GREAT MAN TO TAKE A HIKE.

SOURCE: The Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland, UK)
AUTHOR: Paul English
DATE: 01 January 2005
ORIGINAL: No longer on TDR website. See next item.
ARCHIVE: The Free Library by Farlex. Had trouble with Internet Archive on this one for some reason. Will re-attempt later if they get their shit together.
NOTE: I have to say, on the one hand I love the tabloids because they’ll publish the most random shit about Rory, even when the random shit is true. But I could do without all the “hulk” and “jolly green giant” remarks. Jesus.

His former bandmate Graham’s story about his job at The Beeches is corroborated here, though. Haha. Poor Rory. I could see myself doing something like that…

P.S. Lookit the URL (website address) I gave this one. Hahahahaha.

—–

HOW does an out of work Scottish actor get himself off the road to nowhere and into a Hollywood blockbuster?

By telling one of the biggest directors in the business to f*** off. Well, it worked for Rory McCann. The 35-year-old giant of the Scott’s Porage Oats adverts relaxes into his armchair at Glasgow’s One Devonshire Gardens, contemplating his latest lucky career break.

‘I hadn’t worked for 22 weeks,’ says the ex-Book Group star. ‘I was totally broke.

‘I knew they were doing auditions for Oliver Stone’s Alexander at The Grosvenor hotel in Glasgow, but I heard they wanted us to have prepared a Shakespeare piece for it. I’d never done any Shakespeare and felt I really couldn’t push that one.’

But a chance encounter with a veteran Scottish actor gave him the boot up the behind that took him from Glasgow’s Hillhead to the Hollywood hills.

‘I was at the Western Baths off Byres Road when I met Dave Anderson, who asked me what I was up to work-wise.

‘I told him there was nothing much, apart from this audition up at the Grosvenor, that I wasn’t going to.

‘He nearly kicked me up the arse, and said: ‘Don’t you dare. Get over there and sing a song, whatever, just do something.’ ‘He told me that I’d always wonder what happened if I didn’t go. So I turned up with nothing. I was like ‘Hello, here I am, do you want me to sing?’ In the end, Stone’s casting associate prompted the jolly screen giant to tell how he went from being a lumberjack via painting the Forth Rail Bridge to auditioning for an Oliver Stone movie.

So the Glasgow Hulk told his tales about cutting down trees, punting porridge and winding up in a wheelchair for a part in Channel 4’s The Book Group.

And it paid off.

‘A few days later I got a call and was told to get down to London right away,’ he says. There he met Stone, the big-hitting director whose CV boasts Natural Born Killers, Platoon, JFK and Born On The Fourth of July.

But rather than feeling intimidated, Rory, without a jot of acting training to his name, refused to kow-tow to Stone’s formidable status.

He says: ‘When I was introduced to him I had my lucky t-shirt on, a freebie from Panavision Scotland, which he immediately took the piss out of. I told him to f*** off.

‘And from then on I think we just treated each other as men, really, and not as director and actor.

‘The second thing he asked me was ‘Can you fight?’ ‘I was like: ‘Why’s that your question? Why would you ask me that?’ But the reasons were soon to become clear. By the time Rory had teamed up with co-stars Val Kilmer and leading man Colin Farrell at a pre-filming boot camp, he’d been pushed to his physical and mental limits in preparation for the gruelling role.

The rigid training schedule was meted out by battle-scarred ex-servicemen, who cared not a jot about fame, wealth and pandering to egos.

Rory says: ‘When I met Captain Dale Dye (the former US Military Commander, now eminent film advisor) I went up to him and said: ‘Hi, I’m Rory McCann and I’m playing General Crateros.

‘He said to me: ‘I know who you are, son, you Communist maggot t*rd. Now get down and give me 50.’ ‘I was like ‘Nice to meet you…’ Three weeks of physical graft in the merciless heat of the African desert toughened the actors up and bonded them together.

Rory says: ‘There was no electricity, no phones, no alcohol, no sweets. But it brought us closer together.

‘We’d be crawling over sand dunes to secretly meet some guy on a donkey, giving him half a bank note, and asking him to bring back some chewing gum, cigarettes and Coke, and he’d get the other half when he came back. We were all hitting walls.

‘We lived in tents, had no showers, and for lunch we’d be given half a peach, some olives and stuff.

‘There’d be maggots in the food but you’d just eat them anyway. There was no breakfast. We were only allowed a two-minute shower every second day.

‘We were worn to the bone. But we were soldiers by the end of it and ready to shoot the film. It created a brotherhood.

‘I don’t think anyone involved will ever be the same again.’

Rory recalls how bad-boy buddy Colin Farrell broke down in the middle of boot camp when news reached him that he’d become a dad for the first time.

He says: ‘Someone faxed a photo of his boy to him. I have a picture of him sitting there wearing a head torch, with him looking at this picture of his baby, crying his eyes out, covered from head to toe in all sorts of sh*t.

‘Someone managed to sneak in some beer for a quiet celebration that night. It was like prison. But I have to say I loved every last minute of it.’

Rory plays one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Initially, he feared his part might end up on Stone’s cutting room floor.

But when veteran Brian Blessed fell ill during filming it forced a rethink, resulting in Crateros taking on the mutiny speech – a key scene.

‘Until Blessed went down, I think I had about six lines,’ says Rory. ‘I was thinking about how much I’d end up being involved in things.

Stone’s cutting techniques are legendary, you’ll end up as an elbow in one shot, that’s the worry. But I ended up featuring quite heavily.’ The epic battle scenes took meticulous planning but are visually stunning on the big screen.

‘There were members of the Moroccan army and various other extras and ex-forces men involved in filming those scenes,’ says Rory.

‘Even some of them found it hard.’ The film was shot in Thailand, Morocco and in London studios.

‘Forget stunt routines,’ he says. ‘You were fighting for your bloody life.’ But it wasn’t all hard graft. Rory, the former frontman of a defunct band called Thundersoup, wowed his co-stars with his musical talents.

‘I played piano every other night in Bangkok or Marrakesh,’ he says.

‘Nearly everyone was a musician of some sort, apart from Colin who can’t sing to save himself. We were jamming all the time. Farrell was right in the middle of it all – but he’s bloody useless at music.’

THE film’s LA premier left Rory a little disappointed. He expected to party all through the night in the city of angels with co-stars Angelina Jolie, Kilmer, Farrell and Anthony Hopkins, yet he wound up back in his hotel room raiding the mini-bar. He says: ‘It wasn’t wild. I thought they’d have been partying all night but we were thrown off the piano at the Chateau Marmont Hotel and everyone was ready for bed by 2am. I didn’t like Los Angeles. Don’t know if it’s my scene. But I’d go again for work, of course.’

Which is a distinct possibility given the fact that his global profile has now been given a serious shot in the arm.

Indeed, some have suggested that the jolly screen giant has already earned his first million working on Alexander.

But Rory laughs that off.

‘Some a***hole made that up,’ he says. ‘My mother actually sent me a paper cutting when I’d just left the boot camp.

‘But the truth is I’d never been so broke. ‘I used to actually do OK when I worked as a lumberjack, I always had cash in my pocket. But now I hardly have any.

‘When I work, I live like a lord and spend all my cash on everyone and enjoy it with them. When I don’t work I tighten the belt and walk everywhere.’

He still lives in Glasgow with his girlfriend but hasn’t bought a place yet.

The money’s not quite steady enough, and he’s still driving around in a 30-year-old Scimitar, although you can’t quite see him driving something modern and sensible.

‘You can leave the Scimitar for three months in the rain and it just doesn’t rust,’ he says.

Rory’s just finished filming Beowulf & Grendell with Gerry Butler and Tony Curran in Iceland, but there’s nothing concrete around the corner.

‘At the moment, I have no idea what my next job is, or when my next pay cheque will be,’ he says.

Rory’s cashed Giros like anyone else who’s out of work – even after the Porage Oats ads – but he hopes it doesn’t get back to that.

If things get desperate again, he’d reluctantly – very reluctantly – consider getting that chainsaw out again.

‘It would kill me,’ he says. ‘I’ve been totally winging the acting – and I was a cowboy at the tree-felling thing too.

‘I destroyed everything in that job – greenhouses, garages, a BMW…

‘I even once did a job on a house called The Beeches.’

The implication’s clear that there weren’t as many beech trees left on that job, after Rory had hacked his way through the grounds, as the owners might have liked there to be.

Still, there’s always the dole queue if things get really grim.

‘Aye, that’s right,’ he says with a huge smile.

‘Imagine that – I’ll be the only millionaire signing on at Maryhill Job Centre.’

Posted on

Time & Place: Good times as king of the castle

SOURCE: The Times
AUTHOR: Mike Wilson
DATE: 03 August 2003
ORIGINAL: Click here
ARCHIVE: Cannot archive due to paywall.
NOTE: If this looks familiar, it’s because you’ve seen the story of Rory as a castle doorman in “Dog Soldier“. This story goes into much more detail and gives us context for several other things going on in his life at the time. Finding this for me was like being the little kid at Christmas.

And hey, big man. You ever want someone to come hang out with you in a castle gatehouse again, winter or summer, hit me up. It’s cold? Fuck it, let’s cuddle.

I know. I know. Shaddup.I KNOW, I KNOW, MARRIED MAN. Never mind. Grump.

—–

Actor Rory McCann loved life in an old stone gatehouse, he tells Mike Wilson

The gatehouse looks like a mini-castle — it has 30ft oak doors. Downstairs, there was a grand piano, plus big wheels, the size of a car wheel, that were used to open the 30ft doors. Upstairs, 50 steps up a turret, was my bedroom.

Rowallan Castle is owned by a friend who played with me in a band. And as well as doing tree surgery, I was also required to walk the land, with my gun and dog, to keep an eye on things. Basically, in exchange for being able to live in the gatehouse, I was an unpaid night watchman, doing the odd job around the place and cutting down the odd tree. I felt very lucky. This was only five years ago.

I had great times at Rowallan. It was hard, though, during the winter. The only way to heat the house was with log fires but it would take four hours before the house would feel warm, because the stone (walls) just sucked the heat from the fires. To get a bath, I’d just go down to Kilmarnock swimming pool.

In summer, though, it was just glorious. And I had the whole place to myself. I am very good with my own company. Most of my girlfriends, however, didn’t like staying there when it was dark and cold. Some thought it was like camping, because it was so basic.

Furniture-wise, there were only four pieces: a grand piano, a bed, a sofa and a chair. It’s just as well I can play the piano. There was no cooker, for instance. But I got by for food: lots of fish suppers, I suppose. I’d sometimes cook on the fire.

There was also a dummy — Rab — in full Highland dress, which would scare me every time I opened the door to the room it was in.

Eventually, I had to start earning something for a living, so I left Rowallan for a high-rise in Glasgow and a job painting the Forth bridge. I did that for a year.

It wasn’t the best time of my life, partly because I had to get rid of my dog, a big German shepherd.

But during that time came a call from an agent, asking me to appear in a television ad for Scott’s porridge oats. It meant I was able to dump the ropes and dump the chainsaw and I’ve never looked back.

I now live in the west end of Glasgow. But I dream of one day having my own castle, a hideyhole.

You might know the porridge ad: I’m wearing a kilt, walking down the street, and the wind blows up. It looked very Marilyn Monroe, standing over the air vent.

You have got to remember, I was knocking on agents’ doors all during this period. But all I’d get were one-liners. One of the reasons I moved to Glasgow from Rowallan, I suppose, was to be closer to the acting scene.

And then Annie Griffin, who wrote and directed The Book Group asked me to read a script. I was actually working on a tree when she arrived in person.

Of course, I was expecting it to be another one-line wonder. She handed me the script. I said, “Which line do I say?” And she replied, “No, read the whole script.”

And lo and behold, I’m reading the character of Kenny and his stories are feeling like my stories. And then, a while after that, last year, I am picking up a Scottish Bafta for Best Television Performance.

Best known for playing Kenny in Channel 4’s The Book Group, Rory McCann has appeared in Peter the Great, broadcast on the BBC, and has a part in a film, Young Adam, to be screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival

Posted on

I FELL INTO ACTING SAYS OATS HUNK; SCOTS ACTOR AND CLIMBER RORY MCCANN ON THE MOUNTAIN PLUNGE THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE

SOURCE: Daily Record
AUTHOR: Rick Fulton
DATE: 28 March 2002
ORIGINAL: No longer available
ARCHIVE: Click here (Free Library); Click here (Internet Archive)

—–

Byline: RICK FULTON EXCLUSIVE

STRAPPING Scott’s Porage Oats man Rory McCann cheated death after falling an incredible 70 feet in a climbing accident.

And now the fall is the basis of a new pounds 1.3 million Channel 4 comedy series, The Book Group.

The background to Rory’s character Kenny is based on his own horrific accident – but in the television show, he is paralysed and wheelchair-bound.

Luckily for Rory, he recovered from his horrendous injuries, which included a fractured skull.

Rory, 33, explained: “I was holding on to an overhung cliff face on a Yorkshire cliff. I was on my own and I didn’t have any ropes. I had 15 feet to go, but I didn’t have any strength left and couldn’t do the last move.

“For 10 minutes I held on, then went ‘f*** it’ and aimed for a patch of green. I just saw green, green, green and then ‘bang’. I thought I was going to die.” A friend saw Rory fall but couldn’t drive, so with two broken ankles, broken wrist, broken arm and fractured skull, Rory drove to hospital, his mate changing the gears.

He said: “I couldn’t believe I drove away from that with four stookies and a head bandage. I lost a life there.”

Later, the 6ft 6ins Glaswegian gentle giant told writer and director Annie Griffin about his fall and his life-long love of climbing. Now she’s used it for The Book Group about an American woman who comes to Scotland and forms a book group to make friends.

But the people she attracts, such as Kenny, aren’t exactly what she expects and each week we follow their stories.

Being in a wheelchair is a completely different image to the one that has made Rory a international star as the kilted hunk in a white vest who promotes Scotland’s most famous breakfast.

But Rory doesn’t want to be just the face of Porage Oats – he is desperate to become a full-time actor. This is a perfect opportunity, as the series goes out at 9.30pm on a Friday night – Channel 4’s comedy prime time.

And he’s also won a part as Peter Mullen’s brother-in-law in Young Adam, which stars Ewan McGregor and is currently being filmed in Scotland.

RORY is on the cusp of becoming a successful actor – something he’s dreamed of for years. As well as Young Adam, he will soon be seen in London’s Burning as a jealous boyfriend.

For research for The Book Group, Rory met wheelchair users with spinal injuries to see how they got about. He also went round Glasgow for a day in a wheelchair, which was an eye-opener.

He said: “Everyone was extra friendly and slightly patronising. I think many able-bodied folk find it hard to know what to say or how to act with disabled people.

“It did make me think about what life could have been like after my fall, but I’m still amazed I lived, let alone walked away without a permanent injury.”

But then everything about Rory McCann is amazing. He’s had the sort of life many of us only dream of.

Three years ago when he was offered the chance to be the Scott’s Porage Oats man, he turned it down several times because he wanted to climb the Matterhorn. The producers had auditioned 400 people – but the first time Rory was asked, he was too busy painting the Forth Bridge.

At school, Rory was bullied for being small and skinny. He became a lumberjack and broadened out and that started his love of rock climbing.

He had his first taste of acting at an early age. At 17, he was climbing in Wales and was going past a slate quarry when he stumbled on filming for the fantasy epic Willow.

Director Ron Howard, who this week won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, was looking for extra cast and Rory blagged his way in. He recalled: “They didn’t want me at first. They were looking for drunks who were big, so I stood up and said ‘I’m 6ft 6ins and I’m from Glasgow’.

“My scene was having to look terrified, but every time I looked up, my friends would make me laugh. Ron would say: ‘Hey, Scottie, don’t laugh’. But I couldn’t help it and was chucked off set.”

Having grown a beard for his new role, Rory is happy to keep it and ditch the kilt so he doesn’t get recognised as much.

Rory, who lives with Hazel, his doctor girlfriend of four years, said: “People come up and poke me and say ‘there’s the Porage man’. But it was a great privilege to do the adverts.”

He was keen to do the new television drama Rockface, feeling he was Scotland’s only real climber and actor, but was told they already had Clive Russell – another strapping Scot.

But that hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for acting.

He confessed: “I would prefer to cut down some trees for pounds 100 than do a ropy character, but I want to become a full-time actor – I’m still cutting down trees and every time, I hope it’s my last job.

“My hands are knackered – I’ve got white finger from the vibrations of the chainsaws like miners who use heavy equipment down the pits.

“I’m 17 and a half stones going up trees that are about to fall down. I’ve been lucky once and I don’t want to risk it all again.”