Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 6 on 6/2/2003.

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Bigger than Madonna

Roddy Martine talks...

Bigger than Madonna My discovery of ceilidh music took place when I was seven years old and living in the south of England. I was watching one of those ‘teuchter’ Hogmanay television programmes which during the ‘60s and ‘70s so profoundly influenced Scottish popular culture at home and abroad. Aged seven, it was the first time I had been allowed to stay up to see in the bells and to watch such a programme, and I have to admit that it made a lasting impression. It might sound a ludicrous confession given my subsequent immersion in the ‘real’ Scotland, but it was through such legendary performers as Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson, Andy Stewart, Jimmy Logan and Duncan MacRae – those Caledonian superstars of the late 20th century – that I discovered just how different the Scots are from Anglo Saxons.

The English are incapable of submerging themselves in such unashamed sentimentality, which some might claim is to their advantage. Not so, the Scots. We have no such inhibitions. We revel in it.

But how do we get away with it?

It is all about knowing who you are and where you come from, even when you live far, far away, which gives you all the more reason to make a noise about it. There is nothing wrong with being vulnerable to emotion. Have you ever heard a Scottish football crowd sing Flower of Scotland? Have you ever been to a Kirkin o’ The Tartan ceremony in Australia? The blood, as they say, is strong. Even when you have never been to Scotland. In later years when I actual.....

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By Roddy Martine

Section : Roddy Martine's World

Page number : 7