Martin Compston loves Dundee and Dundonians.
The former professional footballer turned actor’s first away game as a football fan was Dens Park and as a Celtic supporter, his favourite away game is Dundee United.
But the Greenock-raised Line of Duty star has revealed that when he shared a London flat with Kyle Falconer, lead singer of Dundee band The View some years ago, it was “an experience” that “took years off” his life.
“I used to be a flat mate with lead singer Kyle Falconer,” says Martin, 38, “and I can tell you it was an experience. He took years off my life! A wee rascal!
“You’d just come back from filming away and you’d be trying to force the door open because there’d be someone passed out behind the door. Kyle would be like ‘welcome home’. You’d be like ‘everybody out!’”
Dundonians: ‘Total law unto themselves’
Mentioning the experience in a new BBC Scotland series Martin Compston’s Scottish Fling, Martin laughs that Dundonians are a “total law unto themselves”.
The six part series sees the actor take a fun-filled tour of his beloved Scotland with pal Phil MacHugh.
Their unforgettable banter-filled road trip showcases what makes Scotland tick today as the pair visit some spectacular and surprising places.
Bit of a wild day of announcements but particularly proud of this! Can’t wait for folk to see some amazing places and people was a joy to make 🏴❤️ https://t.co/l9cnORSzEm
— martin compston (@martin_compston) August 24, 2022
In Martin’s words, they “drop in on a brilliant bunch of Scots and get properly stuck in about it.”
In the third episode, they travel Scotland’s east coast from St Andrews to Aberdeen, taking in Dundee and Auchmithie along the way.
East coast road trip
Starting in the home of golf, St Andrews, they indulge in a spot of land yachting with brothers Jamie and Guy McKenzie of Blown Away.
They then travel to Dundee where they meet 4J co-founder Chris van der Kuyl whose company makes the console edition of the biggest game in the world, Minecraft.
From there it’s off to Abertay University who were the first to offer a degree in computer games.
They get a tour from lecturer Jung In and discover what other possibilities there are in the virtual landscape.
Continuing their journey north, the boys take a break from the future and indulge in a local tradition that dates back to the Vikings.
They get hands on to help a fifth generation smoker prepare the local delicacy, the Arbroath smokie, on the atmospheric Auchmithie beach.
Next stop is Aberdeen, where the boys discover the East Coast’s burgeoning hip hop scene. Compston gives it a go as MC P-Mac!
They’re also given a musical insight by Aberdonian rapper Ransom FA and meet Dundonian songstress India Rose in the park for an impromptu performance.
Inspiration for the TV series
In conversation with The Courier, Martin explains how he and Phil became friends in their late teens/early 20s in the wake of Martin being in Sweet Sixteen and Phil presenting Gaelic TV.
As young guys in the Scottish creative industries circuit, they’d regularly meet up at awards events and openings.
“We’ve been pals now for like 20 years,” says Martin.
“The Scottish creative industries is quite a small world and we just gravitated to each other – young, eager and ambitious always game for a laugh, always the last two at the bar at the end of the night but at the same time we were talking let’s do this, why not do this.
“These conversations have just kept going. We just naturally became close pals over the last 20 years.”
Martin explains the germ of the idea for the series came out of Martin trying to learn Gaelic – Phil is a Gaelic speaker – and it kind of grew on from there into a travelogue.
The production company came up with the ideas of what to feature though Martin and Phil pitched in terms of approach.
They were both keen to focus on modern Scotland rather than “ticking the box of tartan and everything else that has been done in the past.”
“All that stuff, like whisky tastings, shortbread, it has all been done before,” adds Martin.
“We’re not as young as we were but I feel like we’ve still got young energy and so we wanted to focus on these different aspects.”
What were their highlights?
Martin says it was difficult for them to pick favourites from the series.
Every day of filming they’d go “that was the best” and then another day they’d go “that was the best”.
He says it was an “eye opener” to see all these different facets of Scotland.
They met some incredible people with everyone “really welcoming” everywhere they went.
Growing up on the west coast, Martin – a former Aberdeen youth player who signed for his local professional club Greenock Morton – had seen quite a lot of the country through playing football.
“You travel to all these places to play. My old flatmate was from Dundee so I had been up there a few times with him,” he adds.
Filming of Traces
Martin also spent time in Dundee while starring in the Dundee-set drama series Traces, based on an original idea by best-selling Fife crime writer Val McDermid.
While the work of the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science was fictional, it was based on the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee.
During filming, cast and crew of Traces visited the research centre.
Martin remembers being “blown away” by the creation of 3D virtual crime scenes.
“The 3D stuff is like proper CSI,” he says.
But Martin reveals that he didn’t spend as much time in the city filming Traces as he would have liked to.
“That is just the illusion of TV sometimes,” he says.
“We did spend some time filming in the studio in Salford, but we were here quite a bit.”
Dundee’s ‘strong sense of identity’
Martin says he enjoyed returning to Dundee while making the Scottish Fling series.
Loving Dundee’s “strong sense of identity”, while again laughing that Dundee “is a law unto itself”, he says it has some “amazing characters” and “amazing history”.
Having grown up playing football computer games FIFA and ISS Pro, plus real-time historic battle simulator Age of Empires, he particularly enjoyed learning about Dundee’s emerging culture at the centre of the games industry.
He describes 4J co-founder Chris van der Kuyl as “class”, adding: “He told us a great story about how back in the 70s or 80s computers were being made in the city.
“Dundee wasn’t an affluent city at the time but a lot of kids had a computer so they became these great programmers.”
Wind problems and smokies
As a former professional footballer, Martin admits he “would have loved to” have played for one of the Dundee teams. However, football’s loss was acting’s gain!
“Dundee was the first away game I went to as a fan,” he says, “and Dundee United away is my favourite game as a Celtic fan.
“But I just wasn’t good enough (to play professionally) to be honest. One of my close friends captained Dundee – boy called Gary Harkins – so I used to go up with him quite a bit.”
Despite “wind problems”, Martin and Phil had a great time land yachting on the St Andrews West Sands and describe Jamie and Guy McKenzie as “lovely”.
“The haar came in,” adds Martin, “so we sort of missed the optimum time to do it.
“You could see it would be amazing fun and we kind of got there in the end.”
Martin admits that he doesn’t like fish, but after helping Iain Spink prepare the Arbroath smokies at Auchmithie he “absolutely loved it”.
The series sees Martin and Phil do a lot of impromptu singing in the car.
From The View to a subtle soundtrack featuring King Creosote and The Beta Band, perhaps one day their playlist will come out!
Martin says there was a spontaneous moment when they meet Dundonian songstress India Rose in an Aberdeen park for an impromptu performance.
Martin adds: “We went to Duthie Park in Aberdeen and we had this amazing moment with the singer India Rose from Dundee and there was a guy with a guitar and they knew each other somehow.
“She said ‘will you come and play?’ and they just came together and played. It was amazing to watch.”
Martin and Phil’s onscreen travels begin and end in Martin’s home town of Greenock.
Over the course of the six-part series, they take in the West Coast, Western Isles, East Coast, Highlands, Central and Lowlands.
Asked if it’s inspired them to see more of their country, Martin replies: “Yes definitely”, while Phil says: “Yes I definitely want to see more, it is all right here on our doorstep.”
The first episode of Martin Compston’s Scottish Fling spotlighting the West Coast airs on BBC Scotland, Thursday September 8 at 10pm (then BBC Two, September 9 at 9.30pm).
Conversation