It was the night when one of Scotland’s greatest actors bumped into two of the most famous stars in the history of pop music.
Brian Cox has revealed how an impromptu meeting with a brace of The Beatles – in the unlikely setting of a Dundee house party – was the moment he recognised he was in the Swinging Sixties and that anything was possible.
Cox, who had been learning his craft in a variety of roles at the Dundee Rep, was just a teenager when he was invited to the festivities in Baxter Park Terrace in 1963.
But he has never forgotten the state of confusion he encountered at the bash after finishing another theatre performance.
He recalled: “I’d been working at the Rep, arrived late, and found that things had very much wound down.
“The place was in a somnambulant, post-blowout fug and I had to pick my way carefully through snoozing bodies lying sprawled on the floor.
“In one particular room lay a couple of guys slumbering gently. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked (the host).
“He replied: ‘Oh, that’s this Liverpool pop group. That guy’s called… um, Harrison, and the other guy’s called Starr.”
The comatose George and Ringo might not have known about the stunning impact they had made on the Dundonian, but the actor, who is now starring in Succession, was well aware of them.
He had followed the meteoric rise of the Fab Four. And he was hooked by their story.
He said: “It was 1963, the decade was already finding its feet. But, for me, that was the beginning of the 1960s. It was the beginning of MY 1960s, anyway.
“The overture, if you like, and it all came about through my work at the Rep. I can’t stress enough what an incredible, life-changing experience it was.
“I had adopted the theatre and it had adopted me. It was my home, my family, my bread and butter. I lived and breathed it.”
And now, it had brought him into the same orbit as The Beatles.
Cox, who has published his autobiography, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, still feels grateful for being offered the chance to enter the acting profession.
So it’s hardly surprising that he was devastated when the Rep, which had nurtured him, suffered grievous damage in a fire in the summer of 1963.
He added: “I used to go for bridie and chips at Wilson’s on Reform Street. But I heard the sirens which were followed by someone bursting into Wilson’s and saying: ‘I think the Rep’s on fire’.
“I was out of there in seconds. My first thought was: ‘It can’t be on fire, it has just been redecorated’.
“But redecoration is no defence against fire, apparently, because there it was with smoke billowing out of it, flames licking at the window sills and a huddle of shell-shocked staff on the street forlornly watching it burn.
“It turned out to have been an electrical problem. Nobody was hurt. That was the main thing. There had been a handful of workers in the box office, but they all got out sharpish.
“We all gathered later in the afternoon at somebody’s house and I remember thinking how we were all like lost children.
“I never saw it again, the Rep. They moved to another place up in the Lochee Road, and stayed there until they relocated to what is the current building on Tay Street, which is a beautiful little theatre”.
The conflagration marked the closing of one chapter and the launch of another after Cox moved to London.
Almost 50 years later, on his magical mystery tour, the Scot’s CV testifies to how he has pursued a long and winding road to Succession, but he still owes his development to those early days at the Rep.
And even if The Beatles duo didn’t actually speak to him at that dishevelled party, just seeing them made him realise what he could achieve with a little help from his friends.
- Putting the Rabbit in the Hat is published by Quercus.
