BYRNE, John Patrick 1940-2023
Richard R
E X T R A C T
John Byrne obituary
Maverick Scottish artist and playwright whose TV series Tutti Frutti made a star of Robbie Coltrane
…Byrne, a tall and rangy figure with blue eyes and a white beard slightly tarred by tobacco, was invariably impeccably dressed in a cravat and dark suit from Giuseppe of Leven Street in Edinburgh, the city where he lived in later years. Yet he remained the quintessential outsider. “I’m in a Protestant city and I’m not a royalist, I’m a Catholic,” he growled. “I write plays and I do paintings, but I can’t get a play on here for love nor money.”
John Patrick Byrne was born into an Irish Catholic family in Paisley in 1940, the son of Alice (née McShane), a cinema usherette. Her husband was Patrick Byrne, an unskilled labourer who later became a newspaper vendor.
Yet John learnt later that he may have been conceived of an incestuous relationship between his mother and her father, whom she adored. He never learnt the final truth about his parentage. As a child he was always “drawing in the pram” and at primary school he won a class art prize…
…In the context of a working-class Catholic home he was a somewhat spoilt child, presented with only the best materials, such as artist-grade colours and sable brushes. “My parents were very encouraging of my interest in art and as a family we took an astonishing 27 newspapers and magazines every week,” he said…
…Shortly after his return to Scotland in 1964 he married Alice Simpson, a fellow art student, with whom he had two children: John, who became a graphic artist, and Celie, a portrait artist. They separated, and the marriage was later dissolved…
…Byrne met the actress [Katherine Ma]Tilda Swinton [b 1960 d of Maj-Gen Sir John SWINTON 1925-2018 sometime head of that Scots gentry family of Kimmerghame, and Judith Balfour c1929-2012 d of Harold KILLEN of Australia], some 20 years his junior, and who came from a Borders family, at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1983. “It took some persuading on my part to get her to play the part of the wife in Your Cheatin’ Heart [in 1990] as Tilda had never done television before,” he recalled. “I’d wanted her to shave her head for the part but she wouldn’t.”
By the time he had finished making the country and western drama they were in a relationship and settled in London. Seven years later she gave birth to their twins, Honor, now an actress, and Xavier, who also works in the film industry, and the couple moved to Nairn, in the Highlands, to raise their family.
They separated in 2004 after Swinton met Sandro Kopp, a painter 17 years her junior, during filming of The Chronicles of Narnia,…
…He later met Jeanine Davies, a theatre lighting specialist and Pilates teacher, and they were married in 2014. They lived in the Bruntsfield district of Edinburgh and were practising Catholics…
…Byrne was appointed MBE in 2001 but returned the honour in protest at the invasion of Iraq. Later he mused: “Sending that bloody MBE back was my greatest creative act.”
John Byrne, artist and playwright, was born on January 6, 1940. He died after a long illness on November 30, 2023, aged 83
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-byrne-obituary-xjpj76skc