The Real Rikki; Rikki Fulton, 1924 - 2004 A Tribute By Tom Shields

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Feb 1, 2004 | by Tom Shields

IT is not often you get to meet your heroes. Rikki Fulton for me was a comedic genius to be admired from afar, the way actors should be. He was Josie, the Glesga teddy boy, sidekick of Francie. He was Supercop, the delightfully brain-cell-challenged traffic cop in Scotch And Wry. He was the Reverend IM Jolly, the mournful minister who would have brought his congregation some consolation, if only he could find some himself.

Then Mr Fulton wrote to me saying that he shared my interest in language, in particular examples of the malaprop and the verbal maladroit which I had been gathering in the Diary in the Glasgow Herald. He began sending me the odd communication with examples of his ongoing etymological observations. I was in awe. I had Rikki Fulton as a contributor to my column.

Then he wrote a foreword to a book I had scraped together.

I persuaded him to attend a cheapskate lunch for Diary contributors. He in turn invited me to a much more splendid lunch with his vivacious wife Kate.

I would not claim to be a confidante of the Fultons but we kept in touch. The awe factor remains huge, the more so since Mr Fulton died last week and I think about the loss. Equally impressive as his stage and screen persona was Mr Fulton the man. If you were not aware of his status as a cherished and accomplished actor and comedian, you might imagine him to be an erudite professor of English literature or a classical concert pianist or a grand master of chess.

He was also, as you can tell from his autobiography Is That The Time Already?, an extraordinary man who managed to live an ordinary life. He was well aware of his own worth but looked on with some amusement and a little distaste at the inflated egos of others in his trade.

He could have made it big in London, and indeed was doing so in the early 1950s, but chose to return to his beloved Glasgow. He was a Dennistoun boy who became a devoted west end man. The city rewarded him with great affection and, despite his fame, mostly left him in peace to get on with his life and walk his dogs.

Kate Fulton relates how it was in their favourite holiday retreat of Pollensa in Mallorca, that Glaswegians would sometimes forget to respect their privacy. She said: "Pollensa was full of Scots visitors, especially at the Glasgow Fair. I think they were surprised to find Rikki there and perhaps after a holiday drink or two they would be emboldened to come over and have a chat.

"Rikki spoke very good Spanish and he was once spotted in full flow of conversation with a local in a hotel bar. The Glasgow man rejoined his friends and said, 'You will never believe this, but there is a Spanish bloke in there who is a dead ringer for Rikki Fulton.'

"The owner of the hotel we stayed in was very good at protecting us and would tell inquiring Scots, 'Los Fultones? No estan.' That's Spanish for 'The Fultons? They're not here'."

Even in the days immediately after losing her man, Kate Fulton speaks easily and with astonishing serenity about the ordeal she has endured in the last two years as Alzheimer's took away the love of her life. In truth, the last months for Rikki had been a fate worse than death.

"Towards the end, Rikki could not speak, he could not eat, he could not walk. But he was still a great kisser. On the last day he kissed me goodbye and he went very peacefully."

Kate Fulton is writing about her life with Rikki. It is a great love story. She first set eyes on him when she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl and he was a dashingly handsome young actor with the Giffnock Players amateur drama group.

She was immediately smitten and, as she says: "I could not believe my luck when we got together 17 years later." As an actress herself, she is possibly the greatest admirer of her husband's skills.

"He was a perfectionist who worked to the highest standards and he expected the same of those working with him. He was a generous actor. He would do his best to help a colleague get a laugh."

She may have been the wife but as an actress in panto or on TV Kate was subject, like the rest of the cast, to Rikki's unrelenting gimlet directorial eye.

"He had this amazing talent for ad-libbing which was a terrifying experience for mere mortal thespians. We would be waiting for our cue and Rikki would wander off into a marvellous piece of improvisation. Luckily we could always rely on him to finish his detour and take us back to our cue."

Mr Fulton's most famous piece of ad-libbing was in a Francie And Josie show where a two-minute gag about Arbroath became somewhat extended. By the time he had taken the story-line down some unexpected byways, aided and abetted by his partner in crime Jack Milroy, aka Francie, the item lasted 18 minutes, much to the chagrin of the stage-manager. The audience were in stitches and it became a cornerstone of the Francie And Josie repertoire.

It is commonplace for performers to be asked to do an encore of a favourite song. Francie And Josie are probably unique as a comedy turn in that members of the theatre audience could be heard to shout out: "Do the Arbroath gag again!"