John Moore

Published Tuesday 29 April 2008 at 12:00 by Gordon Irving

John Moore, teacher, theatre historian and writer, died suddenly on March 17, aged 71.

A contributor to The Stage for three decades, he kept the theatre world fully informed on the lively output from the famous and historic little Gaiety Theatre in his hometown of Ayr, on Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

Born on September 17, 1937, in the village of Patna, Ayrshire, he was what Scots used to call the traditional “lad o’pairts”, making headway from school to college on his talents and ability to progress with happy academic results.

These were especially evident in mathematics and science, so it was no surprise when, after schooling at Ayr Academy and graduating as BSc at Glasow University, he joined the teaching profession in the 1960s.

This brought him back to his home ground in the Doon Valley, where he progressed to be Head of Mathematics at Dalmellington High School, known today as Doon Academy, and a Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

Taking early retirement from the daily stress of teaching gave Moore an opportunity many of our classroom educators, past and present, would envy. This was to pursue an interest in his native Doon Valley and in Ayrshire, and to write about the people and places of a romantic part of Scotand.

Surprisingly for one so mathematically minded, it was to the less precise and more haphazard world of show business that Moore then turned. He fell in love with the beautiful little theatre, the Gaiety at Ayr, which he had known as a boy, delving deeply into its history and the stories of the many notable actors and performers who had graced its stage for a full century and more.

The happy outcome was two books about the Gaiety, the second a massive tome, well illustrated, published in 2002 to mark the Gaiety’s centenary. It runs to a mammoth 275,000 words and has photographs of stars from Lauder and Will Fyffe to Ken Dodd and more recent bill-toppers such as Johnny Beattie and the Alexander Brothers.

Moore was rarely away from The Gaiety - “part of the furniture” said one friend - and over the years had established a fine rapport with Eric and Leslie Popplewell, the Yorkshire brothers who ran the theatre on the death of their father, Ben Popplewell.

Moore was a “weel-kent” (to quote a Scottish epithet) face at first nights, having reviewed every show at The Gaiety for the past 30 years, sending his informed critiques - meticulously penned to the precise 300 or so words - to the Reviews section of this journal.

A bachelor, with his home in Alloway, Moore also became a devotee of the show-business atmosphere of Blackpool, and joined the ranks of the many who regret changng standards in today’s world of electronic rather than live entertainment. He loved to meet the world’s magicians at their conventions in the Lancashire resort, especially when there were personal friends to meet, such as magician Mark Raffles and his wife Joan.

The upmarket Clifton on the seafront was John’s favourite Blackpool hotel, and he revelled in recounting the true story of a fellow resident, a total stranger, who spotted him in the bar and insisted, via John’s distinctive handlebar moustache, that he had met him and “shared a jar” with him on many a past occasion. Totally an imaginary thought on the stranger’s part.

A horse-riding enthusiast in his younger days, Moore is remembered by many riding out regularly from the stables in Ayr, always on a handsome chestnut horse called Blondie. He was also prominent in the annual Burns Ride commemorating the Ayrshire poet.

At school and college he sang in various amateur operatic and musical shows, and was a member of the Ayrshire Philharmonic Operatic Society and, in recent days, of the Scottish Music Hall Society.

Just a week before his unexpected death in hospital, he told a friend: “Just give me a seat in the stalls at the Gaiety, with a Popplewell directing a Gaiety Whirl, and I’ll be happy.” The teacher lad from Ayrshire’s Doon Valley will, let’s hope, have achieved that wish.

When the Ayr Gaiety reopens next year after its backstage enhancement, how appropriate it would be if a special seat in, say, the front row of the circle, were to carry a little golden plaque: “In Memory of John Moore, 1937 to 2008, historian of The Gaiety.”