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Iain Cuthbertson

Published Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 11:50 by Michael Quinn

Iain Cuthbertson had dealings with the police long before he became a household name as the dapper gangster Charlie Endell in the crime series Budgie and as the eponymous procurator fiscal in Sutherland’s Law in the seventies.

As associate director of the Royal Court in 1965, he had been cautioned by the police for staging Edward Bond’s Saved, with its notorious scene of a baby being stoned in a pram. His support of the play led to pressure for the 1968 Theatres Act and the abolition of stage censorship.

Cuthbertson had previously run the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow - the city where he was born, on January 4, 1930. The son of biochemist Sir David Cuthbertson (who contributed to the invention of the saline drip), after national service in the Black Watch he joined BBC radio as a journalist, before turning to the stage.

He made his debut in 1955 as twin brothers in The Man Upstairs and joined the Citizens, where he played the title role in Othello and Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. At the Royal Court, he played the lead in the revival of Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance and directed Max Wall in his own translation of Ubu Roi, designed by David Hockney.

Television appearances in Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers and Department S led to his first starring role in period western pastiche The Borderers in 1968. His first film role was brief, but saw him memorably appear out of plumes of train-engine smoke as the homecoming father in the closing moments of The Railway Children in the seventies.

Three series of the Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall-penned Budgie propelled Cuthbertson into the public eye in 1971, a profile cemented by a similar-length run in Sutherland’s Law from 1973. Other appearances included Dr Who, Danger UXB and Vice Versa.

A stroke in 1982, shortly after completing the debut series of ITV’s Rep, set in a wartime seaside repertory theatre, ended Cuthbertson’s stage career, although he confounded his doctors by returning to television and film. He was a regular face on Juliet Bravo, Minder and Casualty and, as the villainous Scunner Gunnell in Supergran, became a children’s favourite. His films included Scandal, Gorillas in the Mist and Let Him Have It.

Twice married, he is survived by his second wife, Janet. He died on September 4, aged 79.

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