44 Scotland Street: Character profiles

Published on 22/02/2013 17:13

Meet the characters behind Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling novel.

ANGUS LORDIE - An accomplished portrait painter and owner of CYRIL, a dog who is distinguished by his gold tooth and tendency to wink at people, Angus was finally joined in marriage to social anthropologist Domenica Macdonald. Life for Angus – and Cyril – will never be the same again!

THE POLLOCK FAMILY - Scotland Street’s resident wunderkind and always on the verge of being seven, Bertie was thrilled when Angus asked him to look after Cyril while he and Domenica are on honeymoon. But Bertie’s mother, Irene, doesn’t have a good word to say about anyone, particularly dogs. Except, perhaps, Bertie’s new psychoanalyst, Dr St Clair. The resemblance between his old psychoanalyst, Dr Hugo Fairburn, and his baby brother Ulysses caused some comment in the Pollock household.

MATTHEW - The well-heeled but unflamboyant owner of a Dundas Street gallery, is married to ELSPETH, who used to be Bertie’s teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School but who but was suspended for pinching Olive, a classmate of Bertie’s and his chief tormentor (apart from his mother, of course). They have recently become the parents of triplet boys: Rognvald, Tobermory and Fergus. Inexplicably, a Danish fly-on-the- wall documentary maker wanted Matthew and his family to be the subject of his next film. But he was too boring.

BIG LOU- A sympathetic autodidact from Arbroath, she has even more disastrous taste in men than Antonia, yet for all that remains a fount of commonsensical advice which she dispenses from behind her New Town coffee bar, The Morning After. She’s still on the lookout for love, and after Sunshine on Scotland Street found herself an accident internet hit! Have the offers rolled in?

PAT MACGREGOR – Perennial student Pat works part-time at Matthew’s Something Special Gallery whilst studying art history at Edinburgh University. She’s also perennially lovelorn having laboured under the spell of Bruce and a boy called Wolf.

BRUCE ANDERSON - Once a preening egotist, Bruce was momentarily humbled by his experience of having been dumped for the first time. Whether this is a permanent change remains to be seen but chino-wearing narcissist met his match, quite literally, in a sinister doppelganger that persuaded him to swap lives. Has it left a lasting effect? With Bruce it’s hard to tell.