Interview: Tam Dean Burn - A man called Horse

THE meeting was almost inevitable. On the one hand you have Harry Horse, the lead singer and banjo player in cult Edinburgh favourites Swamptrash. This is the man who would become a provocative Scotland on Sunday cartoonist as well as a lauded author of children's books.

On the other hand you have Tam Dean Burn, the Edinburgh-born actor, musician and political activist who was the mainstay of Theatre Workshop's Manifesto cabaret in the early Eighties, and lead singer of long-forgotten punk band the Dirty Reds. He would go on to have an acclaimed career in the theatre.

What better companions than these two men, fuelled by post-punk energy as they busied themselves in the capital's underground arts scene? Yet it wasn't to be. The two never met. Only since Horse's controversial death in 2007 has the encounter that seemed pre-ordained taken place.

"It's strange," says Burn. "When I look back on that period in the Eighties when Swamptrash were going, I was in and around Edinburgh. He lived in Lauriston Place and I would have been in that same situ. But I think they came to prominence just as I was going to London, which was at the end of 1985, and I was hardly in Edinburgh at all until 1990, so our paths never crossed. I was always aware of his cartoons, but I didn't really know who he was."

Fast forward to January 2007. On the train to London Burn gets a call from arts radio station Resonance FM. The play they've been planning to broadcast in three days' time in the Sunday-night live drama slot has fallen through and they want to know if Burn has an idea for a replacement.

He puts the phone down and turns to the Scotsman. There, on the front page, is the news of Harry Horse's death. He is shocked to read that this man, whose work he has so admired, has committed suicide. Living in Burra Isle in the Shetlands, the cartoonist – real name Richard Horne – has been found dead along with the body of Mandy, his wife of 16 years.

"I was gob-smacked and realised how much it had affected me," says the actor. "I said to the radio station that I could pull something together on this. I discovered he was a children's writer, so I got a copy of The Last Polar Bears and, through friends in Edinburgh, I got four Swamptrash songs. I got Alison Peebles to read The Last Polar Bears down the line from Glasgow, I did the text from the cartoons and, with the songs, it worked really well."

So began the show now called Year Of The Horse, based on the 52 cartoons published in the Sunday Herald in the 12 months leading up to Horse's death. Having tried out a couple of scratch performances at the Nairn Book and Arts Festival, Burn was ready to take it to the next level. He was given a boost by Andy Arnold, artistic director of Glasgow's Tron Theatre, who, having cast him in this month's Defender Of The Faith, suggested he could take the opportunity to stay on for a late-night studio staging of Year Of The Horse.

Add to this the revival of the Manifesto Politikal Kabaret every month at the Tron, a series of gigs with his band the Bum Clocks (an unlikely fusion of Iggy Pop and Rabbie Burns) and a role in the National Theatre of Scotland's Dolls, which finished last night at Glasgow's Tramway, and it's clear Burn is firing on all cylinders. "I'm really chuffed to have begun the year like that," he laughs.

Year Of The Horse is especially close to his heart, not least because newspaper speculation has clouded the memory of Horse's achievements. Eighteen months after the event, it was claimed Horse had killed his wife in a "frenzied knife attack", possibly while under the influence of drugs, before taking the knife to the family pets and, finally, himself.

He and Mandy had moved from Edinburgh to her native Shetland in 2004. She was living with multiple sclerosis and her condition was growing worse. The newspaper claimed Horse did not like Shetland, that his behaviour had become volatile, and that he had broken contact with the family. Later, it was reported that it was the belief of Mandy's father, George Williamson, that "this was no living suicide pact. It was murder."

This painted a different picture to the initial image of a husband and wife dying in each other's arms after an overdose of painkillers. In July 2007, the Crown Office decided against holding a fatal accident inquiry on the basis that it would not be in the public interest. It means the question remains unresolved of whether an attack involving multiple stabbings – more than 30 knife wounds in her body, 47 in his – can be reconciled with the story of a couple who were inseparably devoted to each other.

"The play is an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation," says Burn, who has explained his plans to the family, in particular Horse's sister Kay, who lives in upstate New York. "When I met the family, I didn't want to know the details of what went on. I felt for them, but for me it was about the work. The newspaper report felt like a hatchet job. The idea that he was a drug-crazed maniac who murdered his wife is not the story. The journalists didn't take into account how far crippled Mandy was, what they were going through and how isolated they were. It's important for Kay that we rehabilitate his reputation and show how great he was as an artist."

In Year Of The Horse, Burn wants to demonstrate Horse's skill as a draughtsman and his perceptiveness as a political commentator. To an original soundtrack by Keith McIvor, one half of the Optimo team, the actor will show a year's worth of viciously satirical cartoons put into context by Horse's own commentary. He will demonstrate how – whether it was a puppet Tony Blair dancing to the devil's tune, a post-holocaust cave painting or a sculpture of Wayne Rooney's foot – Horse had a gift of combining political righteousness, visual flare and mordant wit.

"I find the politics astounding," says Burn, whose reading of The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson gave him a taste for conspiracy theories akin to Horse's own. "I find him an ally despite the fact that he's dead."

He says the play will be a celebration of the cartoonist's gifts even as it acknowledges the trauma of his private life. "In the cartoons, you track the dark journey that he went on, because of all the personal stuff with Mandy and her illness getting more and more crippling. He was going into really dark territory. One of his very last cartoons was 'All My Heroes Are Dead'. He lists them: Blake, Burns and Byron. Harry Horse is the same kind of romantic and radical figure as them and I feel an enormous affinity with him."

Year Of The Horse, Tron Theatre, Glasgow, February 19-28 www.tron.co.uk