Letter: McKellar was a serious singer

I WAS as surprised as your German correspondent (Debate, 30 Janaury) to hear that Kenneth McKellar seems to be forgotten so readily. Admittedly he was part of the pawky "White Heather" TV image which has been so thoroughly jettisoned now, along with the likes of Andy Stewart and Bill McCue.

Understandably so, maybe; yet one can't help feeling that more than one baby went out with the bathwater, and that as an entertainer he did represent something genuinely Scottish, no less so than his grittier streetwise successors.

He's not to be forgotten as a classical singer, either, in which field he won a Grand Prix du Disque for his Handel arias - no small feat. The Australian CD label Newton has recently re-released, to some acclaim, the recording of Handel's Messiah he made with Sir Adrian Boult and starry soloists including the late Joan Sutherland, Grace Bumbry and his friend from student days, the great Dumbarton bass David Ward - another sadly neglected Scots giant. Even in such company McKellar holds his own, as stylishly as any singer of his day, and we should take him much more seriously.

After all, if White Heather Club Scottishness sounds bogus now, it can't possibly be more so than Braveheart.

Mike Scott Rohan, Edinburgh