Peter McDougall

Peter McDougall (born 1947, Greenock, Scotland) is a Scottish television playwright whose major success was in the 1970s.

McDougall claims to have had very little schooling and to rarely read books, He began his working life at the age of fourteen in the shipyards of Greater Glasgow and Greenock with future comedian and actor Billy Connolly. Depressed by the harsh conditions and unfulfilled by the menial work, he left Scotland and moved to London, where he worked as a house-painter.

It was while painting Colin Welland's house that McDougall impressed the actor and writer when relating tales of being the drum major in the Orange walk as a teenager. He was advised to try writing a television play about this and the result was Just Another Saturday, which McDougall wrote in secret and hid even from his first wife, a teacher nearly a decade his senior. Once completed, the script was sent to the BBC Play for Today team, who were enormously impressed but rejected the play because of the sensitive subject matter. McDougall was however asked to try again, and wrote a more intimate piece Just your Luck (1972) based on his sister's wedding, again exploring the sectarian divide in its story of a Protestant girl who finds herself pregnant by a Catholic boy.

The play caused a furore in Scotland, many people appalled by its portrayal of the people's earthiness and prejudice. However, there was much positive praise too, one viewer even going so far as to say it was "the most exciting debut since Look Back in Anger."

At that point, the director John Mackenzie began enquiring after the script of Just Another Saturday and managed to get the play into production, only to then find the piece banned after the head of the Glasgow police said that the script would cause "bloodshed on the streets in the making and in the showing". After a year Mackenzie managed to persuade the Head of BBC Television Alasdair Milne to press ahead with the play, although some scenes were eventually filmed in Edinburgh to minimise controversy.

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