Grant Stott on the new Fringe comedy-drama honouring the memory of Andy Gray

Backstage at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh, he admitted to his fellow pantomime co-star Andy Gray that he was still harbouring the ambitions that were dashed when he failed to get into drama college.

The late actor and comic’s immediate offer to appear in a play with Stott would be the start of a roller-coaster of life-changing events.

The pair starred together in a string of hit plays at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, before Gray was diagnosed with cancer after just one performance of their final production.

Now Stott is preparing to honour his long-time friend and colleague at the event this summer with a new comedy-drama inspired by Gray’s own experiences of leukaemia and chemotherapy.

The River City and City Lights star made a stage comeback after extensive treatment and a bone marrow transplant, and had started working on a new show with Stott and writer Alan McHugh.

But after beating cancer, Gray fell seriously ill again after contracting Covid shortly before Christmas in 2020 and lost his life to the virus a few weeks later.

Six years after the last Fringe show had to be called off, Stott will be back on stage to honour “the big china” he worked with for more than 20 years.

He will appear with fellow River City stars Jordan Young and Gail Watson in Chemo Savvy in the Gilded Balloon’s programme.

Stott, a long-time TV and radio presenter, had been starring in the King’s panto with Gray and Allan Stewart for more than a decade when the idea of a Fringe show emerged.

He recalled: “I had tried to get into drama college when I left school, but didn’t get anywhere at all. However I still had a real desire to act.

"As much as I loved doing panto, I had this burning curiosity to see if I could actually do it after getting lots of parts in shows when I was at school.

"I told Andy that I wished I knew if I could still learn a script and do a play. Andy just said to me: ‘I’ll do a play with you.’

"I had been a huge fan of Andy before I worked with him, so I bit his hand off. I said to him: ‘How do we do this? What do we do?’ He looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know’!

"But it just takes one person to have faith in you. I absolutely believe that nobody else would have taken a chance on me or given me an opportunity like that.”

Stott and Gray took the idea to Gilded Balloon founder Karen Koren, who immediately agreed to help.

Stott and Gray's Fringe theatrical double act made its debut in 2013 with Kiss Me Honey, Honey! – a drama by Philip Meeks about two men living in a bedsit whose friendship is sparked off by a love of Shirley Bassey. It landed the pair a Scotsman Fringe First Award and went on tour the following year.

Stott said: “We had the bug after that. It was born out of our friendship and it gave us an excuse to spend time together.

"We could have taken the easy route and done pantoesque-style shows for the panto audience. But Andy was always keen to push us to do something a little bit darker, with a bit more bite to it, but always with humour.”

After further hits with Willie & Sebastian, and Double Feature, the pair were preparing to launch The Junkies, with actor Ruaraidh Murray in the summer of 2018 when their plans were abruptly halted.

Stott recalled: “I remember Andy saying: ‘I’m just not feeling right, I don’t know what it is. I’m going to go and see my doctor.’ He got some blood tests done and I rang him just after he was off the phone to his doctor, who said he needed to see him the next morning.’ We began to fear the worst at that point.

"His diagnosis was obviously a horrendous shock. I can remember phoning Andy and I just broke down. Andy actually started comforting me. He kept saying: ‘It’s going to be fine, you’ll be okay,’ which was really the mark of the man.”

With Stott keeping in regular contact with Gray throughout his treatment, it was clear he not lost his sense of humour.

"We talked every step of the way and inevitably, because it was Andy, he always had funny stories and was creating funny moments, even out of something as serious as he was going to.

”I remember him saying: ‘Are you writing all this down? There’s some good stuff here. I think there’s a play in this, about someone having cover.’ He told me that it didn’t need to be doom and gloom, and would be so relatable to so many people.

"I kind of got the idea, because I had been laughing with him all the way through his experiences. I also knew that if he was fully committed to it then it would be good.”

Stott, Gray and McHugh worked extensively on the early drafts of Chemo Savvy for months before and during the first lockdown.

Stott, who has been starring in River City since 2021, says it was only in recent months that he had felt prepared to appear without his friend in the play, which has been significantly re-worked, with a new character added, in the last three years.

Running at the National Museum, the show will focus on two brothers who have been estranged for years since the death of their mother, but are brought back together by a cancer diagnosis.

He said: “I have to stress that this isn't Andy’s story. It’s a complete work of fiction by Alan, who has worked like a Trojan on it to get it where it is now.

"It’s a very different play now, but what we tap into is a lot of the funny things that happened to Andy, during his treatment and with the side effects. It’s all come from a true place and Andy is very much the heart of it.

"Everybody involved in the play has a connection to Andy in some way, shape or form. The one reason we are doing this is to pay tribute to Andy. We want to do it for him."