Biography of Duncan McLean

Duncan was born in Aberdeenshire in 1964, and has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, a Street theatre and comedy act with agit-prop tendencies. The Merry Macs won various awards, and were twice nominated for the Perrier. They were able to perform in a great range of venues from community halls in Shetland to West End theatres in London, and from unemployed workers' centres in Rutherglen to the Wogan show on BBC1. In 1992 he published his first book, a collection of short stories called Bucket of Tongues, and since then has published several more ncluding two novels and a first collection of plays, imaginatively entitled Plays: One. Around this time he also set up and ran the Clocktower Press, a small but influential publishing house, which helped bring a new generation of Scottish writers to wider attention. In recent years he has divided his time between writing, music and selling wine and whisky in his wife's family business in Orkney. In 2006 he won the prestigious trade award UK Restaurant Wine Supplier o the Year. In spring 2007 he returned to writing as his full time occupation (more or less) for the first time since 1997.