The Leper's Ball

Norman Maclean

Norman MacLean is a man with so many gifts that he can be forgiven for not knowing which of them to employ in any given week. He is a talented piper and singer, a seriously good writer in two languages, a teacher, a traveller, an actor, a stand-up comic and the pre-eminent Gaelic television entertainer of his generation. Favourite of Sean Connery and Billy Connolly can also be added to this list.

Born in Glasgow in 1936, Norman was educated at school and university there before going on to teach all over Scotland. He garnered much fame after winning two Gold Medals at the National Mod – for poetry and singing – in the same year, 1967, the only person ever to do so. Shortly afterwards he began a career, as he would say himself, as a clown, and it is in that role, and that of a musician, that he is still best-known today.

Norman’s autobiography, The Leper's Bell, is an honest account of Maclean's journey through the second half of the 20th century. It charts his relationship with booze from his first drink from a half bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey as a teenager in the gents toilet of a Greenock college.

He confronts everything in the pages of this well written book, and more. He painfully examines his relationship with his family. His mother gave him the title for his book from her sick bed shortly before she died: “You should have had a leper’s bell round your neck … you are unclean … You’re but a changeling, Norman.”

Norman will read from his book and discuss his life and writing with the audience.