Kitchen 1 Otherness 7 Virgil Pitches Up in Govan 16 Training for Performance 22 To Be Alive Is To Learn 26 Chocolates 31 Mammy, We Wuz Robbed 34 Philately 42 Bundle and Go 48 The Mallaig Train 55 The Land of Lochiel 58 False Fingering 62 Back to the Backcourt 69 As Others May See Me 76 The Slummies Are Coming 83 Kalashnikovs and Tractors 91 War and Peace 98 Grudge Bout 106 The Bosom of The Gentility 114 Cafe de Paris Meets the Hielanman's Umbrella 122 Death of a Father 129 Chasing the Lowey 138 Playtime 143 Une Liaison Dangereuse 150 James, Son of Murdoch 155 Murchadh Beag Sionsain 162 Me, the Classical Scholar 171 Big Heist at Hawkhead 176 A Glimpse of the Viper's Fangs 189 Job and Finish 192 Acknowledgements and Apologies 193
Norman Maclean was born in Glasgow in December 1936 to Hebridean parents: Peigi Bheag, nighean Thormoid Ailein, from Cladach a' Bhaile Shear, North Uist, and Niall Mor, mac Iain Eoghainn Ruaidh, from 'The Green' on the island of Tiree. Brought up in Glasgow, he was evacuated during the Second World War and spent some of his formative years in both Strathan at the head of Loch Arkaig and in Griminis, Benbecula. Maclean who is best known as a stand-up comedian, singer and piper, is also an accomplished writer in both English and Gaelic. In Eavesdropping on Myself he chronicles his boyhood in Glasgow and explores the push-pull of two cultures: working-class Glaswegian and first-generation Hebridean.
This is Norman Maclean at his best - by turns sharp, funny and melancholic. The original lad o' pairts, Maclean has a literary voice shaped, but never confined, by the places and languages of his youth. Eavesdropping on Myself finds him picking over his childhood with an unsparing eye. We knew he was a master storyteller; only now are we getting the measure of his own story. No reader could forget it, by Fraser MacDonald
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