"Scotland's King of Comedy"

At the beginning, like many of our well known and much loved comedians, Lex had to start somewhere and he first entered into showbusiness as a pianist to the "Girvan Entertainers" summer show. After a disastrous few weeks the show closed and Lex travelled to Belfast where he secured regular work as a street entertainer. Back in his home town of Clydebank, when any of his mother's friends asked "How's Lex?", his mother would say "He's travelling". The reason for this being that Lex's mother did not look on show business as steady employment.

When Lex returned to Scotland he joined the "Imperial Scots" all tartan concert party and after a year with them he decided to form his own concert party and called it "The Meltonians" which he toured round Scotland for four years.

It was during this time that Lex caught the "Theatrical Bug" for arranging and producing his own shows, and with the "Meltonians", he appeared everywhere you could think of from the Borders to the Orkneys.

As Lex said in an article years ago, "We had some hectic times with that company. I remember we went to crief and there was no hall so we hired a big marquee. On the Sunday we started to put this marquee up and build a stage, and within an hour every kid from 10 miles around was in the park. You couldn't move for hundreds of weans.

We hadn't the faintest idea of how to put up the tent, but by the late Monday afternoon it was up, the seats were in and the stage built. We were due to start at eight o'clock, then we realised we had no piano and no lights. One of the girls said her landlady had a piano which she was willing to lend us. So we dashed out and found a coalman with his horse and cart and we went round to the house to get the piano.

We chapped at the door and said we'd come for the piano. "How are you going to get it away?" said the woman. I said we had a coal lorry outside. "Oh," she says. "My piano's not going on any coal lorry." We were that bloody mad after getting the coalman out, but there we were due to start the show and no piano or lights. I had to play the show through just with the accordian, and it got darker and darker inside the tent but we still kept going. We thought that would be the end of us in crieff, but the next night everyone came crowding in to see this show without lights. By then we had got hold of those acetylene
things which you had to pump up.

Right in the middle of the show these lights started to go out, and with everything still going on on the stage one of us had to run round the front and pump the lamps to keep them going."

During the Second World War Lex was in charge of the first ENSA company and he visited Army units all over Scotland. After the war was where Lex had his first big break as Comedian at Glasgow's Empress Theatre and it was here that he became a huge success with the Glasgow audiences. In a short period of time Lex became a big success, and in the late 1950's when comedian Tommy Morgan retired from the Glasgow Pavilion, the management offered Lex a contract for the summer show and Lex remained there as "Scotland's King of Comedy" till ill health forced him to take semi retirement in 1971.

Lex McLean sadily died on March 23, 1975 after battling ill health and the theatre world of Scotland went into mourning. A close friend of Lex's at the time paid a tribute to him by saying "Lex Mclean's death is not only a blow to audiences and the people who worked with him, it is also a sad loss to many charities which he quietly helped considerably. He gave his services freely and willingly to many charities who made calls on him. More than any other man of his generation, he brought joy and laughter to the lives of his fellow scots. Scotland has lost one of her sons who made the country a better place
in which to live." On 26 March 1975 more than 500 including show business personalities, theatre managers, friends and family paid their last respects to man who was "SCOTLAND'S KING OF COMEDY."