Paddy Higson obituary

Thu, 24 Apr 2025

Producer and production manager who worked in the Scottish film industry with Bill Forsyth and Peter Mullan

The film and television producer Paddy Higson, who has died aged 83 from cancer, was Scotland’s pre-eminent fixer and facilitator. She helped capture the nation’s sensibility in the early films of the director Bill Forsyth, among them the hit romantic comedy Gregory’s Girl (1981). Of this cultural predisposition toward the wry and whimsical, Higson observed: “Perhaps it is the old Scottish feeling that if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.”

But her portfolio also included episodes of the crime series Taggart, as well as the harrowing Silent Scream (1990), about the poet and convicted murderer Larry Winters, who died of a drugs overdose in HMP Barlinnie’s special unit in Glasgow in 1977. Iain Glen won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival for his lead performance.