James Cosmo: Scottish actor on 'incredible' incident at Braveheart premiere - and his love of whisky

His standout characters include Jeor Mormont in the HBO series Game of Thrones, Angus MacLeod in Highlander and Campbell in Braveheart, which he has called “ one of the last real epic movies”.

But more recently, he has turned his love of blended whisky into his own bottling, Storyman, in collaboration with borders distillery Annandale. The name was chosen given how much of a wonderful raconteur Mr Cosmo is, and no more so when talking about his acting roles, as well as Scottish food and drink.

In one of his compelling tales, Mr Cosmo told us, on the most recent episode of Scran, of his ‘secret’ private jet flight from the south of England to Scotland to attend the Braveheart premiere, which took place at Stirling Castle in 1995.

Mr Cosmo was not going to go to the premiere as he had other filming commitments. But at the last minute, the actor decided to book a private jet and fly to the event, returning very early the next morning. This night flight culminated in the actor and his wife transporting a human heart.

Speaking of the night, Mr Cosmo said: “We hired a plane and flew up. We landed, a car picked us up, we went to the premiere and the after party in Stirling Castle. It was unbelievable.

“They had fire eaters and jugglers and all sorts of medieval stuff. It was the most wonderful party. Eventually at three o'clock in the morning, we needed to get back because that same plane was waiting to take off.

“I said goodbye to everyone and I got in the car and we're driving to the airport and the driver had one of these old brick phones, which rang. He says, ‘oh, it's for you’. I thought ‘oh Jesus what’s happened’, and it's the police. They said: ‘Do you have a plane leaving for London?’ I said, ‘yeah, we are about 20 minutes away from the airport’.

“They said ‘would you mind taking a human heart on the plane for a transplant?’ Because in those days, it was very, very time critical. I said, ‘no, it's OK’. They said ‘just keep on the motorway’. Then within ten minutes this ambulance pulled in front of us and then two motorcycle cops came down [with the heart], so we just got on the plane with it in a big yellow box.

“Annie and I put it between us and we flew down, landed at the airport, and an ambulance and police [were] there, and it went flying off somewhere. I thought it was fate. We really wanted to go [to the premiere] and somebody got a heart that night.”

While early morning flights of mercy may be a thing of the past, Mr Cosmo is still very passionate about cooking, whisky and his love of Scotch pies. Luckily, there’s a good family bakery near Annandale that keeps Mr Cosmo going with these traditional Scottish savouries.

“ I'm an aficionado of Scotch pies,” he said.

“I travel to many places to eat them. In fact, there's one wee place in Annan, near the distillery. It’s one of those family bakeries and they do all the old traditional things like potato scones, cakes and Scotch pies. So I go to the distillery, have a few drams, then collect the pies from the bakery and have someone drive me home.”

The drams he is referring to will be of his own Blend, Storyman, which launched in 2023. The blend was specially created for the Game of Thrones actor by Keith Law, Annandale's master blender, and owner, Professor David Thomson.

The blend features a carefully chosen selection of their award-winning single cask, single malt whiskies. These include various vintages and spirit types from a range of Fresh and Refill Ex-Bourbon, and Ex-Burgundy STR casks. The whisky came about after Mr Cosmo met Prof Thomson at the distillery after filming Outlaw King. Looking for something personal to gift to people at the end of a job, Mr Cosmo asked Annandale if they wouldd bottle something special for him, and the team decided to go one better - create his own whisky.

Mr Cosmo said he wanted a blend as this was his favourite kind of whisky. He said: “There’s a huge number of aficionados who are single malt people, but I would never pretend to be an expert in whisky.

“If I like a whisky, I like a whisky, that's it. I always preferred a blend to a single malt, really. I was brought up in Clydebank, although I moved to London when I was quite young. But being Scottish, it was the thing everyone drank.

“I remember working in a pub in Clydebank. The ship breakers was just down the road and before we opened at five o'clock, about half past four, we would just start pouring halves [of whisky] and half pints of beer - dozens and dozens of them - because nobody ever asked for anything else.”

Speaking of creating the whisky with Mr Law, who Cosmo called ”astonishing”, he said: “Keith is one of these people, he's got just such a knowledge of whisky. It's astonishing, he has a wonderful nose.

“There was one day when there were six samples of whisky, then I had to decide which one was going to be the one to bottle. Then we started the first run of it and it has been a fantastic experience just seeing that first bottle there.”

Mr Law said: “The blending process took a great deal of time to get right. It was a process that involved speaking with James, having in-depth conversations to identify the types of whisky James likes to enjoy. What we created is a smooth and complex whisky, with notes of vanilla, honey, citrus and smoke. What we wanted to do is capture the essence of James's whisky memories and make it tangible and that’s what we have done with Storyman.”

To listen to the full episode of this podcast, search Scran wherever you get your podcasts. To find out more about Storyman whisky, visit Annandale distillery’s website.