Mark Bonnar's rise from panto cow to Celebrity Traitors has a message for us all
Mark Bonnar started his acting career at the archetypically lowest rung of the ladder in the theatrical world
Mark Bonnar has come a long way since making his theatrical debut as the back end of a pantomime cow in 1991, appearing in Line of Duty, Guilt, Dept Q and, recently, Celebrity Traitors.
Like the young Irvine Welsh, Bonnar was working for Edinburgh council in the early 1990s when two colleagues suggested he should join Leitheatre and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now he has returned to the amateur drama company as their first-ever honorary president, saying that it was “not just a place where you can learn and take part in their wonderful productions, it’s also somewhere you can make friends for life, as I have”.
For next year, Leitheatre is planning to stage “wonderful productions” of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Brassed Off – set in the mining villages of Fife rather than Yorkshire – and A Christmas Carol.
It’s a story that reminds us that very few people become an instant, overnight success in their own particular field. So if you feel like your job is a metaphorical ‘back end of a pantomime cow’ right now, take hope.
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