Film/theatre: Joyce McMillan on the Tom McGrath strand at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival

The year was 1996; and Niall Greig Fulton, now Senior Programmer at Edinburgh’s International Film Festival (EIFF), was a young actor working out his obsession with the radical Scottish novelist Alexander Trocchi, through a monologue called A Meeting With The Monster. There were a few performances in a pop-up venue in Edinburgh; and the result was one of those meetings that changes lives, as the playwright, poet, screenwriter and jazz musician Tom McGrath came along to see the show, took Fulton under his wing, and – over the next few years – helped him to develop his play into a larger work, through a series of weekly conversations. At the time, McGrath was a Scottish Arts Council Associate Literary Director, based at the Lyceum Theatre; and Fulton was only one of dozens of young writers who benefited from his breadth of creative energy and interest, his unfailing enthusiasm, and his sheer human kindness.