Panoramic view from Dundee Law
In the 1970s, Dave McLean, John Gibson and Scot Young were typical young lads growing up in the northern Dundee housing schemes of Whitfield and Fintry. They were constantly coming up with madcap plans to better themselves and, in time, each became successful in their chosen fields. But never would they have imagined back then that in 2020, nearly 50 years on, their youthful exploits would be featured in an award-winning film, Schemers. To say the film was made against the odds would be an understatement - this is not a big-budget film backed by major broadcasters or established filmmakers, Schemers has been independently funded and brought to the screen by those very same boys from those Dundee schemes.
iScot subscriber John, an accountant turned property developer, now lives in Broughty Ferry, an upmarket suburb of Dundee which is only around four miles east of his Fintry childhood home but a million miles away in many respects - at the turn of the nineteenth century the Ferry, as it’s known locally, was reputedly home to more millionaires per square mile than anywhere else in Britain and is commonly quoted to have been “the richest square mile in Europe”. He recalls how their business adventures only started because they needed football strips! “Dave was from Whitfield and I lived in Fintry, but we actually met at college. We wanted to start a football team, but we needed money to buy shirts so we decided to organise a disco to raise the cash. It was incredibly successful, so we thought we should continue to do this kind of thing for ourselves. It just grew from there. We got into promoting bands and got into all sorts of trouble and chaos when we were trying to climb up the slippery pole of the music industry! This was in the late 1970s, and it culminated in us ridiculously booking Iron Maiden for the Caird Hall, and it worked!” iScot won’t spoil readers’ enjoyment of the film by elaborating on that story…