After experiencing a brush with death last year, River City star Iain Robertson has admitted his doctors are now “sick fed up” of seeing him.
The 41-year-old, who plays Stevie O’Hara in the Scottish soap, alarmed fans when he posted a picture of himself at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital telling his followers to “go see yer doctor”.
He can now reveal he’d been trying to ignore two infected cysts on his bottom for years and had blamed the dizziness it caused on his new varifocals.
Iain, who returns for a third series of Iain Robertson Rambles, admitted: “It was a threat to my life in the end.
“My poor doctor had never even met me. My old doctor had gone and I had never gone to the new one, so after the experience with hospital now they are sick fed up seeing me. I’m always there... ‘I’ve got this little thing in my eye. I’ve a bit of arthritis can you give me something for that?’
“I’m getting my money’s worth out the doctor now.”
The actor said he’d been trying to manage the cysts for years with the pain coming and going. But the month before he went to hospital, the infection had worsened.
He said: “When I eventually went to my doctors, they couldn’t believe I could still walk and told me I had to go to hospital straight away.
“When I got to the hospital, they told me my infection levels were through the roof and wasn’t I dizzy?
“I told them I’d just got new varifocals and I thought it was my glasses that had made me dizzy.”
Iain, who became famous aged 13 playing Lex in 1996 Glasgow gang film Small Faces, admitted his reluctance to go to the doctors was because of his mum.
The family of five siblings lived in a two room flat in Govan.
Iain said: “I’m from a generation where we weren’t allowed to go to the doctor or have a day off school unless you were dying.
“My mum would have to take a day off work and she had five weans to feed.
“She encouraged you to just keep going. I’ve always had that, ‘It’ll be OK. Just put a bit of Sudocrem on and you’ll be fine’.
“I really should have gone to the doctor a long time before I did. Part of the reason was embarrassment. They were on my bahooki.”
Chatting via Zoom, Iain is fine now and in fine fettle. Which is just as well as many of us can’t wait for the return of his walking show.
Last year, the second series saw him tackle two Scottish walks, Southern Upland Way and the Speyside Way. For the third series, which starts on Thursday, he walks The Hebridean Way.
The four-episode series sees Iain and his then one-year-old collie Molly walk 201miles across 10 islands, six causeways and use two ferries.
The pals who join him for parts of the route include his old Small Faces castmate Kevin McKidd and Alex Norton from Two Doors Down, who doesn’t walk but takes an electric bike with Iain to visit the Calanais Standing Stones.
It was filmed in April and May of 2022 and finished a day before his 41st birthday.
Three series in, Iain realises he’s been trying to make sense of his own Scottishness and heritage.
While he grew up in Govan in the 80s a Catholic boy in the shadow of Rangers Ibrox stadium, sectarianism also blighted his family life.
He said: “While I grew up a city boy in Govan, I have a mix. My father’s parents are from the inner Hebrides – Skye and Eigg – and my father grew up in the Highlands but my mother’s people are Irish Catholics.
“Although I was raised a Catholic, my father’s people didn’t really have anything to do with me because of the old sectarian nonsense.”
He has realised trudging across Scotland – as a hobby away from his day job as an actor – and exploring the country has helped him make sense of his own heritage and “brought myself back together”.
He added: “And if I have children, I can pass something down that isn’t the sectarian divide.”
Iain, who has also appeared in Grange Hill, Rab C Nesbitt and Sea of Souls, had a game of two halves with his Hebridean Way.
The first two episodes show off the Scottish islands to perfection as glorious sunshine beats down on Iain as he walks along the golden sands at the Way’s start off point Vatersay, which looks like the Bahamas, going on to enjoy the sights of Barra, Eriskay and Benbecula.
But in the third episode, as he arrives in Harris, the weather turns and the rain batters him and Molly as they plod 11 miles from Horgabost Township to Plocrapool.
It was only 3km to Luskentyre beach but it took them three hours.
Iain said: “I was sinking up to my knees. I lost the rag and was ready to say enough is enough. It wasn’t a walk anymore, it was endurance.
“I think if I’d been doing it off my own back and not filming a show, there’d have been a good chance I’d have chucked it.
“But we got to Coffin Road and it was a joy to walk and my mood lifted.”
Iain began hillwalking after his beloved dog Lightning passed and he didn’t want to look “like a weirdo” walking alone around Glasgow parks.
Now Molly, who’ll be two in April, has become his four-legged companion.
He said: “She spurs me on. There are times when you are done in and you look at her and she’s like a little Duracell bunny that’s ready to keep going and going and going.
“She’s good value. You can stop for a cup of tea and get caught up in your own napper. The joy of Molly is I have someone else I have to feed and water and make sure she’s safe and secure and then she’s wanting to play.”
Despite being in one of Scotland’s most remote places, Iain is still recognised by an ambulance-driving River City fan.
And while it must be one of the strangest places to be star-spotted, Iain doesn’t think it’s the most bizarre.
He laughed: “I was in this piazza in Rome and a guy from Thailand recognised me. That was a mind boggler. He was a massive Band of Brothers fan. And despite me only being in it for a cough and a spit, he knew who I was.”
Iain Robertson Rambles starts on Thursday, BBC Scotland at 8.30pm.
