John Byrne was born in Paisley and graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1963. His acclaimed play The Slab Boys (1978) was based on his own experience mixing powdered paints at a carpet factory near Paisley. The TV series Tutti Frutti (1987) for which Byrne wrote the screenplay, propelled Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson to national fame. In 2014 the Scottish National Portrait Gallery hosted a retrospective of his paintings and prints. V&A Dundee is currently displaying the giant pop-up book which he designed as a movable theatre set for the Scotland-wide tour of John McGrath’s landmark play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil in the 1970s. To top it all off, Byrne’s infallible fashion sense earned him the ‘most stylish male’ title in the Scottish Style Awards 2018.