Bellany - Fire in the Blood

From a very early age, I knew there was something special about my father.

I would lay awake on Sunday mornings staring for hours

at the ever-changing paintings

that hung in the bedroom I shared with my older brother.

This programme contains some strong language.

I was intrigued, puzzled,

and in the middle of the night, when a car light reflected through

onto one of the half-bird/half-human creatures

staring out from the canvas,

I'm not ashamed to say I was a little scared.

Mainly, for me, I would be making up stories about what was going on,

and if it was figurative,

so I'd think about the characters and things like that.

For a young boy, it's quite a lot to take on board, really.

Well, you know, death is always just round the corner.

Epic artists are a rare breed.

How rare was confirmed by a national paper in Scotland,

which recently named John Scotland's greatest-ever artist.

Heyyy!

This is a film about my father, John Bellany,

and a family taking root in London.

The journey started at the College of Art in Edinburgh, where two students met, married and moved to London.

Five and a half years I was at Edinburgh College of Art and, for me, that was,

at that time, the greatest art college in the whole of Britain.

Och, fabulous memories.

He was finding it more and more difficult

to find space in his life for us.

I don't have memories of, erm...

..us as a family enjoying days out or...

or days in.

It would be a few snatched hours.

He had the world to conquer, he was taking on the world.

He did love the children, there's no question about it.

It had to be on his terms.

They were having big arguments and shouting and screaming, and...

I just used to hide under the covers.

After he left, I was just in tears.

Oh...

It was the end of my dreams.

I think I was seven when he moved out.

I saw it instantly with Jonathan.

I said, "Where's Daddy?"

and Mum said, "Dad's gone... he's just gone away on holiday."

That was even more heartbreaking than my own pain.

"Yeah, but he's coming back soon,"

and you sort of lived by that. But of course he didn't.

He moved into a bedsit in Battersea High Street, above a chip shop.

We'd go there at weekends. It was pretty grim.

It was always, like, leaks in the roof and rats and mice.

It was a right dump.

A lot of my school friends came from broken homes, just like me,

and some were a lot worse off than I was - they never even saw their dad.

And eventually he met Juliet.

She was really nice.

She was sort of one of the first real posh people we'd...ever known.

I remember one of the first times we met her and she had an epileptic fit.

And then out of the blue they got married.

I said, "Well...do you want them to go to the wedding?"

"No, no, no, no."

We felt as if we weren't important enough.

You know, our dad marrying somebody else.

That was like the nail in the coffin for my mum and dad getting back together.

I would have loved to have been there. I took that as a real body blow.

I think it's all wrapped up in his guilt about Mum and Dad splitting up.

And if we came along

he would probably have to face a bit of the guilt on that day.

Jonathan just went immediately to his bedroom and just lay face down on the bed and sobbed his heart out.

And I'll never forget that.

I was just hurting.

And, if anything, you felt even more vulnerable.

It was the end of his dream as well that maybe we'd come back together.

He just a little boy and...

it was just...heart-rending.

Paul and Anya were younger.

I don't think Anya even remembers John living with us,

and Paul was just a little toddler and...

just full of the joys of life.

And the significance of the split-up didn't really dawn on him, perhaps, I don't know.

But Jonathan it did. He needed a dad and he didn't have one.

# I wanna wear braces and boots like my mates

# There's gotta be more to life beyond the school gates

# I want some excitement, escaping life cos it's cruel

# It was written on the bridges, "South London skins rule"

# I wanna, I wanna, I wanna be one of the Battersea Skins... #

You didn't want to be a run-of-the-mill Joe Soap. You wanted to be someone.

He gravitated towards a group that would be to him like a second family.

Then of course Paul followed suit fairly soon afterwards.

I was at the Tube station, and all these black kids, about 25 of them,

I heard them all running and shouting.

Next thing I know I've been pulled down the stairs and kicked around

and they've actually stabbed me in the head.

What the skinheads stood for was the opposite end of the spectrum from my beliefs.

I remember one time going along to a police station in the East End,

and they said, "Look, we know they're just young kids.

"I'm going to give them a good talking-to and sometimes that can bring them to their senses."

And there were my two little boys...

They weren't little now - they were probably about 12 and...15.

And there were the Dr Marten boots plonked outside.

We got arrested because we did stupid things.

Some of the times we were just naive, but we were really young.

We put ourselves into vulnerable situations and that's kind of what happens.

I'd often try to talk to him about the boys.

He didn't think there was any serious problem

and, if there was, he certainly didn't want to know about it.

We lived in this tiny flat.

For years, me mum had to sleep on a put-down bed in the front room.

But it had been a happy home.

We became too hard to handle, so she kicked us out to live with my dad.

At the time, he was, like, killing himself with drink

and my stepmother was a ghost-like figure

who always was away at a psychiatric hospital in Epsom.

I didn't see any future at school.

In this world of total chaos the only stability came from

being part of this sort of right-wing movement, really.

Mum went to work when I was too young.

I needed her to be there and pick me up from school, but she didn't - she was working by that stage.

It was like losing two brothers but almost like losing two parental figures as well.

I just really had a very bad nervous breakdown.

I used to spend days, after Anya was at school, just lying on the floor curled up in a ball.

By this time, I'd started doing a part-time degree in psychology at London University.

When I told my mother that I was going to do this degree, she said, "But, Helen, the children need you."

And she was quite right, but, you see, I had to do something, because I just felt I...

I was just nothing. I just...

had no self-respect whatsoever.

I thought I'd failed at everything, and I needed to do it.

I also thought it would help with whatever employment I might get.

But it was a big mistake

and that was just far too much for the children.

So that's where I let them down a lot.

# What can you do with the drunken painter, what can you do with the drunken painter

# What can you do with the drunken painter, earl-aye in the morning? #

Everybody we knew drank a lot.

It wasn't a problem.

I was part of an Arts Council delegation,

all in sort of bowler hats and suits,

coming round to select a picture of his.

And of course he was in great form.

It was a nice sunny day, so... the old Bacardis and stuff was all...all brought out.

If you've been to Windmill Drive, you can't remember what happened next!

Er, I can't remember very much,

but I hope a Bellany picture went into the collection!

Even in the time when he was drinking really quite heavily and everything,

I mean, the studio was always full of canvases.

There were always the paint brushes, there was always the paint.

That was first things first.

During the day, "I'm ruminating," he would say.

And he would drink all day and then, about ten o'clock at night,

he would climb into his old boiler suit and everything, and he would paint all through the night.

You could say he was an alcoholic, all the rest of it,

but he still put in about ten or 12 hours in the studio every day.

How did he do that?

He just grasps it, doesn't he?

He seizes the hellishness of it and then there's a masterwork.

I think part of it is obviously therapeutic.

This is him getting over it, too, and painting it out,

and it adds another dimension to the work as well.

Once, I remember being woken up, it must have been about three o'clock in the morning, saying,

"Come on, Anya, we're going to play a football match on Clapham Common. You've got to get up."

And my dad just lying on his back with the accordion still going,

drunk as a sack.

# Send him to the shops for more Bacardi, send him to the shops for more Bacardi

# Send him to the shops for more Bacardi, earl-aye in... #

He was easily going through a bottle a day of Bacardi.

He was never really an approachable dad anyway.

You were always a bit scared of him and scared of his reactions to...

any kind of question, because he was just so utterly unpredictable.

# Gonna run away cos you won't stop drinking, gonna run away cos you won't stop drinking

# Gonna run away cos you won't stop drinking, earl-aye in the morning... #

After one sort of big row with him, with me and my brother, we decided that we'd have to leave.

We left him a letter saying, "You can't keep on drinking like that,"

and then just got up early and just went.

It was a difficult thing to write because we didn't want to hurt him.

I wrote this letter to Dad saying, you know,

"Really worried about your drinking,"

and then said, which... I can't believe even now...

"We won't come and see you unless you stop drinking."

We didn't hear from him,

and then I got this letter back from Juliet saying, "Your dad isn't an alcoholic.

"He really doesn't have a drinking problem."

And then that was it, nothing.

And I think one weekend I just went back, and nothing was said.

# Not looking so good but it's not my drinking

# Feeling pretty rough, probably something I've eaten

# Down another glass, get this thing beaten, earl-aye in the morning... #

It became his best friend in the end.

Desperate to stop him drinking, cos we thought, there's only one place he's going to end up.

And, lo and behold, he did.

# We'll bury you in the morning! # Time, gentlemen, please!

On 30th September 1984, my father took his last drink.

We were on a day trip to Dieppe in France to celebrate my sister's 14th birthday.

We stopped at a cemetery to pay homage to Georges Braque.

He was bending over the grave for us to take a photograph of him.

I found it incredibly emotional.

I had a card in my pocket, just by luck.

It was of...

an opening for an exhibition of mine in London.

And I just wrote on the card, "In fond memories of Georges Braque."

My heart was in my mouth, because I just thought his own grave couldn't be very far away.

I knew he was very ill.

He was cracking jokes.

It was the happiest day, and yet it was just tragic for me

because it raked up all the happy memories that we'd had

and I didn't think there was going to be an awful lot of time left for him.

As we were leaving the harbour, I remember going on the deck

and watching the little church on the top of the cliffs disappearing into the darkness

as the boat headed out into the Channel.

And I remember being in tears, just thinking, "What a terrible mess we've made of our lives."

I said, "Look, I want to show you something,"

and I...I said, "What do you think this is?"

and I pulled up my trouser leg and I could see by the expression on their faces

it was... it was something very dangerous.

It seems a strange thing...

..for me to have been doing, but when I was on my own with the children, I was working with...

..people with addiction problems.

I was quite well-placed to know what to do

when I was called on to help John.

That's when they discovered it was liver failure.

At that stage, I didn't know that he'd damaged himself so badly

that he wasn't going to recover.

I never thought I was going to die, but I knew I was getting weaker and thinner and...

everything was all falling to bits.

And then I started to think about my life in general

and what I had done and what I'd done wrong and what I'd done...

It was mostly on what I'd done wrong that I dwelt,

and all the mistakes I had made,

all these things came flooding into my mind,

and I just thought what a real bastard I had been.

And of course that was so negative,

but that's what happens when you think back on your life like the drowning man.

And they told me that he could... die quite suddenly of a haemorrhage.

Though I hadn't lived with him for 11 years...

I'd moved on, I'd made a life for myself with a lot of difficulty,

but, emotionally, I was exactly in the same place I was

when I got married to him. I really cared about him.

Maybe you have to go through these trials and tribulations

as part of penance for your bad behaviour, I don't know.

The whole thing's such a huge mystery to me, it's so complex

that I think trying to put it into words, for me, is...

is useless, because I'm not a wordsmith, I'm a painter,

and it comes off the end of the brush easier than it does...

for me trying to...articulate it.

Although Juliet was in hospital, they were still married,

and I knew that she wasn't in any position to be able to look after him,

and he couldn't look after her.

I had to...

really put all these things aside and just concentrate on looking after John.

And it may be one week, it might be a month, it might be a year -

whatever time he had, I wanted to help him make it the best he could.

John believed that he was getting better and that there was a future.

There's no question about that.

I had to go and talk to somebody myself professionally.

But I hoped and prayed that this was the end of the drinking.

I just was so delighted to be alive and just thought what a fool I had been.

Sometimes I think, "I wish I could just say thank you to Juliet."

She really, really made a big difference to my childhood.

You couldn't get much out of Dad.

He was just in his own thing all the time.

And Mum was working full-time and she'd often

not be back until seven, then she did the degree and that was later.

She had suffered from manic depression.

There's no cure for it.

And no matter how much you cherish her or love her, it wouldn't make any difference.

It was a nightmare situation.

And he wanted a divorce.

When she was out of hospital, she lived with her mother.

I had a great soft spot for her mum because she was an artist as well.

PAUL: Juliet had been tortured by her illness for years.

On my brother's birthday in 1985, we heard that she'd taken her own life.

A few months later my father died,

and I thought, "My whole world

"is crumbling in. It's all falling apart."

The homes of my grandparents up in Scotland were like a haven to us.

You knew you were safe and warm and it was a normal life, and they just

cherished you and took care of you and spent time with you and you absolutely adored being there.

When my granddad died, that was just another massive blow.

I was convinced it had to be his last Christmas, he was so ill.

I was being told that he might not be there next year.

It's difficult to think that you've got to prepare yourself for somebody's death.

I found relief by just crying to the children from time to time.

I think he just decided that he really wanted to try and put things right

and remarry my mother, 20 years after he'd married her the first time.

I wanted it to be back the way it had been at the start.

But Anya was going through this phase where I think she felt

betrayed by me because of all the upheaval in the family.

She and I became very close and dependent on each other.

She wasn't really for the wedding at all, and in fact,

one of the photographs that Paul took of her at the time, you can tell.

ANYA: You'd think you'd be jumping for joy. But I didn't feel that.

I thought, "Well,

"I've got married, but I think I'm

"going to maybe pop off any second."

And again, I was left thinking, "Is this the end that they had warned me about?"

Almost two extremes, aren't they?

You know, their childhood, our childhood.

I think, even now, they can't really comprehend that.

I had an idyllic childhood.

The children were your life and your parents were your life.

You adored them. The love was boundless.

We were churchgoers,

and you really looked upon

everybody who went to church,

they were almost like family members.

They grew up not only with a great education, with the security of

their family, their cousins, their aunts and uncles, nans around them.

A lovely, warm, secure place.

It was just such

a caring environment.

And I think, for us,

you just couldn't get more different.

I remember shouting at her once, "For goodness sake,

"do you not realise your father's not...he's not going to last?"

I was at my wits' end.

It was a difficult time and I suppose that pushed me into being

a stroppier teenager than perhaps I would have been.

She was behaving really badly and I suppose there was just very little to hang on to.

I just thought, "I'm just going to go out and I'm just going to do whatever I want."

I got expelled from school for messing about far too much.

She would get into trouble quite often for this.

They said, "You can't come here any more. You're going to go to a unit,"

which were just for drop-outs.

You don't look at it and think, "God, that was an awful childhood."

In some ways, it was awful and it was really, really hard.

But there were many, many bits of it that I wouldn't change.

Growing up in that creative atmosphere was wonderful.

It's formed who we are.

The National Portrait Gallery offered him a one-man show, and it was the

first time they'd ever given a one-man show to a living artist.

I had been asked by them to do a portrait.

It can be either Lord so-and-so or Lord thingumajig or Lord...

And I said, "They're all Lords.

"I don't really know many Lords."

And they said, "You don't have to know them." And I said,

"Oh, I don't know about that.

"If I'm going to be in the National Portrait Gallery,

"it has to be somebody I...

"You've got to know the person, not intimately,

"but you've got to know them with some respect, reverence."

And he said, "Well, who would you want to do?"

"The person that comes to mind is George Best."

They thought that George Best was too controversial a figure.

So I said, "OK, Ian Botham."

And by that time, I was looking like death warmed up.

We drove up to Cheshire.

We parked the car and then these Alsatians came running out

with ties around their necks, with the Botham colours on.

He had his strip on, the Tim Hudson Hollywood XI strip.

Tim Hudson had his own cricket team, comprising Ian Botham, Brian Close.

I did the portrait, and it was going really well,

and, you know, the teeth were agony.

I did it in one fell swoop.

It just was one of these inspired things. It just...

Wham! It was sheer expressionism.

It was amazing the coverage that the Ian Botham painting got.

It was in all the newspapers, it was on the television.

It was even on the Six O'Clock News.

It's a difficult one - do you want a Bellany or do you want a portrait of Botham?

Frankly, if you want a portrait of Botham, I'd get you to take a photograph of him.

If you want a Bellany, then you get Bellany to paint Botham, so Bellany paints Botham

in the way that Bellany sees Botham, which is as this massive, sort of giant figure.

He was a hero, and that was how Dad saw him and that was how he portrayed him.

It's not understanding what an artist is about.

One newspaper had put, "1986, the year of Bellany."

It was amazing.

I was offered a retrospective exhibition

at the National Gallery of Modern Art.

That was about the biggest compliment

that can be handed to any Scottish artist.

And I was only 44.

The whole stretch of his career, all his paintings from each phase.

The people had thronged the garden in front of the gallery.

There were hundreds and hundreds of people.

Everybody was clapping and cheering and things.

Oh, I'll never forget that night. That was...

one of the highlights of my whole life.

You have the National Gallery saying, "Here's a great artist."

That's the turning of the tide, isn't it?

From that moment on, he's an old master, he's in the history books.

I remember thinking, "Well, if this is his last

"few months of life, I couldn't have wanted anything better for him."

He also was asked to do the poster for the Edinburgh Festival,

which is a great honour.

During the festival, Sean Connery had had his portrait painted.

Micheline said,

"Sean's having the time of his life with John painting him.

" 'It's like having a wee brother that I can speak to,'

"and he says, 'we're so close and many things in common.' "

That was such a fantastic thing to say.

In the autumn, he had a big show at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

We discovered that David Bowie had been a collector of John's work

for a number of years.

Just opened the door, and David Bowie.

You think, "Has he got the right house?"

He felt on the same wavelength and immediately saw him

as a kindred spirit.

I don't think David realised just how much

he kept John's spirits afloat at that time.

But I was so grateful for occasions like that.

Just catching a glimpse of him and it was just a face of death.

That's such a horrible experience...

It's only because...

Yeah, OK, OK, OK.

I couldn't waken him up one morning.

And when I did, he was completely delirious.

He didn't know where he was or what.

# The vultures were a-circling

# The scent of death in the air

# My compass long since broken

# Causing waves of distress and despair

# Am I the ghost of John Bellany

# Disfigured and slumped on the deck?

# Just another tortured soul

# Sinking like a broken wreck? #

And we were in A&E for - it seemed like hours.

I was just trying to hold his arm down

and he wasn't aware I was even there.

He looked like he was in his last throes of life.

# We tried our best to reach you

# But you were blinded to our task

# And so you tried to hide your hell

# Behind a brush, a sea of oil and a mask... #

My face was completely blank, as if I wasn't there,

and I was shouting my head off at the top of my voice.

# ..I just want to hug and embrace you

# Fearing dust is all that's left in my hands... #

It was about nine o'clock at night by the time we got up to the ward.

He was still unconscious.

I was flying up the Thames, trying to grab the sides of the tunnel.

It was colossally claustrophobic.

# I haven't fulfilled my quest in life

# I must fight to realise my goals... #

The nurses and the doctors came round and they said,

"Can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?"

and I says, "That's so easy.

"It's..."

And I couldn't remember.

And I got asked many, many questions and I couldn't remember anything.

And then I said, "Look, I'll see if I can draw."

I got the bit of paper and it just went...

And I thought, "I'm dead.

"I can't draw, I'm dead."

Haunted him for a long, long time.

"Do not go gentle into that good night

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

# The fire still burns within you

# I know you've got the fight... #

The day came, just before Christmas 1987,

when they told him there was nothing else they could do for him.

He shouted out, "But I want to live as long as Picasso."

And my blood ran cold because this was it,

this was the moment that I'd been dreading.

That's when I got the death sentence,

when Dr Wing said, "I'm afraid

"your life expectancy has been greatly reduced."

And I said, "What do you mean by that?

"Can you tell me exactly what you mean by that?"

And then there was a silence, and then the penny dropped

and I said, "You don't mean I'm going die, do you?"

I went to talk to the doctors,

and it came about that one of the doctors had suggested a transplant.

I don't think it had been taken seriously,

because nobody had mentioned it was a possibility.

And I was feeling really, really low.

I thought, I'm just giving up the ghost lying here,

nothing cheering me up at all.

Then I heard this music, and it was played very gently,

but it was getting nearer.

I thought, "Heavens above, I'm dreaming now."

And he came in and he just said, "How's the patient today?"

and that just gave me such a lift.

And to quote Graham Greene - I used to have this in my studio -

"There is always hope."

I thought, "My goodness, Rolf Harris has given me hope

"to soldier on and really take the world on and get back.

"Can't give up life as easily as that."

# Cold winter was howlin' o'er moorland and mountain

# And wild was the surge of the dark rolling sea

# When I met about daybreak a bonnie young lassie

# Who asked me the road and the miles to Dundee... #

And of course, every day, every minute of every day

was just a huge risk by that time.

He couldn't breathe properly, he couldn't swallow,

he couldn't swallow food.

He couldn't walk, his legs were swollen, his teeth were falling out.

He was in agony with this skin complaint.

He was yellow. A breath of wind could have blown him away.

When we got into the hospital, I just felt like crying.

They said, "It's a bit more than 50-50, but it varies."

I decided,

I've got to do drawings because they might be the last things I ever do.

So I started with the patient who was opposite me

and then I drew the nurses.

And it kept my mind off D-E-A-T-H.

This doctor said, she said, "We've got a liver for him."

And the doctor said, "Well, that's that."

And I said, "It's not that's that.

"This might be the last painting I ever do in my whole life,

"so sit where you are."

And she said, "I'm so glad you said that,

"because that's going to be my claim to fame if you die."

I kept thinking,

"God, this might be the last time I ever see him,"

and I kept trying to think, "What can I say?

"What can I say that's big enough for this?"

It was just the longest day.

It was the longest day ever.

We expected it to be about six hours,

and I think it turned out to be about nine.

While we were sitting in the waiting room, we were almost like just

individuals in our own little worlds, just hoping that he'd do well.

There was nothing we could say to each other to either

comfort each other. It was beyond that.

The new liver didn't kick in straight away.

He started to bleed at that point.

We just had to wait until the liver kicked in and we put in enough

blood replacement factors for this to stop.

He was quite a spectacular one in that respect.

Doesn't happen very often.

The doors of the operating theatre opened,

and I could see the team wheeling him along on a trolley.

But when I saw his face,

there was just something about his face that I thought looked healthier

and gave me a good feeling.

When we saw his scar, it was like someone had sawn him in half.

That was, I suppose, the biggest hurdle over.

At least he'd got his chance.

And in the morning, I wakened up with a start, thinking,

"It's about eight o'clock."

I'd been so exhausted that I'd slept on, and I jumped out of bed

and ran along the corridor because I thought,

"I should have been with John. What if something's happened?"

I was petrified to go into the intensive care unit.

They said, "Oh, yes, he's started to come round.

"He's been asking for paper and pencil."

Ohh!

So the doctor came across with a bit of paper,

and I was able to draw her.

And he'd written, with scrawly, spidery handwriting,

"I will get better."

And he did.

That was me on the mend. I knew I was OK if I could draw.

# Wait, I see that I can draw

# Then I know I'm alive... #

I got a bit of an infection.

I lost even more weight.

I was down to seven stone

and they were worried about me going to fade away.

There was one night, it was about three o'clock in the morning,

I think, and I was in agony.

It was just unbearable pain.

It was, "Do I struggle and do I keep this will to live or do I just

"close my eyes and that'll be that?"

I did a self-portrait.

It just flew off the end of the pencil. It was just drawing itself.

It was me in absolute agony, as bad as it can get.

I signed it and then I lay back and I was absolutely

drained of any energy whatsoever.

That's the Conte drawing that's now in the National Gallery of Scotland.

It's the best drawing I've ever done in my life.

Every day I'd go in, he'd have done another few watercolours.

I felt so proud of that room.

This is my dad recovering from the transplant,

and look what he's done already.

John has to paint and draw.

It's just an inner need.

It's like breathing.

He didn't need any painkillers because he was so,

so intense with his painting

that it completely numbed, I think,

all the pain he must have been experiencing.

I've never been involved with a painter of his calibre

who felt that, despite the fact that he was extremely ill,

that he still must use his talents to express himself.

I suspect that's unique, but if it's not unique,

it's very, very unusual and very, very courageous.

It helped to deal with the pain because I was concentrating so hard,

cos if good painting's about anything, it's about intensity.

And he did 60 paintings showing what it was like

to have a liver transplant, which is a pretty formidable operation.

Nobody will ever be able to describe liver transplantation

better than those 60 paintings.

When you're actually going through it, it's sheer hell.

Birds were coming up and pecking on the window,

little chaffinches and everything.

I've never been so in love with nature as when I first came out.

And then the first painting I did was a big painting.

I said, "I'm going to start off as I mean to continue."

And it was a big painting of flowers,

which now hangs in Jesus College in Cambridge.

# When I met about daybreak a bonnie young lassie

# Who asked me the road and the miles to Dundee

# Says I, "My young lassie, I canna' weel tell ye

# "The road and the distance I canna' weel gie..." #

When me and Jon got involved in the right-wing music scene,

that caused a big rift in the family,

and we were kind of ostracised because of that and, you know,

now we're back together, perhaps you wanted to say a few words about that.

No, no, I'm not saying anything.

No.

Not a thing ever.

My brother had gone to play drums with Skrewdriver

in Cottbus, which at the time was a hotbed of right-wing activities.

The night before the gig, there was a bit of trouble.

We just got completely stranded and

didn't know the first thing that was going on, really.

Oh, it was just dreadful.

A strange place away in the far side of East Germany.

Quite ironic, really, to think that I'd worked in prison,

and here I was visiting my own son in one.

I had no idea they were coming.

It was just heart-breaking.

We were told that, if we paid a sum of money,

the charges would be dropped.

But I'm convinced he didn't do it

and it's wrong in my view to pay the money, so we didn't.

For the first time in my life,

I could really think about what I was doing, where I was going,

and I came to terms with so many things.

The fact he was involved with such people,

who held such obnoxious views, and that was a crime in my eyes.

The tabloids had tagged us as the Bruise Brothers

and various other names.

And my mum and dad had given an interview to one

of the broadsheets up in Scotland, where they had basically disowned us.

And even though it was understandable,

it was still hard to take

when you read that your mum and dad didn't want to know you anymore.

That was the lowest point, I think.

JONATHAN: I can't say how big a moment that was.

I could see that if we didn't get out, this was going to end badly,

and we were getting involved in something

that was spiralling out of control.

But it's at times like that where you do really have to take a step back and look at your own life.

But after that, I remember getting a letter from Jonathan,

and he said that...

I've still got the letter, and he said,

"One day, Mum, I'll make you proud of me."

And he has.

When I look back now, it's like someone else's life.

It just feels like it's a million years ago, it's so far away.

And so distant from what the person I am now.

Well, I think Anya felt quite at sea with all this going on.

She'd got O-levels and a couple of A-levels and found herself

at Liverpool University, where she studied history of art.

When we were going to find out our results, I saw my name and I put my

finger along it and I said, "God, it really is. I've got a first!"

and I just couldn't believe it.

I was so proud of her because she suffers from dyslexia

and that was a huge hazard to get over.

This was like a real occasion where I'd really made them feel proud.

A letter came from the Prime Minister's office.

He opened the letter and he went...

.."For fuck's sake!"

He said, "They've made me a CBE!"

And I said, "Wow, let me see that.

"Wow! Well, well." He said, "They're asking if I'll accept,"

and I said, "Well, will you accept it?"

"Of course I'll fucking accept it."

He got the shock of his life.

The bad boy of Scottish painting, he used to be,

now hobnobbing with the great and the good.

Paul was always drawing.

He in particular had the talent and a need to draw continually,

very similar to his father.

He continued to do creative work while doing the most menial jobs,

and taught himself.

It was many years later that we were surprised

to learn that he'd applied for a place at the National Film School.

Which is one of the most prestigious

film schools in the whole world.

Finally, he was doing what he should have been doing many years before.

He was given his degree by Sir Richard Attenborough.

'Paul Bellany.'

APPLAUSE

'And since going to the film school,

'I feel that I've grown a lot closer to my dad.'

I'll often just pop down to see him in his studio.

Even a ten-minute conversation, you come out filled with inspiration

cos he's got so much knowledge, but it's not just the knowledge,

it's the passion in which he imparts that knowledge.

JONATHAN: It was a really special moment.

The whole family came up to see him being awarded the honour

of being the first ever Freeman of East Lothian.

We started off going to the John Bellany Centre.

SHE SINGS

And as we were leaving, they started up an old song

which was very Scottish and very Port Seton.

"Weel may the boatie row, the boatie rows fu' weel."

THEY SING

Oh, that was just so touching.

Being surrounded by own family, that was a great heart-lifter.

The Provost and Councillors unanimously resolve that

John Bellany CBE, RA, be admitted as an Honorary Freeman of East Lothian.

Of course, I'm entitled to several things.

You have rights to graze geese on Musselburgh Links.

The image of you walking with a gaggle of geese

doesn't bear thinking about.

There's a painting there somewhere.

His affinity with Port Seton and Eyemouth in particular,

it resonates all throughout his work, throughout his life,

and still to this day.

They are special places, and it's a great occasion

when you visit Eyemouth or Port Seton with him.

You walk along the harbour, you can see just what it does to him.

He's invigorated by it.

Things in the family had really improved

and life was really quite calm,

and then a storm came out of nowhere, and I remember being with my father

and we were on our way to exhibition in Glasgow.

I looked round and boom, he was on the floor.

I thought that he was a goner.

I just felt myself going, and I said, "I think I'm going to faint."

I remember just standing there, my eyes closed,

just saying, "Please God."

I remember taking this photograph of my mum looking at my dad,

and it's probably one of the most precious photographs I've ever taken,

because it was just a picture of joy and love that he'd survived

against all the odds.

He'd done it again.

It was just unbelievable.

I'll never forget Glasgow as long as I live,

because that was a very, very close call.

You can imagine how

endlessly thankful I am to these people who work in hospitals.

Ambulance men, nurses, doctors,

they are just a race apart.

20 years ago, to all intents and purposes,

he probably should have died because of the state he was in.

And of course, it's partly down to his inner strength,

not just because he wanted to live,

but because he wanted to live and paint.

FOOTBALL MATCH ON TELEVISION

Yes! 1-0!

Come here, come here, quick. Quick, quick, quick.

'Yeah, football has always been special when Scotland played,

'you know, even as far back as the '78 World Cup.'

We watched the games together.

The house would get dolled up in tartan and Scotland flags

and we'd all be dressed up for the occasion.

It was literally five minutes' walk from my front door to Stamford Bridge.

We'd have hot dogs. It was like, "We never have anything like that."

He always made it a special day.

We've been Chelsea fanatics ever since.

I did a portrait of the Chelsea centre-half Micky Droy.

Bastards!

Bastards! Bastards!

I took them to see Scotland versus England, one of the last matches

of that great series of feuds between Scotland and England.

And when we got to the Wembley Stadium,

it was absolutely packed out with people.

The steward lead us through some tunnels

and we spotted the home dressing room and the away dressing room.

And we came up and there we were.

We walked into Wembley, came out of the tunnel

and all the crowd was there. It was fantastic.

And all the singing behind us.

All the Scottish supporters were behind us, you see.

And it was just so...

It was one of the happiest moments of my whole life,

with my two sons, one on each side.

About ten years ago, my mum and dad bought a place in Tuscany.

Within a very short space of time, they'd become a real part of

the community and my father was awarded the Freedom of Barga,

maybe three or four years after moving there.

Everybody loved John because John loved these people.

Probably, John found here an atmosphere

much similar to the atmosphere of Port Seton, I think.

A thing I love most is when I'm here, I get off the plane at Pisa

and within ten minutes, all your cares

float into the ether up above you.

It's here that I think my deepest thoughts.

You think about your own creativity in a much deeper way

than you can if you're living in a city.

He paints the most evocative street scenes of the little hill villages

that are around us where we live in Italy.

In the '60s when he was a student, minimalism was all the rage.

He hung his figurative paintings

outside the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

Now they fetch six-figure sums and hang in museums

and galleries all over the world...

..from Australia, to China, America and all over Europe.

'I've stuck to my own vision.

'I haven't followed all these fancy new tricks like invisibilism,

'all these different new things.

'I just find these things so negative for me.

'So I have taken the bull by the horns

'and worked totally against fashion.

'And I paint from my very soul'

and I want to move people, to get inside their hearts.

I do believe that painting isn't a joyride about fancy colours

and blobs and squiggles.

And I think when the time comes for our reckoning, we will see

who are the great artists and who are the not-so-great, shall we say.

And I remember, for my mum's 60th birthday,

him climbing up on the roof of the house to play the accordion

and belt out a rendition of The Road And The Miles.

It's unbelievable, but that's how he was

and that's how he's been throughout our life.

We have, I'm delighted to say, Paul Bellany.

Paul, where are you?

I was really proud to be representing my father at a recent event

hosted by Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, celebrating Homecoming.

The principle of family, friends, belonging, safety, nostalgia,

back home to harbour, which is what Homecoming is all about.

'In some ways, I feel that making this film has been a little bit

'like a homecoming, and we've all been cut adrift in rough seas

'and managed to somehow clamber back to harbour.'

'And it's amazing where we've ended up.'

'Our story is the story of two people who really love each other

'and the hurt that goes with it when problems arise.'

We've been lucky that we've been able to turn it all around, eh?

And whatever life holds in front of us, really, we've had such a life.

It's not material things that make you rich.

It's things that, really, money can't buy.

And the fates have been kind to us, really.

It was hardly plain sailing, though, was it?

Oof, no!

And to go back and think over some of these times

is incredibly painful.

He's intent on giving his grandchildren

the very best start in life possible.

He's a great support to his children,

who've worked hard to build up their lives from a difficult start.

And he's just a wonderful person and I love him.

# Oh, so merrily we'll sing

# As the storm rattles round us

# Join and bond us like a ring

# And with pride roar out a chorus

# Will you go, lassie, go

# And we'll all go together

# To pull wild mountain thyme

# All around the blooming heather

# Will you go, lassie, go

# And we'll all go together

# To pull wild mountain thyme

# All around the blooming heather

# Will you go, lassie, go

# And we'll all go together

# To pull wild mountain thyme

# All around the blooming heather

# Will you go, lassie, go

# And we'll all go together

# To pull wild mountain thyme

# All around the blooming heather

# Will you go, lassie, go

# And we'll all go together... #

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