OVER the years, Johnny Beattie’s interviews have been performances; sprinkled with gags and funny stories, like excerpts from his variety theatre shows.

But you never got a peek behind the curtain of the man, despite an incredible 63-year career.

Instead, you got the outline of the 88-year life, from Fairfield shipyard engineer to am-dram appearance to being seduced by the business. And it’s all been nice. No tales of tin-bath-in-front-of-the-fire misery, no dampness and depression running down the walls of the psyche.

Yes, we’ve had some nice little anecdotes over the years, but now that’s retired, left River City for good, will he talk about the realities of personal and professional life?

At his home in Glasgow’s West End, the performer is as welcoming as ever, but Johnny no longer looks as tall or as strong as a Govan crane.

He still manages the two flights of stairs up to his flat however. “My daily exercise,” he says, grinning, as we climb past the walls covered in theatre posters, and pics of early days on stage.

Inside, you realise his hearing is not what it was. “You need to shout,” he says, shouting, and so the questions – and answers – are delivered to the back of the stalls.

And here’s the opener; did his parents panic when he said he was entering showbiz?

“My father (a Co-op doorman), was laidback about me going into the business but yes, my mother felt there was something not quite right about it,” he says in careful voice.

“And years later, when I was top of the bill at Ayr, she’d say to me ‘When are you going to stop gallivanting aboot?’”

Johnny Beattie’s entry into showbiz came about in 1951. Was he a natural performer/show-off?

“I think so. During National Service in the Marines, in Singapore, I was always taking off the officers, clowning about.”

Did Singapore make a man of him, in every sense of the word? “It probably did, but you don’t realise it at the time.” Mmm. I think you must have realised you had become a man, Johnny? “I suppose you would in a way,” he says, skating over the subject like a flat stone on a calm loch.

“But the army and showbiz has let me see the world.”

What about those early showbiz days? Was he taken advantage of?

“There were agents who would do that,” he says, offering little. What about the giant egos in the business? The upstagers? “There were some,” he admits.

For example? “The one man no one wanted on stage with him was Big Chic (Murray). He always had to be up front... ”

Johnny stops and looks worriedly at the recorder. “Don’t put this in the paper.” Come on, Johnny. You’re not saying Chic Murray was a monster, just a monstrous attention seeker. He relents. “He was a funny man, Chic, but half the audience simply didn’t get him.”

Did he pay a price for working so hard? “Yes, I missed my kids growing up,” he says of the two boys and two girls, which includes actress daughter Maureen.

Was Johnny Beattie’s love affair with showbiz a factor in the break-up of his marriage to Kitty Lamont in 1982, whom he “adored”?

Surprisingly, he opens up. “Yes, but we got back together,” he says, in emphatic voice. “You’ve never read anything about that have you?” No. “We tried to make it work again.”

He pauses, perhaps searching for answers. “I couldn’t understand the split at all. What I do know is we still went out together after the break-up.” His voice drops. “We looked at a house around the corner. A big house. But then she took no’ well.”

Lamont died from cancer in 1992. Beattie was bereft. He looks bereft now. “You really want to know the hardest time for me going on stage? It was when I lost her, and I had to go on and do my turn every night and be funny. I was shattered. I really don’t know how I got through it.”

Did he take to drink to cope with the grief? Selective hearing kicks in. “It took me a long time to get over it. But I had some great friends who were supportive.” Did he find love again? “Not really. Kitty was the real McCoy.”

Let’s switch tack. Does he regret he didn’t make it outside Scotland? “I’ve never felt I had to reach a certain place. I was never desperate and I think I’ve been like that in life generally.”

There’s no envy or jealousy in Beattieworld. “Kevin Bridges is a multi-millionaire – and he’s 26? Good luck to him. But it’s crazy money. After I did the Robert Wilson tour I was on £12 a week.”

What does get him irritated is a lack of niceness on TV. (He has made more than 1,000 hours of programming.) “They’re saying f*** on the telly all the time now. I wasn’t even allowed to say ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ when I joined the Ayr Gaiety in 1960.

“And then there’s sex on telly. They’re doing it in front of you! There’s one show I saw recently featuring this 80-year-old woman who’s kinky for the young men! What’s that got to do with entertainment?”

Beattie’s fans will reply: “Nothing.” They’ll say they love the man who’s offered up nice safe jokes, who’s never felt a need to shock, to be radical; it’s not who he is.

“I think a comedian’s material should suit their personality,” he argues, “like Lex McLean, or Tommy Morgan.”

If Beattie had a darker personality would he have been more successful? Think Cooper, Hancock... “It’s probably true,” he says.

But if you’re nice you can have a nice, long career.

“Only if you don’t reveal too much,” he says, grinning.