The Hour

Renowned Scottish actor and director, David Hayman took the plunge and abseiled off the Titan Crane in Clydebank, to raise money for the charity ENABLE.

The Trial and Retribution actor took on his challenge at the site of the former John Brown shipyard, on July 1, to raise cash for Scotland’s leading charity for children and adults with learning difficulties.

Speaking to STV’s The Hour, he said: “I don’t normally do work for other charities because I run my own and my time is so busy. But ENABLE is a great charity and they help young people and children with learning difficulties, and they help them through life, help them through education and training, and fight on behalf of them for rights.”

The actor – who has also appeared in a number of big movies, last playing a Jewish servant in The Boy with Striped Pyjamas – runs his own charity, Spirit Aid, which assists youngsters in Scotland and abroad, in countries including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

One of David’s main programmes with Spirit Aid is Shooters, a filmmaking project he runs with various communities to tackle important issues, such as alcoholism and loneliness.

Speaking about the project, he said: “Shooters is the filmmaking arm of spirit aid. It was one of the first ideas I had when I set up the organisation, I though I wanted to take the best from our industry, film and television, to help give young people a voice.

“So what we do is we spend time with communities of young people, we teach them how to use a camera, how to record sound, how to write a script, how to act, how to direct. Then we mentor them to take the democratic decision to choose an issue to make a film about, and then we mentor them to make films.

“We’ve made over 45 short films with over 400 young people from 27 different nationalities.”

One of his most recent projects was with St. Margaret’s High School in Airdrie, who made a short, gritty film about the dangers of knife crime.

David has also been recently filming a special programme for STV’s forthcoming Made in Scotland series, during which he toured around distilleries learning everything there is to know about malt whisky.

The actor - who called his task “phenomenal” - got the chance to work with Richard Paterson, one of most famous whisky blenders in the world, who taught him all about ‘whisky nosing’ and various other techniques.