Dufton Scott - The Auctioneer Out Of His Element

Dufton Scott (1880-1944) was born at Forgue in Aberdeenshire in 1880 and started his working life as an ironmonger in nearby Huntly, and soon afterwards in Aberdeen itself. His ambition to become a professional entertainer led him to join George Walker's touring party, performing his own monolgues in a broad mid-Aberdeenshire accent. In these tours he often performed on the same bill as the fiddlers James Scott Skinner and Mackenzie Murdoch. By the First World War, Dufton's popularity was widespread in his native Scotland, and he was encouraged to publish a collection of his monologues, Dufton Scott's Sketches which was reprinted several times, even into the 1950s. With the arrival of radio in the 1920s, Dufton Scott quickly became a favourite, hosting such programmes as An Evenin' in the Grieve's Hoose, where his "Braid Scots Stories" would be interspersed with music and song from singers such as John Strachan and Tom Morrison, the latter with whom he collaborated on many musical and dramatic productions on stage, record and radio (in 1921 Scott and Morrison appeared in Mains's Wooin', a comedy drama written by Gavin Greig. As a result of the radio exposure, Scott recorded many of his monologues on 78rpm on the Columbia and Beltona labels. As well as his entertainment career, Scott owned a stationery shop in Inverurie, where he had settled after getting married in 1911.

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