SIR Sean Connery has had plenty of tributes and obituaries over the past few days, the best of them the personal tribute paid in the Scottish National by Alex Salmond. Today, I am going to try and tell Sean’s Scottish story in as exact details as I can muster, as well as telling some untold, or at least unremembered stories, about a man that I met several times and who I know was a great self-taught student of Scottish history. I will be concentrating mostly on his life in Scotland.

Apologies to those expecting the final part of my short series on Scotland in the British Empire, but that will appear next week. There are occasions when anyone who writes about history has to pause and reflect on the personal history of an individual, especially when that person is the most famous Scottish man of recent decades.

My favourite story about Sean was told by Tom Conti in 1991, when Sean received the Freedom of Edinburgh at a packed Usher Hall not far from his birthplace in Fountainbridge – and there will be more about that award later.

Conti told how Sean had come up from his home in Marbella to join the Scottish fans at the stadium in Seville, where Jock Stein’s Scotland were to play the mighty Brazil in the 1982 World Cup. A Daily Record photographer, Eric Craig, spotted Sean in the crowd and waved to try and get his attention. A Scottish fan standing next to Sean said to him: “Hey pal, I think that guy wants to take your photie.” Only later did the fan’s pals tell him who the mystery guy in the picture was. Sean thought it was a hoot.

The facts of his birth and upbringing are well known. He was born as Thomas Sean Connery on August 25, 1930, to Joseph Connery, a factory worker and lorry driver, and Effie (nee McLean), who worked as a cleaner. He had a younger brother Neil.

Sean grew up in Fountainbridge and was known as Tommy, and while they never starved, his early years were lived in straitened family circumstances. To help out the home finances, he left school at 13 and went to work as a milkman on a horse and cart at St Cuthbert’s Cooperative Society, having previously delivered milk for them from the age of nine. Becoming a full-timer, he worked under the guidance and tutelage of Alec Kitson, who would become a major figure in Labour and trade union circles, chairing both the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. Connery never forgot his early mentor and sent a warm message to Kitson’s family when Alec died in 1997 at the age of 75.

Connery had other jobs before joining the Royal Navy at the age of 16, where he trained as a gunner and served on HMS Formidable. He enjoyed the Navy life but it did not suit him physically – he was invalided out of the senior service at the age of 19 after suffering duodenal ulcers, a condition that ran in his family.

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The Navy gave him a couple of qualities – two tattoos, one “Mum and Dad” and the other “Scotland Forever”, and a big improvement in his swimming, so much so that one of his jobs when he returned home was as a lifeguard at Portobello Swimming Pool. As the National revealed last month, the successful bodybuilder-turned-tapestry-weaver-of-genius Archie Brennan, the Mr Scotland of 1953, was the man who suggested that Sean try out as a life model at the Edinburgh College of Art. One of the students was future arts entrepreneur Richard Demarco, who thought the then 21-year-old Connery was “too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis”.

Sean had numerous odd jobs, including a spell as a coffin polisher and a dance hall bouncer, usually at the Palais de Danse. The story that he once took on an entire gang who were trying to steal his coat is slightly exaggerated – there were only six of them and they left him alone after that.

At 6ft 2ins plus, in his 20s Connery was known locally as Big Tam. He had taken up bodybuilding and was also a keen footballer, playing first for Fet-Lor amateurs. The name came from Fettes and Loretto public schools, which backed the club. Connery also delivered milk to Fettes, and Ian Fleming made James Bond an Old Fettesian directly because of Connery’s influence. Connery also played for Bonnyrigg Rose juniors and gained a trial for East Fife, then enjoying their golden age as one of the best clubs in the country. He confirmed this fact when he contacted Scotland on Sunday to deny the story that had been put about that he once had a trial for Celtic, the club he once supported. He later supported Rangers, but this was much to do with his friendship with the club’s then owner Sir David Murray – Connery detested sectarianism, it should be said.

Taking up bodybuilding competitively, Sean had some success but he had already decided to try for a career in acting. He first trod the boards in Edinburgh as a guardsman in full tartan regalia, before a chance encounter at a body building contest in London led him to audition for a part in a production of South Pacific. He stood out from the chorus line and with his fine light tenor voice – see his first scene with Ursula Andress in Dr No – was given a principal role, Lt Buzz Adams, in the touring production of the musical. The role saw him appear bare-chested, pictures confirming his hirsuteness. The greatest influence in his life at that time was a colleague in the cast, the American actor Robert Henderson, who encouraged Sean to read – he gave him a list of books and plays to read and Connery duly worked his way through them.

It was a fellow Scot who almost changed Connery’s life in 1954. The male cast of South Pacific arranged a publicity stunt football match with the reserves of Manchester United. Their Scottish manager Matt Busby was so impressed with Connery’s performance he offered him a trial. Given Busby’s coaching genius, it is not difficult to see that Sean would have improved enough to make the United first team and might well have been one of the Busby Babes who perished in the awful air disaster at Munich in 1958 – except that Sean had signed a contract with the musical’s producers and he would not break his word. He went back to studying Henderson’s reading list and also learned mime and movement and took elocution lessons – though as the world knows, he never quite lost his Scottish accent.

In that same year Connery’s future was decided. He was given a minor role in the Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn musical film, Lilacs in the Spring. Moving permanently down south, Sean began to get a series of theatrical roles and minor roles in television series – he played a baddie in Dixon of Dock Green and relished his short role.

His big television break came in 1957 when he played the boxer Mountain McLintock in the live BBC production of Requiem for a Heavyweight, written by Rod Serling.

Minor roles in British film followed, until he was chosen to play opposite big screen star Lana Turner in the film melodrama Another Time Another Place. Her boyfriend, mafia hoodlum Johnny Stompanato, confronted Connery with a gun as he thought the pair were having an affair – Sean knocked him out.

HIS role in Darby O’Gill and the Little People in 1959 was secured for him by Walt Disney himself, but it was producer Cubby Broccoli’s wife Dana who persuaded her husband to screen test Connery for the role of Dr No.

Having also made an impact as a combative Irish soldier in the D-Day film The Longest Day, Dr No director Terence Young added no little style and class to Connery and his film career, as they say, is now history. Though he played Scots such as Roberts in the brilliant The Hill, he rarely filmed in Scotland – the final scenes of From Russia with Love were shot in Argyll and he played Ramirez in Highlander.

In 1967 he carried out his only directing project, a documentary for STV called the Bowler and the Bunnet about the Fairfield Shipyard Experiment. In the short film Connery rode a bicycle, and fans will know that the bike ride appears in his underrated film Finding Forrester.

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In 1970, with Jackie Stewart, Sean co-founded the Scottish International Education Trust, which has helped thousands of young Scots with their education. As Alex Salmond says, it is probably his greatest legacy.

He also loved being made a member of the R&A, and competed for many years in the club’s tournaments at St Andrews.

Sean also made a tourism promotion video for The City of Edinburgh District Council. Made by Murray Grigor, who helped Sean write his only attempt at a memoir, Sean Connery’s Edinburgh is a true love letter to his home city, for which he charged no fee.

The director of public relations and tourism at the time, Andrew Fyall, became a friend, and later as the STV bureau chief he persuaded Sean to take part in an STV documentary. Directed by Ross Wilson, it is often acclaimed as the most insightful documentary on Connery.

There has been much controversy over Connery’s tax status. He once explained he lived in Marbella because he worked 10 months of the year and wanted some guaranteed sunshine on holiday – but when it was suggested that he be given the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh in 1990, it was his SNP connections that caused some Labour councillors to object. The suggestion was made to Lord Provost Eleanor McLaughlin by none other than National columnist George Kerevan, then the council’s economic development convener.

George told me yesterday: “It seemed the right thing to do at a time when his fame was at its peak. I gave him a present – Portobello pool had been demolished and I went there and retrieved one of the fancy ceramic tiles which I presented to him.”

McLaughlin had actually known Connery in the 1950s, and actively promoted the award. Connery himself was fearful that the event would not fill the venue, but on June 11, 1991, the Usher Hall was packed for a memorable occasion with hundreds outside to greet him. Typically, Sean started shaking their hands and kept those inside waiting, among whom was councillor Irene Kitson, daughter of Alec. As the star of the show entered stage left, the Criterion jazz band struck up the music and Connery delighted the crowd by dancing across the stage. A voice rang out: “Welcome home big Tam!”

The freeman’s scroll was kept safe by council chief executive Sandy Hepburn until the Lord Provost conferred the Freedom upon Connery, and he was clearly emotional as he accepted the honour which he always ranked above his Oscar.

As we all know, Sean Connery was no saint, but this is the true measure of the man. On the day after receiving the Freedom he went unannounced to Milestone House, the hospice for HIV-AIDS victims, and spoke to all the patients. Lord Provost McLaughlin asked him why he chose to become the first major Hollywood star to visit such an establishment in Britain. He replied: “I have lost friends to this b*stard of a disease.”

A complex and sometimes contrary figure, Sean Connery was a true Scot who longed for independence. But now Big Tam has gone, and will never know what it might have been like for him to live in the independent Scotland he so passionately believed in.