As for a number of homeless people to spend Christmas of the original the new cancelled the city's rule hotels that it was worried about the impact on its other guests Simpson's from the Raise the Roof group who organized it every life quality also allowing a full focus for someone else into the tree house showing no cause for they have over ready 20 feet for such a large and Christmas for investors Christmas Day It is a fantastic turnaround Lewis Hamilton's being criticized by his hometown for saying it was his dream to get out of the slums he made the comment the B.B.C. Sports Personality of the Year awards he backtracked straight away but the leader of Steven age bar accounts as people they're a very offended Shabnam Eunice Joel has the support from the Rovers boss Mickey Mallon says it'll take a bit of time to sink in that they'll be playing Tottenham in the F.A. Cup 3rd round in January but he decided through after beating Southport to Nell in the 2nd round replay these maidens Darby finished goalless but the draw Darby County has moved Nottingham Forest to within a points off the Championship play off places and will be staying at Manchester United until 2020 is after the club triggered the option of a year's extension on the food contract 5 year dominance of the F.A. Youth Cup is over after a 43 3rd round exit at Manchester United they'll face Brighton in the next round the Champions League last 16 and Europa League last 32 draws have been made you can head to the B.B.C. Sport website for details and Alston Island forward in Henderson will miss most of next year's 6 Nations because of a thumb injury this is B.B.C. Radio 5 Live on digital B.B.C. Sound Smart speakers from a. Very mild this morning in windy today with a chance of gales we'll see rain spreading east some of the heavy especially in the north and west getting brighter in Northern Ireland later highs of 11 in Edinburgh and London than some of the year again yes it is really the vein I was. I just want More I was gone 5 past the radio it's like that people tend to say nice things about you when you die but the outpouring of praise that followed the Scottish artist John Balinese who is rest in 2013 Israel held by the director general of the National Galleries of Scotland so John Lennon is one of Scotland's greatest artists of the modern era he was loved by his fellow creative talents some of them telling the story it is a story another great Scott many feels called him a hero Damien Hirst said the bell in the show when Sheffield turned him on the painting and David Bowie was a close friend as well as was the poet the Scottish Port Allen bolt nobody could have been a better friend than Bellamy's wife Helen though he moderate twice with the art critic Tim Morrow Helen Bellamy He's written a book the restless wife mighty life with John Bellamy and the book starts with a view of Hallam as a young student at Edinburgh College of Art student and early 1960 S. So why did they get the clothes were all sharp spoke to Helen Melanie back in April when I came down in tweeds and they you know hand knitted things that had been specially made for me by my mother and to go to the college she see so I soon realised that this was the most uncool thing I could ever be seen in so a there. Students we all went to the 2nd hand shops in the grass market and. There were several of them there but our favorite one was Madame de out fires and she had a place down in the new town in amongst all that sort of pushed around houses a basement and it was full of piles of clothes nothing was hung up and nothing was . Presented in any normal way and the cats used to roam around it and there with the Consequently the smell was quite pungent at times. But we found treasures there it was a fantastic bet you did and that was royal circus I mean one of the grandest streets in the new toy that's right yes it's a basic so anyway and it was called I saw this is amazing it was called Madame de out for just think of anything to do with the naming of the film when you know Robyn Williams That the film Well I believe I'm fine with it wrote the book and titled it madam and I've got to see I really was I wasn't pleased about that because not of Doubtfire was a legend in a own right and didn't need a film you know called you know it's the film made that was called not and fire had nothing to do with her and it was a good film but you know. Don't fire deserves a film of your own Well there you go. There we're here we are here we are to talk about John Bellamy the wonderful artist who was your husband not once but twice how did you 1st learn about Him Well I 1st set eyes on him in my 1st week dark college and then I didn't know him he was just a student in the year above. And they subsequently I saw some of his work which told him I'd fallen in love with the wire before but fell in love with him if he was it was dynamic and very very powerful work and even though through I was just a fledgling art student myself and didn't know very much I it it had a great impact on me there seems to be an exuberance about his work the especially the early work it was like he could barely contain himself you know just just to get stuff on the canvas yes absolutely he. He was fired up from an early age I think really from when he was a very young child and he started with the fishing boats of course and you always knew he wanted to be an artist seemingly. You say the start of the fishing boats that was because he came from a fishing port wasn't a great sea didn't support a port and fishing families both his maternal and paternal grandparents and before them they were always fishing fishing people and you would think that you know he the the family wish would have been for him to follow in their footsteps but he had other ideas and. He went ahead with with with what he wanted to do and they were very very proud of him. I mean is there a leap some of the early stuff as is fishing boats on on the skids isn't it with a yes a go back into the water Yes Yes Well his father was a he left the sea for some family reasons and he went to be a boat builder so the whole thing it was the whole the whole. Aspect of fishing that the family were concerned with and so John he would see the boats the in-built he would see the structure been for him and he would understand the balances and the the grace and beauty of the design and everything it all fed his imagination one of the early great paintings or was is can or will is not just a bow is it so much more it's that it's the people are on the board can you tell us about it well when he came to Sutherland what I come from I took him run to the west coast and they of course he wanted to go and see Lochinvar under and that was a harbor that he knew of so we went there and he was thrilled and we spent ages looking at the boots some of which he he knew because they came from the East Coast and he could tell who the skipper where the skipper is where and then I took him further up the West Coast and we found ourselves in pin oak there V. And turning the corner and looking down into little harbor among the rocks he was astounded he couldn't believe he thought it was part of dice a harbor in such a beautiful remote place and that inspired him to paint the iconic picture that is in the National Galleries. They've they've all got these severe black hats on which the hat of course appears on his head well I think that's where they are just imagination comes in artists license if you like and this is what it was it wasn't a sort of literal depiction of the fishing fishing boats and fisherman It was his own vision which was powerful and idiosyncratic and. That's where it creates you know work of art comes in it's it's I know it's a personal vision of the artist. It Tomorrow actually talks about this hat on John's head in a self-portrait and he says that it strikes you when whenever you go into the general assembly room at the Royal Academy in London and there it's a it's a very severe self-portrait isn't it I mean he barely appears to have any arms will a lot his portraits in the early days where quite severe and I don't quite I can't quite explain that except that perhaps it comes from history logis upbringing because he had to go to church 3 times every Sunday to Bible class Sunday school he even went to the president meeting with his uncle and of course Black Cats in the fifty's. Everybody wore hats men were hats women were huts to church all this kind of thing but there's a severity in the fifty's that. Sort of permeated everything and perhaps that's where it comes from for us I think is that the beard is straight the brim is straight shoulders are straight everything is in straight line well you had to be in state lines then. A bit awkward for him it was well he found a solution through he told the line tell us about what you told the lion and then well let's all get a line and then he got a glimpse of another world and that appealed to him much more so he he he would see that his life was fooled he followed the line between the sacred and profane for the rest of his life but it's interesting because that that upbringing the church the religious upbringing he had never left him he played a way he he lived the wild life but. It was always knocking against him and always causing him some kind of anguish which never left him I think he believed that what he was told in church that. He would he will he wouldn't be one of the saved ones he would be going to hell you know and there's seemed to be no way to fat 30 but you could never I mean just jumped by a long way along we had but you could never convince him otherwise could you I mean even when he when he he lay quite ill for quite some time and you would have conversations about solitary Yes well. I think he would he used to sometimes see he was a dealer atheist so in this sunny hours it was all joie de vivre and. And living the good life that come the darkness and then that's when the voices and the fears would would arise again and torment him and they did to the end of his life but he still he still was the most joyful person you could ever meet and date but I knew that this is what was happening in the quiet errors like about the College of Art because you meet him and then only later to do discover the full the full cut a mythic status Yeah this man who would organize marvelous contests with the students yeah the Glasgow College of Art Yes yes. Well one of the things that they did they get up to well. There was a non You will visit one year be Edinburgh going to Glasgow the Macintosh School of Art and law school and then the next year the Glasgow ones who'd come back to visit us so there are all some pranks and schemes lead on and one notable one was when the Edinburgh students put on a still trace which was going to go around the building and Princes Street so they started all the all lined up at the stage at the front of the building and they had to go right round and come round to the front again the prize was a bottle of gin and I don't know if there's a crisis but there's a bottle of gin anybody so it was all arranged between the Edinburgh students that they would let the Glasgow gang get round to the back of the building and then they would ambush them and knock them off their stilts and then. Get round to the front and claim the bottle of whiskey bottle of gin for themselves so that is what happened and they push there's a riot after after that and they were still rule over the castle. As they ran off with a bottle of gin but that's great fun. There are marvelous descriptions of your life style which would be I think it would be an exaggeration to call but he me and I mean it was it was it was less the behavior it was incredibly basic but there you are now in your 1st place together was and Rose Street which I guess this incredible reputation didn't have the sixty's tell it but rooster Yes it would know it was it was crazy well. They had John had a studio there he shared with some other students but the then Julie. Gave up on it so John had it to him self and that's where after I met him we went and we lived there for the rest of our time and had been there until we moved to the 2nd floor but downstairs I mean the street had a terrible reputation for prostitution for drugs for well drunkenness more than drugs really but downstairs from us there we discovered that there were some side kind of just living in a sort of Warden of rooms and of course there's new and city because. There was no money to put in the meter and things like this so we discovered that these people were Methven players and they we got to know them and one time. Well these to come up because we had paintings on our walls insiders inside the studio and sometimes they would come up and look through the letter books and the 1st time this happened the letterbox went clattering down and we hared footsteps going quickly down the stairs again because we found out that this man who was on meth he looked through the window and the later books he looked through the letterbox and seen a massive life sized painting of John standing there sort of brandishing his paint brushes and looking straight at the letterbox and then he nearly died of fright so he used to sometimes come up again to look but intrigued but then would you know run off again and it was a. It was incredible. How did you go on living with all these huge conferences Well there was no option they used to come everywhere with us and him and the way it was the way paintings as well John always had to paint with every went so if I took him home to Sutherland and where he painted the air he painted everywhere and they always had to come back down south with us so I remember many times by this time we had 3 children small children one in a push chair and we had our bags of stuff to get on the tree in change at Inverness to change at Edinburgh to get back down to London and we'd have all of this plus the 2 totally wet paintings to negotiate. It was incredible but it was already such a wonderful life. There was a time wasn't a before before he actually left before he graduated from college in Edinburgh and he you know his friends wanted to enter a contest in London the people of College of Art We're nothing to do with us but they had to work out how to get all these enormous campuses down to London how did they do it well John never saw any sort of op stickle to to achieve in any of this stuff you see he believed that and he believed that everybody would go along with the way he thought because he thought that it was the cause of art was sacrosanct and that you know the people in the railways must think along the same lines as him so anyway a plan was hatched to get it to collect all the paintings it was a friend of up in the pub who had a van and so he would collect all the paintings he would be paid in paints probably at the end of the day but so they got the load of paintings to Waverley station and the they watched for where the guard's van would be positioned so and they knew when the train was coming and it was the night train to London so there was a whole team of them and the man handled the big huge converses into this guard's van as fast as the crude Well that got tough of them loaded on when a one of the guards saw what was happening and came up to inquire in no uncertain terms so they said hold on a minute Sonny if just say it so he said What are you doing he said well we're taking some paintings to London and Donal was thought that if he gave his heart to heart talk about the grandeur of art in the grunge of the of a the motives and things like this that they would fall into line no new leads not a whole so everything was halted they were made to see the cold to see the. Stationmaster who in these days would have taught Pat. He was a bit like the Fat Controller and so they were holed into his office and he wanted to know exactly what was going on so while they were doing that they just looked out the window and saw the train. The other things speed out of we've really station often it's way to London with half the paintings in the guard's van with no documentation nobody it's a King's Cross to to deal with them and the rest in the van waiting to be loaded on well it was they had to call a sort of open Philipson who was the head of painting at the Edinburgh article it and say seemingly Well he I remember I was around at the time and he sorted it all out I believe he must have paid paid the the cost of the transport but. And and then 2 of them John and his friend went on the next train with the rest of them but I reckon there was a big tailing off waiting for them when they got back to the art college and but they got them there they got them do you know not only that but they won prizes at the competition so marvelous. Edinburgh during the festival there was this was a very exciting place because the 1st 4 wasn't on the friends there was an old and no they decided they'd make their own exhibition John and those polls well it was the out of the NZ a few 3 really they believed that there Bishan It's where grander than anything that anybody is attempting to do in this in the Scottish art scene at the time and the believe that the want to take art to the people not art in the pressure is a. Art Art galleries they wanted art to be for everybody so that was the great vision so they so they thought that instead of trying to get their paintings into the establishment they would demonstrate their difference and their superiority by by by displaying them on on the railings outside the Royal Scottish Academy and. The actually managed to persuade one of the guards at the Royal Scottish Academy to let them store them there overnight which I thought was an amazing cheek but that didn't last long because it was soon brought to the attention of the. Purrs that B. And the they were furious and the came to an end so they had to end up storing the paintings in the basement of Milnes bar in her street where there was that was their favorite bar and they would they would still take them out in the morning take them across Princes Street in the rush and their massive things I had a hand in helping with them once or twice myself and then they would tie them to the railings outside whether the rain came on or the sun it was all the same they stayed there until the end of the day that the pipe band would come along play beside them so that they thought they'd got a really great pitch because it was milling with people and at the end of the day they'd all be untied and cut it again back across Princes Street and into the basement it's hard when you sort of well my goodness me and it must of us that they called them to but years later 3 years old retrospective Royal Scottish Rite out of me which is a magnificent building of course although yes and there's a name all over it Oh absolutely absolutely it's it. But he he always knew he was going to do something he. It was just he had thought in a Dr and he knew it but it didn't surprise him that he had that takes efficient and he also had had a major a retrospective. Earlier but 20 years earlier in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art but. He was very honored and appreciate it a lot and him. It was wonderful it was wonderful especially the one at that but this because it was just before he died this is and what was 820112012 he died 6 months later oh my goodness tell me we think about Milnes bar I mean it was an amazing place in those days wasn't it because that was where a human at the great Scottish port like to hold court and all of his pals who were also great ports in the row yeah right like like Norman McKagan Robert guy and so on else all quiet on the road Milnes bar you the most in quite a street of creativity it was absolutely it was an inspiring on this fear and day we