Scottish producer Paddy Higson, collaborator of Bill Forsyth and Peter Mullan, dies aged 83

Scottish producer and executive Paddy Higson, who worked with Bill Forsyth and led filmmaking charity GMAC, has died aged 83, of cancer.

Higson died on Sunday, April 13. “She passed gently away surrounded by her family and so much love,” read a Facebook post from her children Michael, Chris and Frances.

Higson was a production supervisor on Forsyth’s 1980 Scottish classic Gregory’s Girl and an associate producer and production manager on 1979’s That Sinking Feeling.

She also produced films including Charles Gormley’s 1982 romance Living Apart Together; and Cary Parker’s 1985 The Girl In The Picture starring Gregory’s Girl lead John Gordon Sinclair and Irina Brook.

Higson began her career as a production secretary at the BBC in the 1970s. Alongside her work with Forsyth, she also collaborated with Scottish talents including Peter Mullan, on his features Orphans in 1998 and The Magdalene Sisters in 2002, as executive producer and line producer respectively.

Higson also co-directed Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet, a 1977 TV documentary following the comedian on a tour of Ireland.

Further TV credits included producing episodes of series Taggart, Monarch Of The Glen and Cardiac Arrest.

Higson was presented with a Scottish Bafta for outstanding contribution to the Scottish film industry in 2018. Presenting the award, actor David Hayman described her as “the mother of the Scottish film industry”.

Higson joined the board of Scottish film charity GMAC in 2014, and became the organisation’s CEO in 2019, before retiring in 2022.

“Not only have the three of us lost our amazing and extraordinary mother, we as a wider community have lost a kind and generous, supportive and selfless pioneer,” wrote Higson’s children in their Facebook post.

“We are heartbroken but find comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering.”