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And so we come to the final episode of this dramatic tale inspired by the urban landscape and macabre folklore of my native southside of Glasgow, a story I've wanted to perform and record like this ever since I first performed it live in the theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival way back in 2015, a story I was intent on performing, then as now, in an unequivocal, unapologetic Glaswegian voice and language. I hope with this, and the preceding episodes, I have done my native city full dramatic justice, in my own macabre sort of a way. Our young narrator has looked set to suffer the most terrible yet of all the many cruelties the Vampire has inflicted on him, having to stand by and watch as the Vampire sinks his iron teeth into the throat of his ailing mother on her sick bed. But maybe our protagonist has more fight in him than even he had thought, fight enough to challenge the Vampire at last - to take him on in a fight to the death. The Gorbals Vampire Must Be Destroyed!

Now that the Gorbals Vampire has told his story to our narrating protagonist, this strange pair perhaps better understand one another now. Yet the fact remains - our young hero is getting older and no longer able to serve so successfully as 'bait', drawing victims to the vampire's iron fangs, and the Vampire is getting helluva thirsty. But now the Vampire comes up with a whole new idea for getting hold of fresh blood. But this will lead our hero to another startling reunion....

So the time has come for The Gorbals Vampire himself to tell the story of how he came to be a vampire in the first place, a story which links his biography intimately with that of the city he haunts.... This being a horror story, the episode contains scenes and images some listeners might find disturbing....

So an innocent young Glasgow boy has been conscripted into serving as "bait" to lure victims to the clutches of The Gorbals Vampire. But as we learned in the last episode, time is catching up with the boy himself, making him much less useful in that regard. But as the relationship between the Vampire and our protagonist becomes ever more tense, a figure from an earlier chapter of our story is about to make a surprise reappearance, in an episode which makes no apology about some frank Glaswegian language and an eye for the harsher side of life in the big city....

So in the last episode, we saw how our very Glaswegian Nosferatu was able to use our innocent protagonist as "bait" in his quest for human blood. Now we see The Gorbals Vampire adopt this as regular practice. What can our narrator do but go along? But if he fell into the Vampire's clutches as an innocent boy, time itself has clutches of its own....

So our narrator has been abducted down into The Gorbals Vampire's underground lair, beneath Glasgow's Southern Necropolis graveyard, being told he is to remain there as the Vampire's "special boy". But in this episode, we learn his future is not to be spent entirely beneath the earth. No, the Vampire has need of him above ground.... This episode features one scene of violence.

So our narrator has fallen into the clutches of The Gorbals Vampire haunting Glasgow's Southern Necropolis. But his strange and disturbing adventures in the vampire's company are just beginning. This episode contains scenes, images and ideas that some listeners might find disturbing. This, for all its touches of strange dark humour is a horror story in the deepest sense, a tale of the most terrible kind of loss of innocence....

So our hapless young narrator has been trapped and abandoned by the bigger, rougher boys who accompanied him into the great rambling old graveyard of Glasgow's Southern Necropolis, tied down and bloodied across a line of broken tombstones. Just as well the urban legend of the graveyard being haunted by an iron toothed vampire is just an old story with no truth behind it. It isn't true... is it...? This episode doesn't have the bloodshed or "bad" language of the previous installment, but it does feature plentiful vampiric horror - you have been warned!

Here's the second part of this dark tale inspired by the genuine Glaswegian urban legend of an iron-toothed vampire haunting the great graveyard of Glasgow's Southern Necropolis. Our hero has unfortunately, in telling the story to his schoolmates, talked his way into a nocturnal trip to the cemetery with the biggest, toughest, scariest kids in the school, all in search of the fabled vampire.... BE WARNED - this is an unrepentant horror story, and a Glasgow horror story at that, with disturbing scenes related in some very frank language. Rating "R" (or "X" as they used to say in the golden era of British horror films), in other words.

And so, as they say in the creepiest horror movies, it begins... with the first episode of my epic tale inspired by an urban legend of my native southside of Glasgow, an uncompromisingly Glaswegian vampire tale, told in an unapologetically Glaswegian voice (for my feelings on the importance of this, check out the separate introduction I posted yesterday). Yes, back in the 1950s, before I was born, there was a mass panic centred around the city's rambling Southern Necropolis graveyard: local kids in this most impoverished part of the great city had got the idea in their heads that a vampire with iron teeth was running loose in the graveyard, attacking children. Every night they went into the graveyard, armed with wooden stakes, to stalk the vampire - at least until the "polis" came along and chased them away. Spoiler alert: no actual iron-toothed vampire showed up. But my story responds to this anti-climax by imagining... what if there really was such a creature haunting the graveyard? And what if, a generation later, a local boy, intrigued by the legend, fell foul of just such a creature?

Here's something a wee bit different: me on video (if you're on Spotify, sound only elsewhere) introducing an epic piece of storytelling which I'll shortly be posting right here: my 10 part audio drama inspired by an urban legend of the very part of Glasgow I come from: the legend, which caused panic among local children back in the 1950s, of the mighty Southern Necropolis graveyard on the city's southside being haunted by a vampire with iron teeth. I've taken that true story (true in the sense that there really was a panic about this among local kids - and police, and parents, and politicians!) as inspiration for my own piece of dramatic Gothic fiction built around the legend: a very Glasgow story told in a very Glasgow voice. That will make its premiere very shortly in this very spot. Meanwhile, here's the intro....

Here's the concluding episode of my dramatic contemporary version of Robert Burns's classic tale of Ayrshire witchcraft, essentially a recording of my most recent live show here on the Isle of Arran. Tam, having had his wife Kate mysteriously disappear into the clutches of the local witch cult, is now fearful for the safety of his beloved daughter Fiona, hastening home to see if she's safe....

After the mysterious disappearance of Tam's wife, Kate, the scene is set for a charged confrontation between Tam and Morag Soutar, after which things may never again be the same at the old ruined, witch-haunted kirk, in this fourth (and penultimate) chapter of my radically reimagined version of Robert Burns's classic Ballad Of Tam O'Shanter, as recently performed on stage here on the Isle of Arran - next best thing, I hope, to actually seeing me live.

So... Tam's passion has got the better of him and he is now involved in a potentially dangerous relationship with Morag Soutar, meeting her night after night in the ruins of the old kirk. Just so long as his wife Kate never gets to hear what he has been up to.... Here's the third part of this recording of my recent live show here on Arran,

Here's the second part of this recording of the live show which I performed a couple of weeks ago here on Arran,a show which reinvents the classic ballad of Tam O'Shanter by Robert Burns as a very contemporary psychological thriller. Property developer Tam has just taken ownership of an old ruined church with a sinister history, intending to demolish it to make way for a huge out-of-town 'retail development'. But before that can happen, Tam first has to settle accounts with the mysterious young woman who almost killed him the night before....