Extras, extras – read all about it

IS stv taking multi-skilling to new levels?

Spike only asks because, on last week’s edition of the station’s highly-rated Unsolved series, which rakes over mysterious crimes, two well-known faces from within stv’s north office – formerly Grampian – popped up as extras in the reconstruction scenes.

The programme looked at the strange tale of SNP activist, Willie McRae, who was found dying in his car on a remote moor in the Highlands – in 1985. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered?

In one reconstruction scene was one Donald John Macdonald – the programme’s producer and editor of news at stv north – acting as the shopkeeper who sold McRae a couple of bottles of whisky before his fateful journey.

Later, up popped the unmistakable white-haired figure of stv presenter, Chris Harvey, keeping his head down no doubt in the hope no-one would notice he was moonlighting as an extra.

And… wasn’t that a retired Aberdeen bank manager spotted in another scene?