GLASGOW has played host to a galaxy of Hollywood stars over the decades – but sometimes the brightest ones shone much closer to home.

Glesga chancers Francie and Josie were created in 1959 on the Five Past Eight Show at the Alhambra, but they were so popular, they soon had a TV series and multiple stage shows of their own.

Played by Scottish acting legends Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy, Francie and Josie were a daft, dapper duo and Evening Times photographers captured their story in style - they were never too shy to play up to the camera.

In one classic picture in November 1970, members of the chorus from the stage show The Magic of Francie and Josie at the Pavilion helped out with a fun photocall outside the theatre.

Glasgow Times:

The opening night was a hit – the Evening Times review the next day exclaimed: ““From the moment Francie and Josie walked onto the stage and said, ‘Hullawrerr, chinas’, last night’s Pavilion winter show had success emblazoned all over it.”

The reviewer added: “Jack Milroy and Rikki Fulton romped through The Magic of Francie and Josie and perpetrated some diabolical deeds – and gags – in delicious tongue-in-cheek style.”

Our sister newspaper The Herald, agreed.

“It is a show which will reap box-office profits, because it has a real pantomime flavour and an abundance of entertainment for adults and children,” said the review.

“There are some excellent scenes and one particularly hilarious episode when the entire cast, dressed in Francie and Josie outfits, do their ‘Glasgow waddle’ around the stage.”

In their own TV show in the Sixties, one sketch saw them buying suits – this picture shows them doing the famous waddle. The sharp-eyed among you will also spot that Glen Michael, who went on to make the long-running children’s cartoon show Glen Michael’s Cavalcade, is in the background as the shop assistant.

Glasgow Times:

In October 1965, the duo were pictured on board a special 13-coach exhibition train which pulled into St Enoch’s station. The Evening Times had a special interest in the train too. Chartered by the Pye-Ekco television and radio companies, it had been touring Britain as a radio show in miniature. Between 11am and 9pm both the Glasgow Herald and the Evening Times broadcast hourly news bulletins to visitors from a coach equipped in the manner of a local broadcasting station designed to give people a flavour of what local radio might look like.

Glasgow Times:

In mid-December 1969, Fulton and his wife Kate were photographed at a showbiz lunch held by Glasgow’s Lord Provost Donald Liddle in the City Chambers. Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson, Dora Bryan, Miriam Karlin, and Tom Alexander were also in attendance.

Glasgow Times:

When Rikki Fulton died in 2004, three years after the death of Jack Milroy, the Stage magazine described them as the “Glasgow teddy-boy delinquents” who “became the Morecambe and Wise of Scottish entertainments.”

In 1995 they came out of retirement to take part in a charity show at the King’s, and as a result, were tempted back to the venue for a three-week run the following year.

Glasgow Times:

Fulton told Herald columnist Jack Webster that he would always treasure the memory of that charity night. Neither he nor Milroy could recall a reception quite like it. “I was taken aback by that night,” he said. “And there is no way to describe the feeling. It is the most joyful, glorious experience that any human being can have.”