Calum Kennedy

Calum Kennedy (born as Malcolm Martin Kennedy; June 2, 1928 – April 15, 2006) was a Scottish singer who performed in both English and Scottish Gaelic.

Biography Kennedy was born in Orinsay, a small crofting village on the Isle of Lewis. After a year at Glasgow University and four years in the army, he entered the Aberdeen Mòd in 1955, singing in Scottish Gaelic and won a gold medal. His first major success outside Scotland was his winning of the World Ballad Championship in Moscow in 1957.

The BBC produced a program in the early 1980s called Calum Kennedy's Commando Course, which documented a disastrous tour around the Scottish Highlands in an old bus. As more and more of his cast left the tour, a red marker pen was shown erasing them from a promotional poster. Kennedy was not happy about this program being shown, as he felt it ridiculed him, but it has since gone down as a piece of classic television.

He had six daughters; Fiona, Kirsteen, Morag, Morven, and Deirdre from his first marriage to Ann Gilles, and Eilidh from his second marriage with singer Christine Wilson.

His daughter Fiona is also a singer and was for a time co-host with Roy Castle of the long-running BBC children's series Record Breakers. His granddaughter is model and actress Sophie Kennedy Clark. Kennedy owned Leethland House, Glenpatrick Road, in Elderslie, which, since a fire, has been left in ruins.

Kennedy died at age 77, in Aberdeen, Scotland on the 15th of April 2006.