Beattie was born in
Govan, Glasgow, on 9 November 1926 into a
working class family. He grew up there with an older brother, Frank, and two younger sisters, Mary and Cathie. He attended
St Gerard's Roman Catholic Secondary School, but left school at sixteen to start an apprenticeship and became involved with amateur dramatics, and by the mid-1950s he had become a
stand-up comedian. Beattie went on to appear on Rikki Fulton's sketch show
Scotch & Wry, at one point appearing as his alter ego Glaikit O'Toole, who encounters Fulton's character Supercop in one of the sketches. While on the set of
Scotch & Wry, he met actor
Gregor Fisher, with whom he went on to appear in the 1990s
sitcom Rab C. Nesbitt. In 1990, Beattie starred in
The Big Man alongside Billy Connolly and
Liam Neeson. He had a couple of local hit records with "Scotch on the Rocks" and "The Glasgow Rap" and presented radio shows on
BBC Radio Scotland and
Clyde 2 before he was cast as
Malcolm Hamilton in the Scottish
soap opera River City, a role which he had retained since the show began in 2002. He was the Honorary President of the Scottish Music Hall Society. ==Personal life and death==