In 1908 he took over the Clydebank Gaiety Theatre, also for cine-variety and soon grew his own cinema circuit in the Glasgow area.
[2] Among many performers at the weekly amateur night at his venues, starting with the Britannia Panopticon was a sixteen year old Arthur Stanley Jefferson also known as Stan Laurel.
Pickard bought and sold numerous houses, shops and real estate, boasting he had more properties than Glasgow Corporation.
He also bought property in England including in September 1939 the mansion, estate and private racecourse at The Dicker, near Eastbourne, developed by former MP Horatio Bottomley, founder of the Financial Times and of the John Bull magazine.
He died in 1964, age 90, the result of a fire at his palatial mansion on Great Western Road, Glasgow.