John Gerard Beattie, MBE (9 November 1926 – 9 July 2020) was a Scottish actor and stand-up comedian whose career spanned over six decades.

[2] In 1974, Beattie took part in STV's four-part series A Grand Tour, along with Rikki Fulton, Jack Milroy, Billy Connolly, Mark McManus and Stanley Baxter, in which the six performers went on a grand tour of Scotland and took part in useless tasks.

Beattie recalled his most renowned moment on the show as when he was made to "Take a long drop off a short pier", in which each of the participants had to compete.

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.

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[4] 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.