McDougall was however asked to try again, and wrote a more intimate piece Just Your Luck (1972) based on his sister's wedding, again exploring the sectarian divide in its story of a Protestant girl who finds herself pregnant by a Catholic boy.
After a year Mackenzie managed to persuade the Head of BBC Television Alasdair Milne to press ahead with the play, although some scenes were eventually filmed in Edinburgh to minimise controversy.
Starring blues singer Frankie Miller this was the story of Greenock razor gangs and specifically of one man's life of alcohol and violence over a twenty-four-hour period.
His most violent piece, Just A Boy's Game the film was also notable for supporting performances from a then unknown Gregor Fisher, Ken Hutchison, comedian Hector Nicol and Jean Taylor Smith.
Mackenzie and McDougall's last collaboration was on the STV film A Sense of Freedom (also 1979), based on the autobiography of Glaswegian gangster Jimmy Boyle, detailing his crimes and subsequent reform.
[3] In 2004, McDougall wrote three short dramas for the stage, starring - amongst others - Robbie Coltrane and Sean Scanlan, which were presented at the Òran Mór in Glasgow as part of the lunchtime theatre event A Play, A Pie and A Pint.
He was at this point working on remakes of the Ealing films The Maggie and Whisky Galore but spoke out furiously when his proposed casting of Robbie Coltrane and Robert Carlyle was passed on in favour of English actors.
As of 2011, McDougall has written a screenplay adaptation of the James Hogg novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which has garnered interest from long-time friends Billy Connolly and Robbie Coltrane as well as Kelly Macdonald.