From humble beginnings in a Scottish tenement to Hollywood, an MBE and national treasure status is quite a journey. It’s especially so when part of said journey is done by horse and gypsy caravan, of which more later.

James Cosmo, actor, raconteur, flâneur, mimic, cigar-lover, whisky producer, Boisdale habitué and all-round good egg, has come a long way in his almost-eighty years.

Since his break in Battle of Britain (1969), he’s starred in such cinematic gold as Highlander (1986), Braveheart (1995), Trainspotting (1995), Troy (2004), Ben Hur (2016) and Whisky Galore! (2016) and, among scores of guest appearances, has taken leading roles on television in such hits as Sons of Anarchy (2010), Game of Thrones (2011-13) and – as Russian spymaster Luka Gocharov – in the third series of Jack Ryan (2022).

Oh, and he was also a finalist in Series 19 of Celebrity Big Brother, getting beaten into fourth place by Coleen Nolan, Kim Woodburn and, erm, Jedward, which must still sting a bit. This blip aside, it’s quite a career. “I’ve just been so fortunate,” says Cosmo over a rum punch in Boisdale’s Negroni Bar. “I’ve been slapped so many times in life by the lucky stick.”

Although James’s father, James Copeland, was an actor – best-known for his roles as Andy MacGrégor (“L’Écossais”) in Innocents in Paris (1953) and as “The Mate” in the Ealing comedy, The Maggie (1954) – Cosmo had little, if any, encouragement from him. “He was something of a heavy drinking ne’er-do-well and we didn’t have an easy relationship,” he says. “He never took me under his wing but then nor did he ever stand in my way.”

When Cosmo was a boy, his father upped and left his family for the supposed Shangri-La that was London. After spending most of his time – and money – in the city’s pubs and bars, James Snr landed a leading role in the smash hit Sailor Beware! in the West End. He sent money home and asked his wife, Helen, daughter Laura and son James, all then living in Glasgow, to join him.

Not unreasonably, James Snr expected them to come by coach or train but, for some reason, Helen – a feisty woman from a good coal-mining family, according to Cosmo, working at the time at the Singer sewing machine factory in Clydebank – bought a gypsy caravan and found a horse, Bobby, working in the local fish market to pull it and headed south. Cosmo was just eight.

“It was such adventure,” he says. “I remember passing the sign to Auchenshuggle in the eastern reaches of Glasgow and thinking we were about to fall off the end of the earth. I’d never ventured so far.”

Nor, it turned out, had poor Bobby, who struggled this far outside the city without any of the usual tram lines to follow and kept veering to the side or simply grinding to a halt. By the time they’d cajoled the nag as far as Dumfries, Sandy, a stockman on the lam, joined them and the adventure really began, with snared rabbits and poached trout added to the daily menu.

It took them six weeks to reach London: the Daily Sketch, which had got wind of the odyssey, wrote the story up under the title Hopalong Helen. They finally caught up with James Snr, by then spending most of his time drinking in the pubs of Hampstead with Peter O’Toole, and stayed in London for three years before Helen took the children back to Glasgow.

Cosmo went to Clydebank High School but left at 15 to work at a shipbreaker’s and in the local bars. But, like his father, he too found London calling. “I’d seen the life of an actor that my father led and liked what I saw. I loved the sense of freedom. But I also saw that he spent much of his time head in hands wondering how he was going to pay the bills.

“I was never under the illusion that being an actor was about fast cars and beautiful women. It was about hard work and, crucially, luck and, no false modesty here, I’ve been very, very lucky.”

Cosmo found himself an agent and at the age of 22, with no formal acting training, landed a role in Battle of Britain. He has been gainfully employed ever since, working on small independent movies as often as he does on big budget blockbusters. “I enjoy the buzz and energy of the former,” he says, “and I enjoy the glitz and the glamour of the latter.”

Cosmo is a Scot through-and-through and, although he lives with wife Annie in the leafy surrounds of Surrey, he delights in his membership of London’s Caledonian Club and his regular visits to Scotland’s unofficial London embassy, Boisdale. “I love Boisdale,” says Cosmo. “I love the food and the drams and the fact that I can smoke, which I’m not allowed to do indoors at home. My Staffie, Duke, is the most walked dog in all Surrey.”

By now we’re on Boisdale’s fabled cigar terrace, with Cosmo puffing happily on a Casa Turrent 1880 Claro Short Robusto. “A recommendation from Ranald,” he says from behind clouds of smoke. “And, as usual, he’s spot on.”

Being a proud Scot, Cosmo loves his whisky, so much so that he has his own brand: Storyman, a premium blended whisky that’s heavy on the single malt, smooth, honeyed and deeply approachable, produced for him at Annandale Distillery. “I’ve always wanted my own whisky, something to give friends at film’s end, and worked hard with the master blender, Keith Law, to get it just right,” he explains. “And I always talk too much once I’ve had a dram or three and can’t resist telling a few stories, hence the name.”

Cosmo is not short of work – he’s soon off to make an independent short film in Scotland, and promoting Storyman also keeps him busy – but he still has one ambition. “I’d love to film or record the definitive version of Burns’s greatest poem, Tam O’Shanter,” he says. “It’s a great story, and the story is everything.”

This is the cue, of course, for a whisky-fuelled tumult of yarns – complete with bang-on accents – about meeting Paul Newman, playing cricket with Sean Connery, auditioning for John Huston and a very droll tale about Ali, the gay Aberdonian barman at a well-known wine bar in London.