Gordon Fulton

Gordon Fulton, who died on 25 September 2016 aged 67, attended the school from 1960-1967 and in his final year was Head Boy. He was one of the first students to enrol at the New University of Ulster.

At one stage Gordon had planned to become a Presbyterian minister, but instead, he taught English at Foyle College for most of the 1970s. Although obituaries said he started his acting career with Derry based amateur group the 71 Players, in fact he had been a leading actor in the school’s drama productions in the mid-1960s, playing Hotspur in Henry IV, Part One in 1965 and in Molière’s The Miser, as the eponymous Harpagon the following year.

He gave up teaching at the age of 33 and went to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. After he returned to Ireland he worked alongside acclaimed Kerry playwright John B. Keane in Tralee and with Roma Tomelty’s Centre Stage Company, where he added challenging roles to his repertoire such as Krapp’s Last Tape and Last of the Red Hot Lovers. He also acted with the Tinderbox Theatre Company and one of his last stage roles was as a priest in a Brassneck Theatre Company production of The Sweety Bottle at the Grand Opera House in Belfast.

Roma Tomelty described Gordon as a consummate actor who could play a huge range of parts, from Shakespeare to Sam Cree. She added: “He also took classes in our summer schools for 20 years and passed on his enthusiasm about Shakespeare to hundreds of children who called him The Legend.

In 2012 Gordon was seen by millions of Game of Thrones fans across the world in the second season of the hit HBO series. He played Lord Portan in the episode The North Remembers.

Gordon had been supported by the Arts Council, with a residency award allowing him to work with the Stanislavski Theatre Group in the USA. In 2011 he appeared in Conor McPherson’s play The Weir in the Keegan Theatre in Washington DC, where he had studied in the 1980s. He also had a number of roles in films like Salt on Our Skin, Wilderness and Sunset Heights.

But it was his portrayal of Sammy the barman in Give My Head Peace which ensured he was recognised in Northern Ireland long after the character had vanished from TV screens.

Gordon is survived by his wife Ann, two sons and a granddaughter.