MORAG Fullerton doesn’t really give the impression she’s ever been a midwife, a psycho-analyst, a sycophant or indeed a b******.

Yet, the theatre and film director admits she has had to be one, or all, of the above at any given time.

“The job description comes from film director Billy Wilder,” says Fullteron, grinning. “And he was definitely right.”

Right now, Morag Fullerton’s skillset is being utilised in the heart of Glasgow’s West End where she has become Artistic Director of Oran Mor’s lunchtime theatre programme.

The Play, Pie and A Pint series has been running 42 weeks out of 52 for the past ten years, and now the awesome responsibility of turning out a decent weekly play lays on her fiftysomething shoulders.

“The audiences love the Oran Mor plays and the challenge is to make them as entertaining as possible,” she says. “I want to keep up the standard.”

The Fullerton cv reveals she’s has the experience to excel, the lady once responsible for first bringing Dario Fo plays to Scotland, directing the likes of Robbie Coltrane’s heralded Mistero Buffo.

Yet the director brings more to the Glasgow theatre stage than a series of comedy plays.

She brings almost thirty five years of experience of surviving theatre disaster and despair.

“My very first professional directing theatre job was at Borderline Theatre,” she recalls of the Ayrshire-based unit she joined in 1979 as an assistant.

“And it was a nightmare. The Artistic Director Campbell Morrison left half way through directing the panto (wages dispute), Peter and Penny and the Marvellous Magic Show, and I was given the job.

“But chaos ensued. The Govan Fairy left then another actor and another. So I lined up replacements and then nervously called writer Alex Norton (actor and subsequent Taggart star).

“But Alex screamed down the line. ‘Please tell me you’re f****’ joking! You’ve hired an alcoholic, a manic depressive and a guy with tunnel vision to play the Wizard?’ Then he hung up on me.”

Alex Norton turned up on opening night in Ayr Civic Theatre to see the Wizard, who apart from being semi-blind also suffered from strong thirst, walk on stage and off again.

But not into the wings. “He walked into the orchestra pit,” says Morag. “All I could hear behind me was Alex growling.

“Eventually, a head with a squinty, squashed cardboard hat appeared from the pit . . . and then collapsed back down.”

Alex Norton was worse than incandescent. He felt his panto had been wrecked. “He was horrible to me,” the director recalls, with a grimace. “He said I was f*****’ incompetent. He never spoke to me for a very long time.”

Norton and Fullerton would later become best friends, she directing him in Taggart.

But it says a great deal about the director she didn’t crack, and the panto became a great success. Where did this survival streak come from?

Growing up in the cosy little town of Castle Douglas in Kircudbrightshire (population 3000) was hardly the soul-searing stuff of late Fifties kitchen-sink movies?

“No, it was idyllic,” she says grinning. “And I was really happy there my two sisters and one brother, all quite close together in age.”

There were no drama classes in high school so Fullerton, who excelled in art took off to art college in Manchester. It was there she discovered, and fell in love with theatre.

She rapidly applied to Glasgow’s RSAMD and was accepted. But was new to the ways of the city. “When I arrived in Glasgow someone said to me ‘Are you a Tim?’ And I replied ‘No, I’m a Fullerton.’”

She and a young man called Pat Doyle (later to become a Hollywood-based film composer) didn’t wait to be employed on leaving drama college. Before you could say ‘Bongo Herbert’ the pair had written two shows for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The young director made it onto the BBC’s trainee director scheme, based at Elstree, which at the time recruited from the theatre.

“The trainees were paired off with technical people, old guys who’d worked on the likes of Lavender Hill Mob, and they were great.

But outside at work it was different. For example, I did a TV show in 1997 called Pie In The Sky (starring Richard Griffiths) and a car chase had to be filmed. But this Cockney assistant director, who always called me the Sweaty Sock (Jock) said ‘Darlin’, don’t worry, we’ll sort out the car chase for you.’ I told him to ‘F***off.’”

Fullerton directed a huge range of major drama, from At Home With The Braithwaites to Cardiac Arrest, from The Bill To Rebus. But theatre endeavours ran parallel.

Yet, some of the tiny theatre tours of the Highlands would have crushed lesser spirits. “To keep up morale I played Calum Kennedy’s Commando Course to the cast,” she says of the early eighties BBC documentary which ridiculed (unintentionally) a failing Highland touring company.

“We laughed hard and had great camaraderie.”

What’s clear is Fullerton is a do-er, a writer and director who makes things happen, with recent self-penned successes such as A Bottle of Wine and Patsy Cline and Doris, Dolly and the Dressing Room Divas. “I had early success,” she says, with a proud grin. “When I was eleven I wrote a letter to Jackie Magazine and it made Letter of the Week and I also got a cheque.”

Fullerton, who is directing the Glasgow King’s Theatre panto Cinderella this year, met her long term partner, writer Peter McDougall, in 1989.

Did she ever feel the pressure to marry and have children? “Never, never, never, never” she says, smiling, with at least another couple of nevers thrown in for emphasis.

“At lot of my peers married within five years of leaving school and having a family. But the theatre world was one of uncertainties.”

Her partner, she says, understands ‘The nonsense of the business.” Yet the man in her life who has had most impact upon her career, outwith her partner and Billy Wider’s sage advice, is in fact her dad.

“He was the most entertaining man I’ve ever met in my life,” she says, beaming. “And he was so encouraging. ‘Do what will make you happy,’ he used to say. And I’m happy to say I have.”

*Play Pie and a Pint returns August 29 at Oran Mor with The Real Mrs Sinatra, the story of Frank’s mother Dolly, played by Barbara Rafferty.