HE was, the Evening Times said in September 1967, a “millionaire jester,” a “little knickerbocker-suited eccentric who promoted himself by making gestures in the grand manner.”

A.E. Pickard, pictured here in 1936 as he arrived with a giant crowbar to open his new Glasgow cinema, the Norwood, died, aged 90, in a fire at his Kelvinside home in October 1964. Three years later, the Evening Times reported that his property was valued at £119,925 and his moveable estate was worth £92,456.

The paper listed his many accomplishments. He owned 409 houses in Glasgow and 39 elsewhere in Scotland. He had at one time owned a waxworks, a macabre museum, several cinemas and a monkey-house. He had stood for parliament in Maryhill in 1951 as an ‘Independent Millionaire; he polled 356 votes and lost his deposit, but won some national attention in the process.

He had once offered a £100 note to pay a traffic-offence fine. He had once sent a £1,000 cheque to a woman who wanted to marry a man awaiting execution in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison.

Furthermore, Pickard had been the first man in Glasgow to buy a private plane - and also the first to own a car fitted with glass which could not be seen through from the outside.

“Tales of his exploits are legion and he will be remembered as a ‘character’ in the Glasgow tradition of ‘worthies,’” the paper added.