Bob Mitchell is a warm and generous storyteller with a wide-ranging repertoire including material in his native Doric Scots. He enjoys incorporating his own creations into his performances, which are always generously laced with his distinct brand of humour!

Bob was born and brought up on an Aberdeenshire croft and learned his first stories as a toddler whist ’helping’ his father with the countless tasks that faced a hardworking North-East crofter. He trained as a psychiatric nurse in the sixties and is now retired from his post of Senior Lecturer (Mental Health) at Napier University, Edinburgh.

Bob is very experienced in telling to older adults in Care Homes and Day Centres in East Lothian and in primary schools in East and Midlothian, Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders. He is also experienced and confident working in and around prisons and in telling stories by telephone to housebound individuals.

He performs regularly in the Haddington and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals.

Bob is very much in demand for Burns Events throughout January and February and is currently the President of ‘Poosie Nansie’s Burns Club’ in Newcraighall, Edinburgh. In this, its centenary year, he will oversee a number of celebrations and events with a show currently scheduled for the Edinburgh Fringe. He has convened an annual Burns competition for primary schools in the Newcraighall district of Edinburgh for the past 19 years.

Bob has regularly played the 2nd Craw in Rita Bradd’s ‘Three Craws’ on East Coast FM and to live audiences throughout Scotland and in France since 2013. He was recently relieved to discover that the average lifespan for a crow in Scotland is 10 years!

Prior to the covid-19 pandemic Bob was a regular performer at Edinburgh’s Guid Crack Club and Café Voices and has embraced the Zoom culture of the past year with enthusiasm and increasing competence. He is a firm believer that online storytelling will continue long after traditional venues reopen and he has pledged to promote its existence as an extra additional alternative avenue for the telling of tales.

He is currently Chair of Edinburgh’s Burgh Blatherers, a group that exists to support storytellers at all stages of their journey and provide a safe place to tell in a supportive environment. In this capacity he is currently a member of the editorial board charged with the task of making ready for publication a book of members favourite short stories, original and traditional as the club’s contribution to Scotland’s Year of the Stories.

Bob is an enthusiastic supporter of the Buchan Heritage Festival held annually in Strichen, Aberdeenshire and has won a number of prizes in the storytelling, short story writing and poetry sections in recent years.  Bob was awarded first place in the Scottish Storytelling Centre’s Tall Tales Oscar competition in 2021.

He is happy to travel throughout Scotland and beyond for storytelling performances and events.

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