a book-signing event in Glasgow. He was educated at Ralston Primary School and Paisley Grammar School and acted in various school productions. His talent was noticed by actress Edith MacArthur, who told his parents that she believed he would become a successful theatre actor after she saw him perform when he was 10 years old. Tennant attended Saturday classes at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland before passing an official audition at age 16, becoming one of their youngest students and studying there between the ages of 17 and 20. After discovering that there was another David McDonald already represented by the actor's union Equity, he created his stage name by adopting the surname of Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant, whom he had seen in Smash Hits magazine while deciding on a new name. He later legally changed his surname to comply with rules set by the American Screen Actors Guild (which was later merged into SAG-AFTRA). Career Early work Tennant made his professional acting debut while still in secondary school. When he was 16, he acted in an anti-smoking film made by the Glasgow Health Board which aired on television and was also screened in schools. The following year, he played a role in an episode of Dramarama. Tennant's first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui co-starring Ashley Jensen; one of a few plays in which he performed as part of the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company. He also made an early television appearance in the Scottish TV sitcom Rab C Nesbitt as a transgender barmaid called Davina. In the 1990s, he appeared in several plays at the Dundee Repertory Theatre. Tennant was awarded his first major TV role as Campbell Bain in the BBC Scotland drama series Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), after impressing director David Blair during filming of another drama – Strathblair (1992). As Tennant recalled from the audition, "they needed someone who could believably act 19 and bonkers". During filming of Takin' Over the Asylum he met comic actress and writer Arabella Weir. When he moved to London shortly afterwards, he lodged with Weir for five years and became godfather to her youngest child. He has subsequently appeared with Weir in many productions: as a guest in her spoof television series Posh Nosh, in the Doctor Who audio drama Exile (during which Weir played