Douglas Lindsay was born in Scotland in 1964 at 2:38a.m. There is some dispute over the weather conditions at the time. He spent the first few years of his life being an "if I'd had him first I wouldn't have had another one" kind of a kid. Even now he shows no remorse over this behaviour.

Some decades later he left Scotland to live in Belgium for a while. In the interim period he had been to watch Meadowbank Thistle a lot, including their famous 1-1 draw with Rangers in the League Cup semi-final (a game that might have meant something had not the first leg been lost 4-0). In Belgium he met his wife, Kathryn, and he took the opportunity to drop out of regular employment and join her on a Foreign Office posting to Senegal, West Africa. It was here that he developed the character of Barney Thomson, based on a funny wee man who he'd used to visit in a barbershop once a month in his home town.