The Scot with 11 Oscars As the parties end and the statuettes are placed with pride on Hollywood mantelpieces, Scots could be forgiven for thinking the Oscars are simply a Tinseltown affair. But Scotland does have some winners in the pantheon of the Academy Awards. And somehat remarkably, you will have heard of them. Well, most of them. Leading the roll of honour is Kirriemuir's finest, David Niven. The suave and sophisticated actor, who also served in the Highland Light Infantry during the Second World War, won the coveted Best Actor award for his performance as Major Angus Pollock in the 1958 movie Separate Tables. Not too bad considering the other nominees that year were Tony Curtis, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracy. But it was almost 30 years before Scotland got anywhere near those heights, and even then, in 1987 it was the Best Supporting Actor category where Scotland shone. And who else could it be but Sir Sean Connery, for his role as Irish-born Chicago cop Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables. As yet, the Academy has yet to introduce a Best Mangled Accent award. It seems a world away from profanity-spitting TV spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker, but Peter Capaldi is also an Oscar winner. The 1994 film Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life, which Capaldi wrote and directed, won Best Short Film in 1994. Scots documentary maker Kevin McDonald also flew the Saltire in Hollywood, with his film One Day In September, which tells the story of the terror attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and won the Best Documentary award. But remarkably, Scotland has an eleven-time Academy Award winner. Only Walt Disney, with 26, has won more. So who is this film star? Well, he's not technically a film star, but without his efforts, you wouldn't see any films at all. He's Iain Neil, a physics graduate of Strathclyde University, and vice-president of Panavision, giants of the film camera world. Iain has triumphed 11 times in the somewhat obscure, but no less important, Sci-Tech section of the the awards, thanks to his work in creating new lenses for film cameras. Unfortunately, this category doesn't win you one of the gold statuettes - winners receive a plaque - but nobody would win any Oscars without Iain's innovations.