"Black or white vodka in your Martini, sir?" Hollywood's Allan Scott writes the script to sell a new drink to the world Written by: William Cash Photographs by GlynnSmith

On the face of it. Allan Scott is a highly unlikely traveling vodka salesman. At 1pm, the writer of such cult film noir classics as Don't Look Now, and the executive producer or rewrite-man of dozens of hit films, including Shallow Grave and Regeneration, is sitting at his regular table at The Ivy. sipping a glass of white wine and power-nodding hellos to literary agent Ed Victor and theatre producer Michael White.

But Scott's latest "noir" project is of a very different sort. Earlier this year, he was typing away on a script in the Soho offices of his film company Rafford Films when he received a call from Glasgow stockbrokers Brewin, Dolphin. Would he be interested in becoming chairman of a fast-growing British vodka company that was going public in February?

Scott swiftly pulls out of his jacket pocket two miniature bottles of Blavod, the world's first black premium vodka, and places them on the table. They look like mini bottles of black ink with a blood red label. The vodka gets its colour from the addition of a herb called catechu, which is rich in tannin. The taste is much like any other premium vodka, only smoother.

"Put these in the freezer. if you want a very memorable cocktail, try mixing it with Red Bull and ice. We call it the 'Black Bull'." He adds: "My dream is Allan Shiach. aka Allan Scott, juggles his Hollywood projects with promoting Blavod that it won't belong before you walk into any bar in the world and if you ask for a vodka, the barman will reply, 'Black or white?' The possibilities are endless, especially because barmen love inventing cocktails."

The idea for a black vodka was dreamt up by Mark Dorman, a British advertising executive who had worked on such brands as Levi's, Cadbury and British Airways. While in a San Francisco bar, he was offered a choice of 28 vodkas and then asked whether he wanted his coffee black or white. He thought it would be a great marketing ploy to have the same choice in vodka.

But why would a new British vodka company, 35 per cent owned by Baron Eric de Rothschild of Château Lafite, ask a 58-year-old Gitanes-smoking Hollywood screenwriter to help launch black vodka as a global brand?

The answer is that Scott has led a double life. his real name is Allan Shiach, the former chairman of his family company Macallan-Glenlivet whisky. Shiach, who served an apprenticeship in whisky distilleries, moved on to a career as a television comedy writer in Canada before entering the film business in the 1970s. He came back to the fold to take over at Macallan in 1980.

Moving between family homes in LA and Scotland and an office in London, where he also wrote his scripts under the nom deplume of Allan Scott, Shiach built Macallan up from a small company with a few employees to an award-winning international drinks brand with a market capitalisation of £200m. "I've always been a vodka drinker, but when I was running a whisky company I was rather ashamed to admit it," he says. During this time, nobody in Hollywood knew that this affable, witty, white-haired, jeans wearing "Brit" writer, whose Hollywood pals include Tim Robbins, was also an independently wealthy and powerful Scottish whisky mogul.

At times, this double life was confusing. Even his wife Kathy, a former actress and opera buff (who describes herself as "a houses-wife"), doesn't always know what name her husband is booked under in hotels. But the odd glimpse of his unusual secret did occasionally leak out. When the Seagram drinks empire took over Universal Studios for nearly $6bn, Shiach couldn't resist sending chairman Edgar Bronfman jr - an acquaintance from the whisky industry - a postcard saying:"Welcome to the small but exclusive club of whisky makers turned film producers. Your entry price was considerably higher than mine."

It was also a trademark of all of Shiach's 25 or so films (including Castaway with Amanda Donohue and Two Deaths with Michael Gambon) that he included a shameless reference to his whisky in the script. The most famous example was the exhaustive love scene in Don't look Now between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in a Venice hotel bedroom. Afterwards, when Sutherland pours himself a very large Macallan, director Nic Roeg - one of Shiach 's closest friends -allows the camera to linger for several seconds on the bottle's famous label. But since the late 90s, when the company was taken over in a hostile bid by Highland Distilleries and Japanese group Suntory, the supply of free cases of malt to anybody who wrote Macallan into their novels or films dried up. While his friends in London and LA mourned, Shiach went off and bought one of the most beautiful houses in the south of France, with its own vineyard. He gave grand parties, with guests including Elizabeth Hurley, during which his estate-made white wine, dubbed Château Shiach was always served, but not always drunk by guests.

In February, Shiach surprised Roeg by producing a bottle of Blavod at a dinner party without telling him why. He "just loved it" says Shiach. "Nic is a serious died-in-the-wool gin and Martini drinker. That he was able to overcome his reticence so thoroughly was very encouraging."

However, the screenwriter may not find it easy to incorporate Blavod into his next script, which is about the life of Anne Boleyn. The story is set nearly 500 years before Blavod was invented.

Product placement opportunities aside, why should a millionaire screenwriter agree to trek out to City banks at 9am, touting his sample bottles of black vodka? Part of the answer is that Shiach has always been something of a maverick who has liked a challenge, preferably if it is fun and different. Another reason can be found in his biographical notes in the Blavod Black Vodka share prospectus. He was a governor of the British Film Institute from 1992 to 1998, is a director of Scottish Media Group, a former chairman - now governor - of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, a former director of the Scotch Whisky Association, and so it goes on. In other words, he is a man addicted to success and only at ease when running the show.

We were once discussing the psychology of what drove people in Hollywood, when he made an acute, possibly self-revealing, observation about the psychology of the rich. He says that when you are born pretty well off - such as Rupert Murdoch - and generally regarded as having a silver spoon in your mouth, it is only by the amount of money that you make yourself that you can keep the score. The open market - in Shiach's case Hollywood - is where you can prove your self-worth to yourself, as opposed to the world.

Shiach's peculiar stature in the British arts establishment has much to do with his ability to mix equally comfortably with his powerful friends as with his not-at-all-rich but rather more eccentric friends, neither of which camp bears him resentment for what he has achieved by playing the Hollywood power game.

The Blavod slogan, "Outrageously Smooth", could equally apply to the upward path of Shiach's double careers. The occasional feud aside (nobody gets to make 25 films without crushing a few industry egos) there has been only the odd blip. He has yet to receive an Oscar or an Emmy. And despite more than two decades as Britain's unofficial ambassador to Hollywood, formal recognition for his services has somehow eluded him. The only title he is otherwise known by (to his family) is 'The Big A'.

The last time Shiach put some sample wares on a table at The Ivy was when he tried to persuade the restaurant to use olive oil produced at his French estate. He was diplomatically informed that they were happy with the oil they had. The better news is that the bar at The Ivy is stocking Blavod.

But does the world really need another premium fashion vodka, priced at £11.99 bottle? The last time I was in my local off-licence in London, there was a choice of 20 bottles of vodka, along with a bottle of "Red Pepper" Absolut, ominously marked down to £5.99.

During the Cold War, the original Russian article, Stolichnaya, was so scarce it had to be smuggled out of Russia in diplomatic bags. By the mid-l990s, however, it had become so terminally trendy that Patsy and Edina were glugging it down mixed with champagne in Absolutely Fabulous in a cocktail known as a "Stolly-Bolly".

Blavod cashed in on this wave of popularity in February, when the company listed on AIM with a market value of £14m. The shares have since been suffering from something of a hangover, especially following September 11, and market value is now hovering at around £6m. Blavod has so far achieved worldwide sales of more than 30,000 cases and is exporting to more than 30 countries. But even if it does manage to create a global premium brand, what is to stop other drinks companies from producing a black-coloured vodka? Blavod took the precaution of protecting its product by fighting copyright cases around the world and has now secured the patent.

"Now that we have protected our trademark, we have to market the brand," says Shiach. "With a Hollywood movie, you make the product and do all your marketing within the first few weeks, so that from the day your film opens all you are doing is trying to prevent too steep a decline."

With a new vodka like Blavod, its marketing strategy is the opposite. Having built up a following in fashionable bars and supermarkets such as Tesco, where sales rose by 55 per cent in the run-up to last Christmas, he now plans to take the brand into the mainstream.

Just as in the film business where small, often wonderful, British films get made but are never released, it is useless in the drinks business to produce a quirky new label if it's not on the shelves of bars and off-licences. Only a hundred yards or so from the Blavod offices in Fulham Road is Nikita's, one of London's best known Russian restaurants. Although they serve more than 40 premium vodkas, a request for a Blavod drew a blank. "We usually stock only Polish and Russian vodka," the barman replied, a bit sniffily. After pointing out that the Absolut I was drinking was from Sweden, I asked whether a black British vodka could have a similar appeal. I've never heard of such a thing but I don't see why not," he replied. "Somebody tried to sell me cucumber vodka the other day."

The launch of Blavod has coincided with an international vodka revolution. Customs and Excise says that since 1992, while demand for all other spirits has fallen, vodka consumption has increased by 10 per cent in Britain. This vodka craze is reflected in the success of such vodka chain bars and restaurants as Revolution, based in the north and now expanding south. It prominently displays Blavod in all its 26 outlets and on its cocktail list.

But the biggest money is to be made in exports. With 300m cases of branded vodka sold worldwide each year, Shiach notes that the company only has to reach 0.1 per cent of the market to turn a tidy profit. In America alone, premium vodka sales were up by 8.4 per cent in 2000 with 7.7m cases sold - more than the total sales of Scotch in America.

"The great thing about the vodka business, as opposed to the whisky business, is that you don't have to worry about the maturation process," says Shiach. Huge costs are taken up waiting for malt whisky to age, on top of which you lose 2 per cent to what is called 'the angel's share' - it just evaporates."

So are we going to see the first 12-year-old vodka bottles? "Nobody lays down vodka," Shiach says, thinking for a second, "but I suppose there's no harm in trying!"

That entrepreneurial spirit is at the heart of Blavod. The City presentations for Blavod at the start of the year were anything but usual. During their rounds, chief executive Richard Ambler, who helped build such brands as Bombay Sapphire, carried around a portable drinks cabinet, along with a silver bucket and ice cubes in a cooler bag. In another bag he had a supply of black g-strings emblazoned with the Blavod logo. "It's not what you would normally do in a merchant bank at 9 o'clock in the morning," Ambler said. You could see them all looking at the Black Bull that I'd just made and thinking, Ummm... I wonder what that tastes like?" By 10 o'clock, they'd be saying, "What the hell, I'll try it."