Roots, shoots and stories

When I'm looking at census records I find it useful to look at other records on the page other than those of the family I'm searching for. One day in September I was checking out census records for my 4 x great grandfather James Somerville. I know he was a medical doctor and that he studied at the University of Edinburgh and that he came to live in Cambusnethan Parish in Lanarkshire. I have his marriage, his children, but no death locally. Nor can I find that of his wife, Janet Telfer. It made sense therefore to check further afield, so I was looking over 1841 census details of three James Somervilles in other parts of Scotland, when something - or should I say - someone else caught my eye in the census for Drumelzie in Peeblesshire. Further up the page, lodging with a farmer was a man named Charles Mackay, aged 50 who was a ... comedian by trade! Really??? A comedian in 1841? I'd never come across such a thing before. Maybe the person giving the census responses was being ...