Confessions of a Scotland on Sunday veteran

Published on Sunday 28 October 2007 01:19

TAKE a look at these two group photos on the right. The black-and-white one was taken the night the very first Scotland on Sunday rolled off the presses in August 1988, and it shows the original team of journalists. The colour one shows the SoS staff as it is today. Taken 19 years apart, the two photos have just one thing in common: me.

Yes, I've been at this paper right from the start, man and boy. Owners and editors may come and go, but I'm always here - and as you can see from the mugshots above I haven't changed a bit. The glasses, let me assure you, were very fashionable at the time.

We spent anxious hours that August night in 1988, in our windowless bunker of an office on North Bridge, waiting for the first printed edition to be delivered into our hands. It was in every sense a little bundle of joy. Through the door it came, cradled in the arms of its father, who lovingly placed it down on the table in front of us.

There were smiles, exhilaration and even some tears, although that might have been because of the excess of champagne. We had been waiting almost three hours for the happy moment and most of us had started wetting the baby's head long before the actual arrival.

We handled it gently, almost reverentially. In the air of general approval, one of our number pointed out its cute little features.

It was left to the proud dad, Alastair Stuart, the launch editor of Scotland on Sunday that hot summer's night in 1988, to inject a note of sober reality. "We have all been in on the start of a great new enterprise," he boomed out as we lifted our glasses once again. "Now all we have to do is do it again... and again... and again... because a great future lies ahead!" How right he was, on both counts.

Newspaper culture was different then. An early editor, Ron 'Badger' Hall, an old Fleet Street hand steeped in the cranky rhythms of Sunday newspapers, endeared himself to all by introducing Wednesday lunchtime 'brainstorming' sessions, with the aid of a crate of red wine. "I haven't had a dry lunchtime in 30 years," he said, surveying a surprisingly large gathering. "And I'm not going to start now."

We let off steam in the Jinglin' Geordie, the dingy howff on Fleshmarket Close favoured by the denizens of the old North Bridge headquarters. On Saturday night at 7.30pm, it resembled a library reading room as hacks, from the editor downwards, pored over the first edition to see where improvements could be made, before rushing back to the newsroom to catch up with breaking stories.

There were moments of hack drama. In 1992 reporter Ron McKay, now an assistant to maverick MP George Galloway, was arrested and charged with reset while conducting investigations into a break-in at Lothian police HQ. The police believed stolen documents, revealing controversial surveillance techniques, had ended up in SoS hands. The charge was later dropped, and although McKay spent a night behind bars, the newspaper gained from the publicity.

It all helped to build an esprit de corps that comes with the sense of being Davids fighting Goliaths. Takings rose in the Jinglin' Geordie as our reputation grew. Industry awards started to arrive by the dozen, and continue to arrive today as the paper - in its new home next to the Holyrood parliament - looks to the future and new challenges.

As for me, well, I'm already looking forward to the party for the 2,000th edition. That and the gold watch. Who knows, by then maybe those glasses will be back in fashion.