Former BBC governor had many strings to her bow

Published on Wednesday 20 February 2008 09:17

FORMER Scottish Governor of the BBC Lady Janet Sutherland Shearer Avonside has died, aged 90.

Lady Avonside, of North Berwick, was awarded the OBE for political services in Scotland in 1958 and was Scottish Governor of the BBC from 1971 to 1976.

She was educated at St Columba's School in Kilmalcolm, followed by Erlenhaus finishing school in Baden Baden, Germany.

After studying law at Edinburgh University she went on to work with the British Institute of Public Opinion.

During the Second World War she was a welfare officer with the Ministry of Labour, and later was assistant to the labour officer at the Ministry of Supply in Scotland.

In the years following the war she acted as area secretary of the East of Scotland branch of King George's Fund for Sailors until 1953.

The following year she married Ian Hamilton Shearer, then an Edinburgh QC, who went on to become Lord Avonside, a former Lord Advocate, who died in 1996.

She was also honorary secretary of the Edinburgh Branch of the Federal Union and United Europe movements, and a member of the Conservative Party's speakers panel as an expert on the European common market.

She unsuccessfully contested parliamentary elections for the party in Glasgow Maryhill (1950), Dundee East (1951) and Edinburgh Leith (1955).

In 1963, she became a lecturer in social studies at Edinburgh University and remained a well-known public speaker throughout the rest of the 1960s.

She was appointed Scottish Governor of the BBC in 1971 and found herself having to fend off criticism about sex, violence and the lack of morality on television at the height of the Mary Whitehouse campaign.

She took a pragmatic approach to the debate, referring once to sexual content in 1970s programming as "not so much morally corrupt as an assault against taste".

After stepping down as Scottish Governor she continued to advise the BBC as part of the Broadcasting Council for Scotland, where she acted as a champion for more Scottish output in broadcasting. In her later years she acted as Governor of Queen Margaret College, from 1986 to 1989.

She was also a keen gardener, a member of Edinburgh's New Club and an associate member of the Caledonian Club.

Lady Avonside enjoyed her privacy. Her wedding was attended by only a handful of guests and she left instructions in her will for a private funeral.

She died on February 15, 2008, and is survived by her two stepchildren Ann and Alastair.