Witch doctors and hippos all in a day's work for Jim

Jim Dow, a former journalist with The Scotsman, has died, aged 71.

Born and raised in Edinburgh, where he attended a local primary school, Mr Dow found his life completely changed when, aged 12, his father's job as a telephone engineer saw the family move to Dar es Salaam, in the then Tanganyika.

He would later recall that while the school bus in Edinburgh took 20 minutes, to get to school in Nairobi involved leaving Dar es Salaam on the Monday, and travelling by train and bus to reach Nairobi on Thursday.

During his time there Mr Dow experienced the political turmoil of Africa, as a state of emergency was declared when the Mau Mau terrorist organisation pressed its claim for an independent Kenya.

In 1956, after leaving boarding school, Mr Dow fulfilled his childhood ambition of becoming a journalist, joining the English language paper the Tanganyika Standard.

This proved an excellent training ground, and he later returned to Scotland, joining the Galloway Gazette in Newton Stewart, and then the Fifeshire Advertiser, where he worked for four years.

It was here that he met his future wife Lorna Murray, although not long after they met he returned to Africa, later telling friends "the dust of Africa was still on my feet".

Three months after sailing for Kenya however, he bought Lorna a single fare from Edinburgh to Nairobi, and sent a bouquet with a note reading: "Fly out in August and marry me."

By then he was working at the East African Standard, and during a posting to the Rift Valley he met some of the country's top politicians, using his fluent Swahili to translate speeches effortlessly into shorthand.

He spent four years working for the paper, and later said he had "covered political rallies up and down the country, murder trials, elephants rampaging, hippos street walking, and even witch doctors influencing football teams".

The increasing turbulence of Africa, and the birth of his daughter, prompted Mr Dow to move his family back to Scotland in the late 1960s.

After a brief spell at a newspaper post in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, he was appointed to The Scotsman, and over the next 23 years would become one of the best-known journalists in the country.

He first worked as a reporter, then later became the night news editor and supplements editor.

In 1981 he was appointed business editor, a post he held for eight years prior to taking up public relations and freelance work, where he specialised in business journalism.

Mr Dow was given an honorary life membership to the National Union of Journalists two years ago.

He wrote two books in his lifetime, African Dow, based on his own experiences in Africa and Islands Galore, a book about Scottish islands.

A friend remarked that Mr Dow could turn his hand to any topic and was "a marvellously clear and readable writer and with a ready sense of humour that worked on the page as well as in conversation".

He never thought of retirement, and was still writing a weekly commercial property column for The Scotsman when he died.

He is survived by his wife Lorna, daughter Karen, son-in-law John and granddaughters Natasha and Lindsay.