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West Highland Free Press | Friday 10 May 2013
daoine inntinneach interesting people
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The life of
Angus from
prefabs in
Plasterfield
to editing
The Times
PUPIL TO MASTER:
Angus began writing in
school newspaper Pupil
before joining papers
including the Scotsman
and Sunday Mail
T
HE NEW EDITOR of The Times
in Scotland describes himself
modestly as the poor mans
Magnus Linklater, in deference to the
previous incumbents breeding in the
school of gentlemen journalists.
Angus MacLeod, in marked contrast,
comes from Plasterfield and has reached his
present position via the Nicolson Institute, a
long march through the foothills of Scottish
newspapers, broadsheet and tabloid, as well
as a predestined showdown with his own
demons.
His parents were from Shawbost, his father
a warper in MacKenzies mill. In the great
post-war housing crisis, they were among the
homeless who became squatters in the Nissan
huts at Stornoway aerodrome, vacated by
departing troops. Already with two children,
they were allocated a tenancy in the
Plasterfield prefabs on the outskirts of the
town.
Angus was a late arrival and spent his
formative years there: It tended to be looked
down on by the Stornoway people but to me
Plasterfield is still the best example of what
community is about. Everyone knew each
other and helped each other. I went to
Sandwickhill Primary, then the Nicolson and
have nothing but good memories.
His older brothers had eclectic interests for
Lewis of that era ranging from the songs of
Woodie Guthrie to cricket and that helped
to influence his own horizons. The parents
were very much education-oriented, along
with the other common Hebridean
assumption that in order to get on, their
children should get out.
The eldest brother, Norman, became a
lecturer in English Language and Literature at
Edinburgh University while Alan had a
successful career with Marks and Spencer.
Both are now retired. Unlike Angus, they are
fluent Gaelic speakers because they were
closer to the Shawbost background. His
own status is lapach the product of both
unbelievable Stornoway hostility at that
time and the assumption that English was the
language of education and progress.
He identifies Alan Whiteford, the former
depute rector of the Nicolson Institute, as the
man who steered him towards journalism. In
fifth year at the Nicolson, Alan involved both
Neil Munro and himself in a school
newspaper called Pupil. For both of these
lifelong friends, the seeds of future careers
were sown.
At Edinburgh University, Angus did some
work on the student newspaper reporting
the Second XI against Civil Service Strollers
in the back of beyond. But it was only as he
approached graduation that the career option
became attractive. He saw an advert for the
Thomson Regional Newspaper training
scheme and, having been accepted, followed
a well-trodden journalistic route to Newcastle
for a grounding that has stood him in good
stead.
He then joined the Scotsman, which was
part of Lord Thomsons empire, but was soon
dispatched to London at a time when the
Scotsman still had a real presence there to
become its general news reporter. This threw
him into covering huge stories like the
Jeremy Thorpe trial and the Libyan Embassy
siege heady stuff for a Stornoway lad, still
in his twenties.
In retrospect, Angus thinks that he
travelled too far, too quickly and was not
ready for it. And maybe that led to a more
sociable lifestyle than was advisable. I freely
admit that I developed a taste for the booze at
that time. I suppose that the combination of
being a man from the islands in a profession
like journalism had all the necessary
ingredients. That created a lot of health
problems over the years which, thankfully,
have disappeared.
H
IS NEXT CAREER stop was at the
short-lived Sunday Standard, set up
as an off-shoot of the Glasgow
Herald in 1981 under the editorship of
Charlie Wilson, who went on to become
editor of The Times. The Sunday Standard
was top-heavy with highly-paid veterans of
the Scottish newspaper scene and was
launched during an advertising recession. It
lasted for two years and Angus went
freelance.
This proved to be quite a rich seam, mainly
in the service of London-based newspapers
which were thinly staffed in Scotland. But in
1986, he opted for the security of the post as
political editor at the Sunday Mail where he
stayed for more than a decade. During this
tenure, the biggest decision he took was a
personal one his last drop of alcohol was
consumed in 1991.
His next move was to the Scottish Daily
Express, just after the 1997 General
Election. It was still a real newspaper then
but when, in 2001, ownership passed to the
pornographer, Richard Desmond, he knew it
was time to get out. On the day he left the
Express he was offered a job by The
Times and has been there ever since, writing
mainly about Scottish politics in which no
man is better versed.
Having put his lifestyle problems firmly
behind him, he married Jan in 1999. She is
from South Yorkshire, near Doncaster, and
worked in the NHS all her career all the
qualifications necessary to keep me firmly
grounded.
The Times does a Scottish edition
better than any of the other UK heavies and
currently sells 20,000 printed copies each day
in Scotland. But that is far from being the
whole story. One thing Rupert Murdoch
definitely did get right was the decision to put
the journalism of The Times and Sunday
Times behind a pay-wall so that everyone
who reads it also pays for it. Angus says that
much of their current effort is going into
developing app subscriptions which represent
an increasingly popular way of reading
newspapers.
The combination of world and UK news
from The Times, with a decent level of
Scottish news, features and sports, has proved
effective. One way and another, it is
reasonable to assume that the Scottish edition
of The Times is pretty much as widely read
as either The Herald or Scotsman, both of
which have suffered calamitous falls in
circulation over the past decade.
The Herald, he says, has given up all
pretence of being anything other than a very
local paper while Angus is convinced that it
has been a folly on the part of Scottish
newspapers particularly his old employer,
the Scotsman to keep giving away on-line
content for free. If journalism is worth
anything, he says, it must be given a value
and allowing access to content without
charging is a highly specialised form of
suicide.
Being a News International journalist has
not, he admits, been comfortable over the
past couple of years as the phone-hacking
revelations unfolded. But its important to
emphasise that none of that happened at The
Times. It was a bit like the banking crisis
people who believed they were Masters of the
Universe overstepped the mark and were laid
low as a result.
He has met Murdoch a couple of times
and confirms his close interest in both
Scottish heritage and current political
developments. There has, however, been no
evidence of interference in editorial policy.
The Times always has been, and will
continue to be, a unionist newspaper. But that
does not mean we will not give fair coverage
to both sides in the referendum debate.
Our style is not to shout abuse at the SNP
but to insist that questions are answered.
What they are proposing is revolutionary and
they must expect close scrutiny. For example,
if someone asks if their pension would be
secure after independence, they are entitled to
an answer. There is no point in berating them
for talking Scotland down. That is not going
to impress them.
A
REGULAR AND astute broadcaster,
Angus has probably the most
recognisably Stornowegian voice on the
airwaves. His links with his native island
have, however, become more tenuous as his
immediate family has either died or moved
away over the past few decades though I
still have plenty of second cousins.
Last August, he returned for a Nicolson
Institute reunion with some trepidation about
how many people he would know or would
recognise him. His concerns were not borne
out by events. Not just at the reunion but
walking along Cromwell Street, I was very
pleasantly surprised by how many people had
a friendly word with me.
Maybe that was due more to the summers
I spent as a barman in the old Neptune and
the Caley public than to anything I have done
since then.
BRIAN WILSON
caught up with
Angus MacLeod to
find out how the
Stornoway boy
became editor of
The Times in
Scotland
BRIAN WILSON
profile
haveyoursay@whfp.co.uk