IAN MORRISON, in his prime the best, most concise and occasionally acerbic agricultural journalist in Britain, has died aged 72.
The sadness of that is not the unexpectedly sudden end of his life, but that the past three years saw the dimming of one of the sharpest brains in our business and the disappearance from the farming pages of Scottish newspapers of some of the best first paragraphs ever written.
Those opening paragraphs, the prized "good intros" of the trade, did not come easily. The legendary Morrison hunch over his keyboard, wrapped in a smoky silence that defied whatever chaos might be going on around at sale, show or conference, was known and respected - if you knew what was good for you.
It would end when, having worked out precisely what was wanted in his mind rather than in a snowfall of torn-out copy paper or deletions like his colleagues, he would start to pound away unmercifully.
He did that to good effect in a career that took him from his first job as copyboy on The Scotsman in the early 1950s to what was his prime, agricultural editor of The Herald for more than 20 years.
That was where he moved up a gear from straight reporting of farming, based on a fast, neat and tiny shorthand note and pointed questions, to become an excellent and pungent commentator, a style that won him the Netherthorpe Award, top UK award for agricultural writers, in 1988.
It was only one of a number of recognitions by his peers. He is the only person to have been chairman of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists twice, in 1974 and 1981, and was guild president in 1987when Britain hosted the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists conference.
That recognition and affection was reaffirmed in 1997 when he was made, one of only five in its history, a senior fellow of the 600-member guild.
Born in Inverness, one of two sons of a civil servant, he attended Boroughmuir School after the family moved to Edinburgh before getting his first job as a copyboy - the office "gofer" - on The Scotsman.
In the 1950s that was still the potential first rung on a career ladder and he took it, stepping up to become a sub-editor on the home pages and then deputy agricultural editor to Robert Urquhart.
He and Elspeth Lawson married in 1959 and, after a record spell as Bob Urquhart's "half back" before a year on the Daily Express, he became agricultural editor on the Aberdeen Press & Journal in 1966. They started a family in the same year with daughter Lesley, followed by sons Frazer, Gregor and Ross.
In 1969, he was brought to Glasgow by IPC to edit the failing Farming News, a magazine he did not get the time or resources to turn round despite his editing skills, before it closed in the autumn of 1970.
The briefest of stints followed on Farmers Weekly before he returned to the daily journalism where he worked best, succeeding Alex Yeaman as agricultural editor of the then Glasgow Herald.
That was where he flourished, not only with his Mondaymorning comment pieces that brought home-truths for farmers to a fine art, but also in regular appearances on BBC Radio Scotland and contributions to television programmes.
Allied to a sharp brain, he had the advantage of not having an agricultural background. He looked afresh and from the outside at the small world of Scottish farming and said what he thought.
Always the most impersonal, in the impartial reporting sense, of journalists, it took his final Herald piece before retirement to move him to use the word "I" - so moved that he did it twice, probably doubling the number of times he had used it in the rest of his journalistic career.
In that article he said he had enjoyed his time with the paper. He meant it, although those of us who had watched the birthpangs of his intros and a legion of press-conference speakers halted in mid-flow by his exasperated groan, head in hand and a tart: "What do you actually mean by that?" might doubt it. What we all knewwas the quality of report or comment he would produce. On form, and he usually was, no journalist could sum up an event, a speech or a press conference more concisely. No matter how well we thought we had written a story, Ian's report next morning was the benchmark. We, his colleagues on other papers, wish it, and his dry, pawky, asides, still were.
His family and work were his main interests, but he was a keen hill and long-distance walker. Despite a number of health problems before his final illness, he climbed many Munros and completed many charity walks, including much of the Southern Upland Way and St Cuthbert's Way with his daughter, Lesley, and the West Highland Way with his brother-in-law, Ian Campbell.
His last big walk was Tyndrum to Milngavie in July 2002.
He was an avid and, unusually, impartial football fan, taking his sons to many matches, but gave up on golf after only a handful of games - despite a hole-in-one at Ross Priory.
He leaves Elspeth, four children and six grandchildren.
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