Dougie Donnelly gives his verdict on Scotland’s greatest athlete

“Gonnae do me a favour?” Donnelly recalls, with some relish, the traffic warden asking him. “Gonnae stop saying it’s Tillicoultry near Stirling? Because I get punters coming up to me all the time asking where Sterling is. It’s nowhere near Stirling. It’s near f****** Alloa.”

My own Donnelly story is a minor entry, all things considered. Back in 2018 when the Beast from the East blew in and paralysed the country I got stuck in Yorkshire for two or three days trying to get back from London. 

I was racking up industrial levels of guilt about being away from home when my wife was really ill. It was only when I saw a tweet from Donnelly saying that the M74 was clear north of Carlisle that I realised things weren’t hopeless. Cue a quick train journey to Manchester and a bus ride home.  

“Glad I was able to help,” the man himself says laughing when I bring it up. “We were down to see the birth of our grandson. They lived in London at the time. And, yeah, we got as far as Carlisle. We had two nights in Carlisle and essentially my son-in-law, who ran until very recently the Rolls Royce dealership in Edinburgh, sent one of his drivers down when the M74 was open, picked us up and brought us back. The trains still weren’t running.”

NB, he adds, said son-in-law didn’t send a Rolls Royce. 

Wednesday morning, late August. A few minutes before Donnelly had greeted me at the door of his Pollokshields home looking like, well, Dougie Donelly.

(Image: Caddying for Monty at the Masters 1999)

He’s hardly changed, has he? Now 71, his hair may be a bit bleached with age, but other than that he remains indisputably, recognisably the face that fronted a thousand Sportscenes (NB, I haven’t actually counted them); the voice that floated over myriad outside broadcasts from snooker halls and indoor bowling greens around the country. 

Today he is in civvies. Jeans and untucked shirt. His wife Linda is somewhere else in the house as we sit talking about his life and in particular his life in broadcasting.

Which is still ongoing. For the last couple of years Donnelly has been commentating on golf on the Asian Tour. He has no intention of giving it up, it seems.

A few years ago when he left the European tour he thought maybe that was it for his broadcasting career, he admits. Or it was until Walter Smith, no less, staged an intervention.

“Walter Smith, God love him, my dear friend, and Ethel [Smith’s wife], were at our daughter’s wedding and we had a chat. 

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“He said, ‘Are you doing OK?’ And I said, ‘I’m doing fine Walter. I’m beginning to think it might be time to wind down a little bit. Do a little bit less.’

“Walter gave me what the players always called the Walter stare, which they were terrified of. And he grabbed me by the shoulder, Teddy, and he said, ‘Don’t you ever f****** think about it. Don’t you ever think about retiring. You’ve got plenty left in the tank. Don’t even think about it.’

“And I thought, ‘Christ, if Walter Smith thinks that, maybe I should carry on a bit longer.’

That’s a very Dougie story. How many others can say they have been given a pep talk by the late, great Rangers manager at a daughter’s wedding? 

Donnelly evidently took Smith’s advice because October will see him head off to cover the Asian tour once more. And his employers have already told him they’d like him back for the following season too. 

“I’m still travelling the world at somebody else’s expense talking about golf and the Asian tour, doing what I love. How lucky is that?”

Lucky is a word Donnelly uses often in our morning together. Over the years he has covered seven Olympics, three World Cups, three Commonwealth Games and 33 consecutive Scottish Cup finals, as he points out in the introduction to his new memoir, My Life in Sport: Recorded Highlights.

The book is dedicated to his wife and their three daughters. Reading it I did wonder if Linda has seen him on the telly more often than at home. 

(Image: In the Mid-Morning Show studio at Radio Clyde)

“We’ve been married 44 years this year and she says you’ve only known me for 22 of them,” he says, laughing. “She brought the girls up pretty much on her own a lot of the time.”

The book which comes with a foreword from his mate Billy Connolly, as well as others from Ally McCoist, Andy Cameron and, of course, curling gold medal winner Rhona Howie, is a chronicle of a life well lived. It takes in meetings with everyone from Bill Clinton (Donnelly hosted three events with the former President of the United States, including one in the Royal Albert Hall), to Paul McCartney, and even includes Donnelly’s story of how he played matchmaker for Colin Montgomerie.

And yet in a parallel world Donnelly would probably now be a retired lawyer like his contemporaries at Strathclyde University back at the start of the 1970s. They’re all now playing golf, he says. Donnelly is commentating on it.

He suggests his career in broadcasting is down to a series of lucky accidents, which started when he became the university’s social secretary, flying up and down to London to book acts. 

“That’s when I first met Billy Connolly, of course. We kept in touch after Billy became the worldwide superstar. 

“We went to see him in one of his last stand-ups maybe five or six years ago, Linda and I and one of our daughters, and we went backstage afterwards and John Bishop, the Liverpool comedian, had been at the gig as well. 

“We’re standing in the dressing room having a laugh with Billy and he put his arm around me and he said, ‘John, this is the first guy who ever paid me a hundred quid for a gig.’ I’m quite proud of that.”

Donnelly, who left uni without finishing his degree (he finally graduated in 1991) could have had a career in the entertainment business. He was offered a couple of jobs in London. Instead, he became a DJ on Radio Clyde, much to his dad Bert’s initial disgust. It wasn’t what he was hoping for for his son.

Originally a bricklayer, Bert eventually became director of a construction firm.

(Image: Dougie and his wife Linda with President Clinton in 2006)

“He always had this guilty conscience that he was uneducated, which was ridiculous,” his son recalls. “But he always had that chip on his shoulder. So, of course, when I left university without the degree to become a DJ, my goodness, it was like running away from home to join the circus.

“We didn’t get on for a while. He thought I’d completely blown it. Fortunately it worked out all right.”

Donelly made his debut on Radio Clyde at the end of 1974. Two years later he was given the mid-morning show and was soon winning the station’s highest ratings.

It’s maybe difficult now to recall just how big Radio Clyde was back in the 1970s and 1980s. It helped that there wasn’t much competition, Donnelly suggests.

“There was only Radio Scotland, which at the time was particularly staid and dull. And then Clyde came on and they were brash and they were local and there were people with Glasgow accents on it! Not a fantastically original recipe, but it was obvious when you think about it. There was a great sense of ownership of Radio Clyde.”

Donnelly looks back on that time with huge fondness. As well as the mid-morning show Mondays to Fridays he’d do a rock show on the Friday night. Guests who had just played at the Apollo would troop along to Radio Clyde’s studios for a chat.

“The laughs we had on the rock show,” he says, cueing up his Ginger Baker story. 

“Poor Ginger was in a terrible state. I said: ‘With us tonight, one of the great rock drummers. Ginger, welcome.’ He literally looked up with this bleary-eyed look and fell forward onto the desk. And I promise you, you could hear the forehead hitting the desk. And that was it. That was the interview.”

By the 1980s Donnelly was close to ubiquitous. He was on the radio every day, on the TV presenting Sportscene at the weekend. He even had his own chat show for a couple of series. It says much about the distance between then and now that his guests included Fiona Richmond, a porn star of the time, and union leader Mick McGahey.

Different times, he points out. Back then he also ended up presenting Miss Scotland and Miss Stella Artois competitions.

“And it was all quite innocent,” Donnelly says, before adding, “Miss Wet T-shirt maybe less so.” 

As the 1980s continued Donnelly moved more and more into sport (he did his last Radio Clyde mid-morning show in 1992). For the following few decades he’d turn up reporting on pretty much every sport under the sun for the BBC, as well as hosting Grandstand on occasion. 

Were there any sports he didn’t like?

“I’ve never been into horse racing. And of course it was an absolute staple of Grandstand so I needed to get to know a little bit, at least the terminology. 

“Motor sport was never my thing, couldn’t get into Formula One then and now. Most sports involving a ball I’m interested in. I knew nothing about indoor bowls, but indoor bowls became a huge TV sport. We were getting three and four million audiences. It was up there with snooker. 

“And then I did darts and snooker obviously. Football, rugby, golf were always my big three, but then I got the chance to do those other sports.”

He says he was lucky - that word again - that his career began to take off just as Scottish sport was on a real high. In the 1980s Aberdeen and Dundee United were emerging as the New Firm in Scottish football, Scottish rugby saw two Grand Slams in the space of six years (not having won one since 1925), Stephen Hendry began to dominate snooker and in golf the likes of Sam Torrance, Sandy Lyle, Montie and Paul Lawrie were all coming to the fore.

“And there was only the BBC doing it. STV did football, but they didn’t do very much else. The BBC, God love them, said, ‘We’ll do some indoor bowls. We’ll do curling and hockey and stuff like that. And I was young and keen and I kept saying yes.

“So, I got the chance to do it and to meet so many of my heroes. I’m past the age of being starstruck, but for a long time I had to pinch myself. ‘You’re on first-name terms with Denis Law and Mr Steen.’ He was always Mr Steen.”

Interviewing Archie Macpherson for Nutmeg magazine earlier this year, I tell Donnelly, I was struck by how combative Macpherson’s relationship could be with the people in football he spoke to. That was never Donnelly’s style. 

Are you just a natural people-pleaser, Dougie?

“I suppose there is an element of the people pleaser in me. Archie was quite happy to fall out with people. I was respectful. I would ask difficult questions, but for some reason I didn’t really fall out with any of them particularly. 

“Fergie could be difficult obviously, but it was always with a twinkle in the eye, I found. I think he maybe saw something in me; a young Glasgow guy trying to become successful and he’d say, ‘Come in and have a plate of soup. What’s happening at Ibrox, what have you heard about Celtic?’

“Not that I knew any secrets, but I knew this would turn up in his team talks.

“The relationship with the media is different now. The access isn’t there. When I was doing it I could phone up McCoist or whoever and say, ‘What are you doing after training? You want to go for a bit of lunch or something?’ And that just doesn’t happen now. 

“And again there only was BBC, ITV, a couple of radio stations. You were able to build a relationship with sportsmen and women. That isn’t maybe as easy now.”

Football coverage has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, he suggests. “The controversialists have taken over. Then it was not about you. You’re only there to present. We don’t want to know your opinion. Now, it’s the absolute opposite. 

“Gary Neville is a Man United fan, Chris Sutton is a Celtic fan, Kris Boyd is a Rangers fan and they’re brought on to be fans. It’s club TV isn’t it? The idea of being a neutral observer is kind of gone now.”

Donnelly eventually stepped down from presenting for the BBC after the Scottish Cup final in 2010. He was told in June that year that the corporation wouldn’t be renewing his contract. I was a little taken aback, I say, to read that they didn’t even give you a farewell do after 32 years working for them.

(Image: Robert Perry)

“It was slightly disappointing,” he says now, a characteristic understatement. “And it only occurred to me weeks afterwards, or even at the start of the following season, when somebody said to me, ‘Did you get your glass of warm wine?’ And I said, ‘Do you know what? I didn’t.’

“And, of course, it’s not a big deal, but you might have expected somebody to stand up and say thanks for your service. But over the piece I can't complain about the BBC. They were very good to me. I was there for such a long time. 

“And I’m not naive about it. It wasn't because I was a nice guy and I bought a drink in the bar. I was clearly quite good at what I did.

“But, equally, as time goes on and you get a bit older, there’s never been a producer in the history of television who comes in and says, ‘This is all going well. Carry on lads, I’ll see you down the pub.’ Producers are there to make changes.

“The time came and I was fine with it. I was disappointed, but I was doing more and more golf at the time so it wasn’t like it was the end of my career or anything. But you would have thought somebody somewhere would have stood up and said thanks for 32 years.”

In a long career he’s had the chance to meet his heroes, to commentate on gold medals, to be on hand for great sporting moments. So who in all that time has most impressed him? He’s often debated who was the greatest individual Scottish sportsman, he admits. In the past he might have said Jackie Stewart. Now, Donnelly says, the answer is obvious. Andy Murray.

Andy Murray

“For me, Andy is not only the greatest ever Scottish sportsman, he’s the greatest ever British sportsman. I really do believe that. He achieved success in an era of maybe three of the greatest players that ever lived as his opposition. He won two Wimbledons, two Olympic gold medals, all the rest of it, coming from a little town in Scotland with no great tennis tradition as a country never mind as a town. So, for Andy to achieve what he did is just beyond belief for me and it puts me above the Seb Coes and the Daley Thompsons and the Nick Faldos and all the others.”

The photographer has arrived. Time for his close-up. But one last question before I go, Dougie. When was the last time you were in Tillicoultry?

“It’s probably a few years now, actually,” he says laughing. “But funnily enough Linda said we need a new couch so we may have to go back to Tillicoultry.”

As long as he remembers it’s near Alloa.

My Life in Sport: Recorded Highlights, by Dougie Donnelly, £22, is published on Thursday by McNidder & Grace. Waterstones is hosting a series of events, An Evening with Dougie Donnelly in Oban (September 13), Glasgow (September 16), Stirling (September 17), Dundee (September 19), Edinburgh (September 24), Irvine (September 26) and Kirkcaldy (October 1). Visit waterstones.com for details