Ewing Grahame tribute: Hugh MacDonald honours the late sportswriter

He was the most generous of friends and the most cultured man I have encountered in more than half a century of scribbling about sport, books, music and art.

Sport, of course, was the outlet for much of his working life.  If one reads sport in Scottish newspapers, then one has read Ewing Grahame. He started with DC Thomson in 1977 but was employed by every major newspaper in the country at one point, including The Herald where he was chief football writer. He went on to work as a freelance journalist.  

Ewing properly regarded journalism as a trade rather than a profession. It was a job that had to be measured, where standards had to apply, where the ultimate aim was to inform or educate the reader. It was about reporting accurately, building contacts and telling readers what they ought to know. His party piece in later years, though, was to compile several match reports on the same game on deadline for various newspapers. In this, he was akin to Eno facing a bank of electronic keyboards and conjuring a tune out of each.

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He was particularly adept at reporting on football and boxing. He understood the imperatives of both sports and the primal nature of the hurt game touched something visceral in him. Confrontation came easily to him. One of the many joys of being a friend was to provoke Ewing into a row. This was not an impossible task.

One could then sit back and be mesmerised by Ewing’s tirades. One regret of a life lived to the full must be that the Olympic committee has never felt obliged to introduce a gold medal for Spleen (Venting Of). In this, Ewing would have dominated for decades.

It must be emphasised that in this pursuit he was not a bar-room bore (though many of his best speeches came coincidentally in premises that were licensed). No, there was both heat and light in his arguments. He spoke passionately with extraordinary certainty but this was leavened by his wit that was so cutting and precise that it could have removed a spleen from a gnat. The light came from his hard-won knowledge and experience.

Ewing Grahame (Image: SNS Group)

Ewing was a working-class boy from Harthill who largely educated himself. The world of journalism then was a hard school. Ewing graduated with honours.

He was brilliant at assessing sport and dismantling the cliches that surround it. But his real gift lay in the arts. I can hear him snort as I propose that I have never met or read anyone who had such a firm grasp of the triumphs and failures of the American novel in the 20th century. I have never encountered someone whose breadth of knowledge on every musical genre (save perhaps opera) was so insightful, so educational for those of us trying to catch up.

There was never anything of the classroom about him, though. He simply answered questions or spoke with a flair that was hugely entertaining. He was both funny and articulate. Thus an afternoon with him could glide from Larsson v Lennox, to Ali v Frazier, to a robust defence of Elvis, the Vegas years, to Kubrick v the Carry On films (Kenneth Williams wins on points) to a withering critique of how people could say the Great American Novel had never been written while the works of James M Cain, Chester Himes and Raymond Chandler sat on his shelves.

He was a generous man. His annual lunch, only recently convened, featured his dedication to the concept of ‘buying a round’, a trait that was a template for much of life in that he believed giving to those he loved (I can again hear his snort).

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To meet Ewing for lunch was to be greeted with a poly bag of CDs and books, all taken from his frankly massive collection, and chosen carefully to add to the enjoyment of one’s life. In this, he was completely successful.

One was occasionally bruised and buffeted by his company but always, always energised by it. He was such a powerful personality that his passing is akin to a band leaving the stage mid-song, a light in a room being suddenly and irrevocably dimmed.

Friends were and are simply devastated by his death. This pain, of course, shrinks to almost nothing in comparison to the trauma inflicted upon his wife, Aileen, and his four children, for Ewing had another secret that intimates slowly grasped. He was a family man. His instinctive tilt towards the curmudgeonly with friends could disguise momentarily the reality that he was both proud of and sustained by the love in his home.

He could be erratic. He could be irascible. These states were occasionally funny and always transient. He was always the truest friend.

Ewing Grahame was a great man. One ducks as one imagines his reaction to that designation. It does not make it any less true, however.