Scottish lecturer and comedy writer who wrote for Not The Nine O’ Clock News

Born: January 6, 1946

Died: March 22, 2019

JOHN Duignan, who has died aged 73, was a university lecturer, author, and comedy writer who wrote extensively for the likes of Not The Nine O’Clock News.

It is rare for both sides of the human brain to operate to the extent that both the artistic and practical sides work perfectly in tandem but that seems to have been the case with John Duignan.

Born in Barrhead in Renfrewshire into a family of eight children, Duignan left St Mirin’s Academy aged 15 to become an apprentice fitter at Babcock and Wilcox in Renfrew. Before leaving the Renfrew factory he helped train the fitters in his footsteps. It was a sign of things to come.

His next few years were spent working as an engineer on the construction of three English power stations, in Fulham, Redcar, and finally Wilfa on Anglesey. During this time he married Margaret and had three children.

Yet John Duignan was not content with working life. He attended night school, rapidly gathering more than enough Highers to gain entry to Strathclyde University, to emerge four years later with a double first – first class honours in economics and economic history. The tools were laid down and a new world in academia beckoned.

A brief sojourn of a year as a researcher at the Fraser of Allander Institute ended quickly with a job offer from Paisley College of Technology (now the University of the West of Scotland) in the newly formed department of economics and management.

Yet John Duignan still wasn’t content. He kept on the day job but having reckoned life was about continuous learning he gained a masters degree then a doctorate in psychology from Glasgow University.

And to stretch the brain matter a little further he studied for an advanced qualification in French. This wasn’t simply because John Duignan was a lifelong Francophile and loved to holiday in France with his family. He would go on to become a visiting lecturer at several French universities and business schools.

The lifelong learning ideal however was not contained to academic study. John became ‘not bad’ (his words) at music (saxophone); bad (my word) at golf – due to his stubborn refusal to use left-handed clubs – but his dominant sinister hand was used to estimably skilled effect in his portrait artistry – again achieved initially through night classes, this time back at his alma mater, Strathclyde.

If all that weren’t enough, John Duignan eventually succumbed to the academic pressure to publish. Several very commercially successful text books were squeezed into and out of his life between 2014 and 2019: Quantitative Methods for Business Research (published by Cengage), or as he would describe it (‘Counting for business students who are feart of mathematics’ ) and a Dictionary of Business Research Methods (published by Oxford University Press).

Yet, Duignan had been writing long before that, in a very different form. In 1979 he and I began a ‘career’ (‘paid hobby - badly paid’) in comedy script writing while we worked as lecturers at Paisley Tech. John revealed his talent in coming up with great gags for Not the Nine O;Clock News, Three of a Kind, Naked Radio and Naked Video.

We also had a stage play Albatross Soup performed – a homage to the Marx Brothers but unlike his co-author, John Duignan eschewed the tempting offer of writing for Spitting Image to concentrate on writing a novel.

His efforts paid off and three published works, written from the point of view of the central female character, emerged in the trilogy – Saving The Last Dance, Katherine Black Doesn’t Dance, and Things To Do When The Music Stops.

After a hiatus of a few years however, he joined up again with his erstwhile co-author to secure publication for three (I’d like to think) satirical, seriously funny novels, Skelp the Aged, The Buick Stops Here and The Lambshank Redemption.

John Duignan never saw his last book published however, despite the physical travails he had to endure towards the end in order to finish it. He was hit with motor neurone disease over two years ago and died just three days before its publication.

But the measure of the man was that his wife Margaret says he never complained, and was never depressed, despite the physical horrors being increasingly hurled at him. And as always, he was caring and interested in his multitude of friends, his myriad family and the team of medics who helped him towards the end.

Just as importantly, John Duignan made them laugh. In fact, he made everybody he was in contact with laugh. And those of us he touched he held at bay the fear of dying – and replaced it, however fleetingly, with the joy of living.

John Duignan is survived by his two brothers and three sisters, his wife Margaret and their three children, John Paul, Claire and Stephen and grandson Sean.

Margaret found this poem, but failed to uncover its author. But says it sums up her husband perfectly: "He befriended those in need/Was ever ready with words of good cheer/To bring back a smile, to banish a tear/(Ask) Not what the sketch in the newspaper did say,/But how many were sorry when he passed away."

A memorial to John Duignan and the launch of his final novel will be held in Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street on June 21, from 6.30 – 8.30pm. All welcome.

IAN HOPKINS