John Evans

Died: March 18, 2015.

JOHN Evans, who has died aged 78 after a series of strokes, was a longtime sound recordist for BBC Scotland TV programmes including Dr Finlay's Casebook, Reporting Scotland, The Vital Spark, numerous farming programmes and Old Firm football matches. He later became a producer and director in his own Glasgow-based film and TV production company, Video Scotland Productions (VSP), which specialised in TV commercials and corporate and political promotional films, including for the SNP in the 1980s. The SNP's Winnie Ewing credited Mr Evans and his crew for helping get her re-elected to the European Parliament as MEP for the Highlands and Islands and enhancing Scotland's image abroad.

In his early 50s, Mr Evans reinvented himself with a whole new career as a psychotherapist specialising in hypnosis, helping suffering Glaswegians and others to overcome their fears, addictions and challenges and to realise their potential. He came to love that job more than his media work although he admitted he missed "the action." Although Birmingham-born and educated, he spent the latter two-thirds of his life in Scotland. "There was very little of Scotland he didn't know, he really loved the country," his son Paul told The Herald.

John William Malcolm Barry Evans was born in the Handsworth area of Birmingham on November 3, 1937, to a Welsh father and a mother of Welsh origin. He went to school in the city, surviving the long Luftwaffe Blitz which killed or seriously injured more than 5,000 Brummies during the war. He left school without qualifications, possibly due to dyslexia, which was diagnosed only when he was well into adulthood. But with a gift of "seeing how things work," he taught himself how to strip things like engines and put them back again. Having read all he could about fast-changing radio and recording technology, he became a radio engineer and joined the Birmingham Commercial Films company as a sound recordist, picking up contract work along the way for the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in his native city.

With BBC Scotland growing as part of the corporation's expansion beyond London, he got a job as a sound engineer and recordist at the Queen Margaret Drive headquarters in 1963, where he would go on to work for nearly 20 years. At the interview, he bluntly told the panel that the BBC's camera and sound equipment he saw around him were outdated. While some on the panel were taken aback by his apparent cheek, a senior member agreed with him. He got the job.

Over the years, he worked and became friendly with such celebritiess as Lulu, Magnus Magnusson, Ludovic Kennedy, Robbie Coltrane and many more. He learnt a major lesson while covering a Ne'erday Old Firm match for the BBC. One of the crew made the innocent mistake of attaching blue masking tape to some camera and recording equipment. He quickly had to rip it off. They were at the Celtic end.

While at the BBC, he also covered the last Atlantic crossing, in 1967, of the John Brown-built Queen Mary cruise liner, now a tourist attraction in Long Beach, California. In 1976, he was in the US to cover the bi-centennial celebrations for Scottish viewers. When BBC Reporting Scotland were sent to film a new extension to the chairlift at Glencoe, the TV crew had to hike up the mountain on foot, no easy task, with Mr Evans trailing after loading their heavy equipment onto a small helicopter. When the exhausted director got to the mountain plateau near the summit, there was Mr Evans, who had persuaded the pilot he was light enough to travel with the equipment. The director barked that he should have been the one to get a ride. "Who dares wins," the soundman replied with a winning smile beneath his Clark Gable moustache.

In 1982, Mr Evans set up his own company Video Scotland Productions (VSP), for which Winnie Ewing sponsored those 1980s SNP promotional films, based in Bishopbriggs, where Mr Evans and his family lived. (Two of his four children were born in Scotland and his wife Margaret, also from Birmingham, brought the other two north as babies to become proud Glaswegians). Mr Evans had already done some directing at the BBC and was both producer and director at VSP.

In 1992, he had a new vision. He did what he had long dreamt of doing, did the requisite studies and set up his own psychotherapy and hypnotherapy practice to help struggling people get better. He saw clients either at his by-then home at Milton of Campsie or at the Glasgow branch of the Theosophical Society on the city's Queen's Crescent off West Princes Street. He served as the society's president for several years.

In his spare time, he was an all-rounder, enjoying scuba diving, gliding, Micro-Lite flying, building model steam-engined boats (inspired by his sails "doon the watter" on the Waverley) and owning classic cars including a stunning 1934 Jaguar SS 1 Tourer.

In the 1970s, he was instrumental in discovering the 1857 wreck of the sailing ship Charlemagne off the Mull of Kintyre, a tragedy which became a Godsend for local Scots who helped relieve her of her cargo, not unlike the famous Whisky Galore! story a century later. He was also a committed dowser, fond of wandering around his garden looking for underground water, minerals or whatever.

On the spiritual side, he was into all religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. He taught himself Tai Chi and Dru yoga and taught others how to meditate.

John Evans, who died in Glasgow Royal Infirmary, is survived by his ex-wife but ongoing partner Margaret (née Watkins), sons Paul and Alex, daughters Ruth and Louise and grandchildren Scott, David, Julian and Christopher. He and Margaret were planning to remarry when the effects of his strokes intervened.

PHIL DAVISON