His “Sunday name” was Robert, but everyone knew him as Stu. He had an infectious laugh and an outrageous sense of fun that could never be suppressed, no matter how bad things might be.

Born and raised in Shawlands, Stu McNee was a lifelong fan of Pollok Juniors, the team he always referred to as either “The Southside Brazilians” or “The Mighty ’Lok”. One of his great delights was dragging colleagues along to their games of a Saturday and trying to wean them away from their usual SPL tribal loyalties.

He joined the Evening Times as a sub-editor in 1968, remaining with the paper until he chose to take early retirement in 2007.

During that time he was also the Times’ motoring correspondent, a role that took him all over the world testing cars. On one occasion in the early 1980s he found himself in the United States with a contingent of his fellow

motoring hacks.

He consulted a map and realised that the journalists were “only” 400 miles from Glasgow, Kentucky. Stu then persuaded the entire group, including his Fleet Street colleagues, to make the trip to his home city’s namesake in the Deep South, arguing that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the birthplace of Kentucky bourbon. They duly drove from dawn till dusk down country roads and arrived in the other Glasgow after nightfall, tired and very thirsty – only to discover that, although the bourbon was distilled there, Glasgow was a completely dry city. The nearest bar serving alcohol was in the next county, another 70 miles away.

With a lynch-mob forming, Stu laughed it off and, predictably, ended up with everyone laughing along with him. He later described the incident with typical understatement as “maybe not one of my better ideas”.

On another occasion he drove north to Bridge of Orchy on a stormy Sunday night – on a hunch – to rescue three of us who had been out hillwalking. It had rained steadily for four days and, in the breaks between driving rain showers, it had snowed.

We were soaked and exhausted by the time we struggled into the local hotel to find Stu waiting to offer us good-natured abuse and a more than welcome lift back home. He knew we were out, figured out our route and had guessed instinctively that we would head to the hotel for

shelter when we came wandering out of the hills.

We treated him to a meal for his kindness and he promptly reduced the entire dining room to tears of laughter by pointing to a trophy deer head peering down

dustily from one wall and remarking loudly that the beast must have been running at a hell of a speed when it hit the outside of the building to end up like that.

He loved people, and his generosity extended to quietly mentoring many young sub-editors engaged in cutting their teeth in the unforgiving world of an evening paper against tight deadlines.

In a parallel universe, he might have made a superb teacher.

As it was, he collected friends with casual ease. His circle at the Boswell Country Club, a howff he could see from his living room window in Mansionhouse Road, included everyone from firefighters to a Chinese barmaid, all of whom he would have in tow on an always-memorable annual outing Doon the Watter to Rothesay on the paddle steamer Waverley.

In retirement, he had also taken to exploring his native city by the novel expedient of picking a bus route every few days and then walking it to see parts of Glasgow he had never had a reason to visit.

Typically, when he became ill a few months ago and was rushed into the Victoria Infirmary for tests, he told no-one – not even his elder brother Chris – that he had been admitted to hospital because he didn’t want anyone to worry. When he was finally tracked down and friends began to visit, that ward became a markedly livelier and more laughter-filled place.

In his time, Stu also held a number of elected posts in the National Union of

Journalists, representing his colleagues in negotiations and generally looking out for their wellbeing.

It is a measure of how much he was liked that messages of sympathy and tribute came in from as far afield as New York and France when news broke of his untimely death.

He will be missed by all who had the privilege to know him as a friend and colleague.

Born February 3, 1947;

Died November 27, 2009.