George Sinclair

born 7th December 1928

died 3rd October 2015.

When George Sinclair joined BBC in Scotland in 1968 the nightly television news magazine Six Ten could hardly have been described as cutting edge. When he retired 20 years later, its successor, Reporting Scotland, had won the Royal Television Society's journalism award for Britain's best daily news magazine. It had also peaked at an astonishing nightly audience of 1.2 million. George had more to do with that than any other individual.

He began his career as a cub reporter cum office boy with the old Renfrew Press and then the Govan Press before being called up for National Service in the Merchant Navy. After that came short stint in The Bulletin before he joined the Daily Mail in 1951. The Mail was an aggressive player in the Scottish press wars of the time and George was in his element. He then made his mark in the Mail's Fleet Street newsroom before becoming, at 27, the paper's youngest-ever news editor in Scotland.

He quickly established himself as a powerful driving force and was head-hunted by BBC Scotland in 1967 when it had become apparent that something needed to be done about what passed for Scottish News on television.

It was, in effect, a radio news bulletin with captions and blinks of mute library film. Regular stories included fish market prices at Peterhead and the number of books borrowed at Falkirk Public Library. As George once told the Radio Times: “It was all about old ladies who knitted socks for Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. That sort of thing.”

That was to change very quickly. A recruitment drive among Scottish newspaper journalists was beginning to provide George with the team he needed. The nightly news magazine soon took a new name – A Quick Look Round – and a catchy Herb Alpert title tune. Mary Marquis added authority and elegance as the main presenter and experienced recruits like Hugh Moran and Campbell Barclay began to make their mark. Slowly at first, the coverage and its quality improved. But George, always impatient and often irascible, was not popular with the Queen Margaret Drive establishment. One of his favourite stories of that time was about the day he sent the veteran reporter Jameson Clark to cover the preview of The Family Way, a film starring John Mills and his daughter Hayley. It was very much a film of the Swinging Sixties and the word 'virgin' came up in Clark's report. George was summoned to the Controller's office and told that any more outrage like that and he would be dismissed.

When Alasdair Milne became Controller, Scotland, in January 1969 George immediately saw him as an ally. Milne had been a key member of the ground-breaking Tonight team in London and within months the pair had come up with the Reporting Scotland format – a full Scottish news service with live coverage from studios in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and (slightly later) Dundee.

There were many hairy moments – links going down, film breakdowns and videotape blackouts and scripts that arrived on the studio floor too late. George, not the most relaxed of producers – and an even shorter-fused studio director - worked hard to cajole and bully his own staff and at the same time wage war on what he saw as the complacency and inertia of other BBC departments.

Why, he asked, was it impossible to switch directly between the Aberdeen and Edinburgh studios? Why were the studio cameras relics from some storeroom in Ealing? Why did it take so long to process and edit news film? Why did television news fare so badly in the allocation of Scotland's video tape recording facilities?

The studio telephone on the presenter's desk was much used to hold up proceedings while the director decided what to try next. After one particularly gremlin-infected programme the team waited with bated breath for George to vent his anger and frustration. Instead, he turned to the traumatised presenter, Douglas Kynoch: “And another thing, Douglas. You'll have to stop getting so many phone calls at your work.”

Despite the technical glitches, Reporting Scotland was a huge success. There was nothing else quite like its news-orientated multi-studio format in British television and soon it became the prototype for Nationwide whose creators spent many nights in Glasgow learning how studio-hopping had to be done.

Over the next 18 years George progressed from programme director to producer and then to Editor Television News, Scotland. Under his guidance the pursuit of major news stories was relentless. Scottish awards soon followed and, in 1988, there came the Royal Television Society Award for news programme of the year. Ironically, the award ceremony in London was held only months after George had resigned over a major disagreement with a new generation of the BBC Scotland establishment.

After a brief stint at Radio Clyde he was quickly back in television with his Fudge Box production company which made programmes for STV reviewing the Scottish press. The Fudge Box was what the late news column in newspapers used to be called.

George was a man of great humour and a sometimes ferocious demeanour. Some colleagues would tremble at the prospect of facing his wrath. Others enjoyed the confrontation. No fall-outs ever lasted overnight for, hard taskmaster that he was, George was always fair, never bore grudges and defended his staff against all-comers as long as he knew they were as committed to Reporting Scotland as he was.

Loved deeply by his three children, George’s later life was transformed by the love of his second wife, Celia, whom he adored.

Bob Millar