Crime reporter and newspaper executive

Born: 5 March, 1923;

Died: 30 April, 2018

HUGH Currie, who has died suddenly aged 95, had a long career in newspapers, rising from the wire room to the executive floor of the Daily Record.

His father, also Hugh Currie, and mother Elizabeth had three children, Hugh, Donald and Martha. Young Hugh attended Adelphi Terrace School in Glasgow, leaving aged 14 for a job with a fruit and vegetable wholesaler.

He was still working there when the Second World War broke out, and he joined the RAF, where he, as Leading Aircraftsman Currie, worked in the signals section, seeing service in India and in the advance across Europe following D-Day. It was his RAF service which led him to the Record, after a forces colleague, John Rankin, who worked in newspapers, opened doors for him.

He joined the Record, still then located in Hope Street in the city centre working in the wire room, in some ways an extension of his RAF experience. However, even then he had an eye for a story and the number of leads he gave to the reporters quickly saw him invited to join their ranks

Initially he was a general news reporter, when he for a time adopted the legendary “Pat Roller” persona, a fondly-remembered Record column covering smaller, local Glasgow stories, before specialising as a crime reporter, becoming the paper's chief crime reporter.

He was one of the reporters heavily involved in covering Peter Manuel's reign of terror in Glasgow and Lanarkshire in the 1950s, landing the Record with an exclusive when an over-zealous policeman, huckling Hugh away from a crime scene, accidentally gave away the news that the body they had found was that of 17-year-old schoolgirl Isobel Cooke, the sixth of Manuel's nine known victims.

He was then promoted to the Record newsdesk, where he set and demanded high standards of his staff, in the process doing much to make the Record, as it then was, the best-selling daily newspaper in Scotland. During this time, he established a great reputation for encouraging young reporters.

From the newsdesk, he went on to the executive floor and board, becoming the paper's editorial manager, where even Robert Maxwell was known to defer to his judgement.

Retiring from the Record aged 65, he was not yet ready to settle down. He was enticed across the River Clyde to the Sun, from where he joined the staff of the short-lived Sunday Scot, and when that paper folded, he remained in harness with First Press Publishing, for long enough to still be active when that company was absorbed into the Daily Record and Sunday Mail group.

Jack Irvine, who recruited him to the Sun and kept him by his side at the Sunday Scot and First Press, said: “I could not believe the Record would let him go. He certainly kept Steve Sampson and me out of jail on a few occasions.”

Since his death, older Anderston Quay hands have been recounting more of the Hugh Currie legends. For instance, there was the night, on Mull, when he put the pub clocks forward half an hour, then, when they thought the presses were rolling, persuaded some rivals from the Daily Express to reveal the exclusive they had, in time for him to telephone the story through to the Record and get it into the next day's paper.

Former Sunday Mail sports editor and author Alex Gordon remembered being wrongly fingered as a card shark who was fleecing colleagues in late-night card games.

“I convinced Hugh of my innocence, and he then identified the true culprit, before coming onto the Eeitorial floor to deliver a very public apology to me, which was the measure of the man,” said Gordon.

Malcolm Speed, former editorial director of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail said, in tribute to Hugh: “With his expertise in marathon running, fellow Record staffers who ran were wary of allowing him to set the pace around Pollok Park, He was never a man to be underestimated either on the road as a reporter or later as a senior executive who really had mega power in shaping editorial decisions.

“If Hugh Currie was on board it was more than half the battle. He was a founder member and active in the Association of Mirror Pensioners.

“His sudden death has come as a shock to those who remember him. The editorial job sometimes called for unpleasant decisions which he always tried to make palatable. He was always a formidable opponent with an exemplary reputation recognised by journalists across many decades.”

Away from journalism he was a considerable marathon runner and his time for the 26 miles 385 yards distance, set in Inverclyde in 1990, of 2-51:30, remains an Over-65s British best. Hugh, whose life's journey took him from the Gorbals to his final home in Milngavie, was still running in his nineties.

He was also a true outdoors man, a skier and climber, who, in 1949 travelled to Zermatt in Switzerland, where, not even witnessing a local guide and his client falling to their deaths could put him off climbing the Matterhorn. He was a member of the Creagh Dhu Mountaineering Club and Glencoe Ski Club

Hugh married Phyllis Fox in 1959. She survives him, with sons, Max and Peter, and six grandchildren, Aimee, Poppy, Findlay, Rory, Theo and Fergus.

MATT VALLANCE