Journalist, artist and entertainer. An appreciation

DEREK Kidd's best joke amongst his perhaps too many, and it's surely a cracker, was that he had once been offered a job in a noisy London pub as the editor of Poetry Magazine but when he turned up he found he was to be the editor of Poultry Magazine.

But was it true? Nobody really cared, but it was certainly true that during his time in the post, and possibly well beyond, he carried a card with editor of Poultry Magazine on it.

For Derek, who has died aged 73, was primarily a well dressed seanachie who did that job well, often in the clothes of a reasonable artist, an often irritating bon viveur, a workaday journalist, and a gadabout man whose life delighted many and appalled a few. His colourful career was more of a verb than a noun and he was loved by many, and often returned the favour though sometimes only strategically.

He was born in Dundee the son of a Canadian serviceman who disappeared before his birth; his mother went to Canada in his wake only to marry another Canadian serviceman who, Derek would claim, found his company so distasteful that he paid him an annual salary to keep out of the country. True? We will never know.

Derek was brought up by his grandmother Catherine Kidd who ran the Albert Bar in Lochee High Street and who, according to legend, kept the fractious child quiet with a diet of flattery and stout, leading to an often desperate search for both that lasted the rest of his life.

Educated at Dundee's Harris Academy, Derek's first job was at DC Thompson where he would claim that he drew the speech bubbles in the Beano before decamping to London to work for IPC magazines and ending up in Country life, before being fished out of his boss's fish pond at a staff day out.

But if he only survived at office work he shone in the pub as a hugely talented raconteur particularly in Soho where he claimed an appreciative audience that included Jeffrey Bernard, Anthony Burgess and Lucien Freud; he was given a substantial advance to spill the beans in a book to be called Soho in the Sixties. Sadly the lack of delivery was all that illustrated the theme and led to Derek very quickly taking up a brief and eventful career in the hospitality trade in far away Oban.

Fired for tipping some food over a disagreeable customer's lap, Derek returned to his home territory in Fife where he drew succour from his grandmother who loved him so much that she left him her flat. He was also much delighted in by such great painters as Jim Howie, John Johnston and Joe MacIntyre. Probably anxious to be loved even more by those he loved, he decided to become an artist and in 1976 he was accepted by Edinburgh College of Art.

By now 14 years older than most of his colleagues, Derek seldom troubled the staff at the college much before lunch preferring to study the art of story telling in theatres such Bannerman's Bar in the Cowgate or at Goombay Beat Reggae Bar where his performance art included his habit of taking off his sock, dipping it in crème de menthe, setting it on fire and waving it around his head.

He graduated in 1980 and spent much of the rest of his life largely delighting his friends in London sometimes working in places such as Dillons but usually spending more time in Ronnie Scott's than at work.

Derek Kidd was an entertainer of verve but as an employee he was as reliable as a Colonsay summer. He created waves and his wake at Edinburgh’s Summerhall Art Centre on Friday will no doubt be huge.

MAXWELL MACLEOD