A thorough Highland gentleman

It was a result he accepted with quiet dignity.

There was great media interest at the Highland count, where the fate of Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander was also sealed.

Mr Kennedy was repeatedly approached for interviews, but declined them all saying the night belonged to the SNP victor Ian Blackford, and he would only speak from the platform after him.

When he did he had a characteristically Highland allusion to underline the historic nature of the results "Tonight if nothing else we can all reflect in years to come, perhaps tell our grand-children, we were there the night of the long Sgian Dubhs."

Not for the first time, he had given the media a good line. He has been doing so ever since 1983, when he became the youngest MP. But he died aged 55 at home in Lochyside near Fort William on Monday.

While this election's SNP's surge was widely predicted, nobody really knew if it would sweep Mr Kennedy away as well as the rest of his party on the Scottish mainland.

It was thought he might be the one who could just defy the odds. Not only because of the size of his majority, but because many would find it very hard to vote against him.

Anyone who had seen him at meetings in village halls in the small communities of his far flung constituency from the Small Isles to Glencoe and Ardnamurchan to the Black Isle, understood.

He had a sheer genius for just appearing ordinary; one of us; a thoroughly reasonable and decent guy. It wasn't an act.

But he himself talked of the number of constituents who were still greeting him warmly, only to admit they would be voting for the SNP.

There was talk of moves within the Liberal Democrats to see if they could try to get him to Holyrood. Others held he was bound for the House of Lords. Neither would have suited him.

The last time this writer, a constituent, spoke to him before the election was at full-time in a Ross County game in Dingwall. With almost a prescient symbolism, he was walking in the opposite direction from the emerging crowd.

It wasn't an interview, just commiserations for the death of his father Ian at 88 not long before. He had been a famous musician and stalwart of the crofting cause.

Indeed at the age of 80 he and Mr Kennedy appeared before the Scottish Land Court in a dispute over access to a proposed 56 house-building development near Fort William.

As local crofters they both stood to benefit financially, and both were in favour of more housing. But they were concerned that the half acre of land needed for access might be improperly removed from crofting tenure as it was half of a tiny untenanted croft. They didn't want to see any more land lost to crofting.

During the proceedings Mr Kennedy snr went off at a complete tangent about an eccentric who had come to live in the area many years ago, who had developed a theory for perpetual motion. His son just very gently observed: "I don't think the court needs to hear this just now dad."

Despite his great passion for his home, Lochaber lay outside his constituency. That was until boundaries were redrawn before the 2005 General Election to create Ross, Skye and Lochaber. Then he was able to vote for himself just down the road from the family croft for the first since 1983, when he had defeated the then Tory energy minister Hamish Gray for the new Social Democrat Party, founded two years earlier.

Consequently there have been huge tracts of the Highlands he has represented at one time or another. Many constituents have been grateful for his help down the years, some who had been dismissed as being unstable or wasters.

But Mr Kennedy once revealed that he had always tried to follow the advice of the late Sir Russell Johnston. "Russell told me never to dismiss apparent nutters or no-hopers, because every so they will be right or be telling the truth."

One constituent from the Black Isle who had been wrongly jailed for drugs offences more than 20 years ago, told how Mr Kennedy had repeatedly visited him in Perth Prison when all others had washed their hands of him. He eventually helped win his early release and would never hear a word against his MP thereafter.

Mr Kennedy was also supportive of a huge range of local campaigns down the years from fighting the Skye Bridge tolls to GM crops on the Black Isle and cuts in the local BBC where he had worked briefly. That was after he had graduated from Glasgow University and before he took up a Fulbright Fellowship to carry out research at Indiana University in the USA.

Skye councillor Drew Millar, who was one of the leaders of the Skye Bridge campaign and had been a LibDem before falling out with the party locally said "He was very supportive of the campaign and helped keep the issue alive in Westminster. He was also supportive when I announced I was voting yes in the referendum and even when I left the party. He just said I was entitled to my view. He was a thorough Highland gentleman."

At the time of all the publicity surrounding how his drinking was affecting his leadership of the party at the end of 2005, most constituents remained loyal. Many just felt great sympathy for their MP, his estranged wife Sarah and their son Donald, born earlier that year.

His struggle with drink was not a secret. But more damaging was a growing recognition in his constituency, recently, that Mr Kennedy was not as attentive to his constituency work as he had been. There was a feeling that perhaps his time was coming to an end.