Favourite Film: The Lies of Others, set in East Germany at a time when the wall falls. My taste in cinema doesn’t usually run to foreign language drama, and I don’t want to sound pretentious but I stumbled across the film. But I have to add the last film I saw in the cinema was Avengers; Infinity Wars, with one of my kids.
Last Book Read: I read a lot of history and I’ve just read a history of Rome.
Favourite Holiday Destination. Dingle in the South West of Ireland, on the edge of the Atlantic. My wife has family there and the kids now get it because it has a great social life.
Best Advice Received. Speak more slowly. But my dad was a great influence. He used to say ‘What’s the worse that can happen?’
Worst Advice received: Don’t worry, we can fix it in the edit.
Advice to 16 year-old self. It will all work out in the end.
Favourite Song: If it was Desert Island Discs it would be a piece of classical music.
Music at Your Funeral. I was a mod as a teenager, so it would have to be something from sixties soul, but I don’t know if that’s appropriate for a funeral. Maybe How Soon Is Now, by the Smiths.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here