By Hamish Mackay in the Scottish Review
After close on 24 years with the BBC’s press office, latterly as senior head of communications, Roy Templeton, has retired after a media career spanning 45 years – the first 21 years in newspapers.
Roy, 62, who grew up in Dalry, Ayrshire, joined his local paper, the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald, straight from school in 1977. He then moved to the Lennox Herald, where, along with fellow reporter, Martin Hannan, he shared a Weekly Journalist of the Year award for a series of articles on the Trident missile controversy. Incidentally, Martin has just left the staff of The National newspaper in Glasgow but will continue to work for it on a freelance basis.
Roy took time out from journalism to take a four-year politics and international relations degree at Aberdeen University while still working for various Scottish newspapers in his spare time and on holidays, and returned full-time to journalism as an industry/politics correspondent on the Greenock Telegraph.
There he was also able to indulge his love of horse racing by penning a racing column for the Greenock Telegraph, and happily confesses to attending the Cheltenham Festival for each of the past 33 years. He also found time to work casual shifts for several titles including The Scotsman, Daily Record and the Scottish Daily Mail.
He joined BBC Scotland’s press office team in 1998 – handling the news and sport portfolio. And there, early on, he had a brief encounter of the most amusing kind. Roy, a gregarious people person with a well-developed sense of humour, recalls: ‘I had been banned from Cappielow by the Morton FC chairman, Hugh Scott, for stories I wrote in the Greenock Telegraph which didn’t reflect too kindly on his stewardship of the club. A few months later, much to Scott’s utter bemusement, I encountered him in my new press officer capacity in the BBC Scotland Green Room when he turned up to be interviewed by Kirsty Wark’.
Roy subsequently became head of press/communications at BBC Scotland and also worked as chief press officer in the BBC’s main press office in London. He served under six BBC director-generals and four BBC Scotland controllers/directors. In Scotland, he worked along with a number of heads of news including Ken Cargill, Blair Jenkins, Atholl Duncan, John Boothman and Gary Smith.
Roy, who has lived in Beauly, near Inverness, for the past 10 years, splitting his work schedule between Inverness, Glasgow and London, has posted an au revoir message on Meta (Facebook) which has drawn a positive avalanche of interesting responses wishing him well in the future.
He writes: ‘If you want to work in the media, the BBC, which, like most media organisations isn’t perfect, and which displays some bureaucratic tendencies that drive many of us slightly more bonkers than we were in the first place, is still a great place in which to work. Its journalism gets most of the attention: rightly, but that often does a disservice to all the fantastic programme makers who work outwith the BBC News department but get tarred with the same brush – the ever-circling sharks with vested interests nibble away at a publicly-funded organisation that tries its best to provide output to which audiences want to see and listen’.
He adds, firmly tongue in cheek: ‘My final day, as you would expect, was spent as usual undertaking rigorous research in our newspapers while also managing to keep my GP happy by keeping my liquid intake as high as possible!’
Roy, who was successfully treated for mouth cancer three years ago, is not too sure how he is going to spend his retirement. He currently sits on the board of the Highland Hospice and the development and foundation committees of the University of the Highlands and Islands, and tells me: ‘I might do some ad hoc media work if the right opportunity comes along. I still miss writing which I didn’t do much of latterly apart from bloody corrections to inaccuracies in newspapers. However, along with my wife, Carol, I tend to our four kune kuna rare breed hairy pigs – I’m their society’s official PR guru; some 50 hens; and three dogs, which takes up a couple of hours a day as it is. We’ll see. I don’t want to walk away completely from the media scene’.
He fondly recalls that his final story while working as chief press officer in London was politely telling David Attenborough, who was having his photograph taken at his London home for a profile by the Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce, that the parrots the famed broadcaster said were flying above them in his back garden were actually parakeets.
‘In true Attenborough fashion, he very politely told me: Yes my boy, you are quite correct – they are parakeets! He then sent me a lovely handwritten letter of thanks for overseeing his interview and followed it up with another letter when I sent him clippings from the P&J when he was awarded an honorary degree a year or so later from Aberdeen University. A class act amongst all the chancers in showbiz!’
I leave you with a memorable farewell written message Roy received from a BBC Scotland newsroom colleague: ‘Hi Roy, you’re one of the unsung heroes at the madhouse that is BBC Scotland – a shadowy fixer who quietly clears up other people’s mess. Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction springs to mind, although you’re better looking*. *Clearly a lie’. For once, the super-cool, svelte Templeton man was stumped to come up with a suitable riposte!