Melanie Reid, the columnist, commentator and reporter for the Scottish edition of The Times, who was paralysed after breaking her neck and back in a fall from a horse 11 months ago, has had a major morale boost.
Last month, Melanie, who spends most of her time in hospital in Glasgow (getting home at weekends), was chosen to front the BBC Lifeline appeal for spinal research.
In her weekly ‘Spinal Column’ for The Times Magazine, on Saturday, she reports: “Another happy postscript …the appeal for spinal research has now reached £120,000 – treble the highest total for any other similar charity appeal by the corporation in the last five years. Thank you again for being so magnificently generous.”
Her articles in The Times Magazine have already earned Melanie a nomination in this year's UK-wide Press Awards. The former Herald award-winning columnist and senior assistant editor has been shortlisted in the Columnist of the Year category where she is up against fellow Scot, Fraser Nelson, among others. The awards are organised by the Society of Editors to “celebrate the best of British national newspaper journalism”.
Melanie is also among five journalists shortlisted in the Columnist of The Year category in this year’s Scottish Press Awards.
Towards the end of last year, she was awarded the Print News title at the Ability Media International Awards, run by the charity, Leonard Cheshire Disability.
The judges said that her column in The Times Magazine provided “honest, funny, painful, and almost unbearable detail of her traumas and small triumphs as each week of her disabled life unfolds”.
