TODAY’S edition of The Scotsman carries an obituary of a former chief sub-editor.
Alastair Clark is described as a Scotsman journalist, broadcast and musucian “who valued wit, grammar and friends”. It is reported he died at the weekend, aged 75.
Writes Fordyce Maxwell: “When he finally left The Scotsman in 2008 – his Peter Pan-like ability to seem much younger than he was confusing colleagues to the end – I wrote in the traditional front-page spoof for such an event that ‘more than 3,000 cursing journalists have suffered from his meticulous attention to grammar, spelling, censorship of rude words and insistence on correct titles for monarchy… he was the only man who cared whether diah…dior… diarr… whatever, was spelled correctly’.”
The obituary is accompanied by an appreciation by Scotsman writer, Jim Gilchrist, concentrating on Clark’s involvement in music.
