The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
John’s return is big news
Renowned broadcaster and former ITN anchorman John Suchet returns to his old university in Dundee this weekend as part of its 50th anniversary. Michael Alexander spoke to him.
Speaking to John Suchet is like stepping back in time.
The familiar tones transport you back to the 1990s when he anchored ITN’s News at Ten and to the decades before that when he travelled the world reporting on seismic global events such as the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Yet once upon a time, those very same tones, which reported from the heart of some of the most dangerous places on Earth, might have got young John into trouble if he’d dared wander down to the old Dundee docks alone.
In the 1960s, the now 72-year-old spent four years studying at Queen’s College Dundee (now Dundee University).
And in an interview with The Courier ahead of an event at the university this weekend, he revealed his student friends wouldn’t let him go down to the old waterfront by himself in case his English accent got him beaten up.
“Let’s be frank about it – Dundee was not the most salubrious city in Scotland back in those days,” he laughs.
“I had two very close friends I made in my first year at university. They were from near Edinburgh.
“They kept apologising to me. ‘Don’t think Scotland is like Dundee’, they would say. ‘It’s a bit of a rough city.’
“Yet when we return to Dundee this time we are staying in the Apex hotel built on reclaimed land that was water in our day. The area they wouldn’t let me go to is where we are now staying in a luxury hotel.
“How times have changed.”
On Saturday, John will be back in his old university’s Drever Commemoration Lecture, named after Dundee University’s first principal James Drever.
John will take to the stage alongside fellow Dundee graduates – former Nato general secretary Lord George Robertson and former British ambassador Sir William Patey – to discuss how they went on to make an impact in politics and how their time in Dundee helped shape their careers.
John hopes it will give him an opportunity to talk about how Dundee has changed and what he went on to do afterwards.
“We were technically the last graduates of St Andrews,” says John, who graduated with honours in philosophy and political science shortly before Queen’s College Dundee secured independence from St Andrews University to become Dundee University in 1967. “But every single lecture I attended for four years was in Dundee.
“I lived in Dundee for that time. So I regard myself as a University of Dundee man rather than St Andrews.”
A member of the baby boomer generation who found it difficult to get into their universities of choice, John confesses his A-level grades at school were “not great”.
Born and bred in London, the brother of Poirot actor David Suchet, he also admits that when he secured a place in Dundee as his third or fourth choice, he knew “absolutely nothing” about the city, let alone where it was.
Yet he quickly fell in love with the place after his mum brought him up on the overnight train for his first term in 1963.
“I was given a room at the Windsor Board of Residence, 71 the High Street, Dundee,” he smiles.
“Mrs Grant was the landlady. And there were two or three of us there from the university.
“It was basically a boarding house for gentlemen who had fallen on hard times. It was amazing.
“I was so pleased I wasn’t in a hall of residence because we were in the high street for goodness sake, right in the middle of things.
“It was absolutely lovely – absolutely great and I really came to regard it as home.”
It was in his final year at university that he decided he wanted to be a journalist.
However, he also has the city to thank for developing his passion for classical music, which he now pursues as a presenter on Classic FM. He was a trombonist when he was in Dundee and founded a trad jazz band.
After years away, John proudly returned to receive an honorary degree from the university in 2000.
“I cannot tell you how proud I was,” he adds.
He has had annual reunions with friends in the city ever since.
And he is impressed with how the city has changed, especially with the development of the V&A.
“It’s an amazing city. It’s lovely.” he says, adding that he hopes to revisit more old haunts during this weekend’s trip.
The area my student friends wouldn’t let me go to is where we are now staying in a luxury hotel. How times have changed