John Gibson
Towering figure of journalism in Edinburgh
John Gibson, journalist, 19332018
It was in the 1950s when John Gibson, as a precocious 16-year-old, first came to the ken of the Edinburgh journalistic fraternity. He stepped through the revolving door of the old Scotsman Publications building on North Bridge to begin work as a hey-you copyboy on the second-floor editorial department of the Evening Dispatch, at a time when the city boasted two evening newspapers. First impression of the would-be journalist was that he talked a lot.
For the next 60 years John Gibson hardly stopped talking and writing prolifically – and promoting his beloved Leith – to make him the Capital’s best-known journalist, and an evening newspaper phenomenon. Almost all his working days, Gibson largely went his own way, followed his own star and succeeding editors – like this one for 14 years – played him a loose rein because it was good for the paper, he delivered the best, and such was his work rate it was like having two journalists for one.
Among the Beautiful People – film and television stars – he was the best-known writer in Scotland. It was like an old pals’ act when they linked up, although many had received the rough edge of his ancient steam typewriter. From Eartha Kitt, Acker Bilk, Rikki Fulton, Ronnie Corbett, David Frost, Stanley Baxter to Billy Connolly and Sean Connery, they were all part of Gibson’s circle, and many enjoyed his company and wit.
It is not too much to say that with his recent passing the Evening News and Edinburgh journalism has reached the end of an era – the Gibson era.
0 John Gibson at home in the newsroom in 1967
Setting apart his short-lived first job as a gas poker maker, he entered journalism by the route taken by many bignamed writers before him in those distant days. As a copyboy he did everything from fetching bacon rolls, running to the library for pictures and cuttings, filling gluepots, to leaping at the shout of “Boy!”.
Gibson hurled himself into it. Even as a copyboy he showed initiative by passing on news tip-offs, mostly to the sports department, and building up a little band of his own contacts. He was a natural. It was not long before he was writing his own stories and the Sports Desk took him on staff. He quickly became an asset with a capacity for work and to learn. Soon he was writing his own column, ‘On the Bawl’, where his unique style of abrasion, praise and quip was first developed. He targeted the readership he knew best at the bottom of Leith Walk. His growing following loved to hate him, and he began to fulfil every editor’s dream to have his paper talked about positively across the city.
Gibson’s career was interrupted by National Service in the Royal Air Force with a demob rank of aircraftsman, a level of importance he once pointed out he shared with Lawrence of Arabia when he used an undercover nom de plume of Aircraftsman Shaw.
Back on the sports desk, behind the impudent grin and cheeky jest, Gibson’s secret was that he had shrewdly dedicated himself to becoming a self-made thorough professional. On the old Dispatch he also had sports sub-editing responsibilities and he could write a fast, mean headline with the best. On Saturday afternoons he was an important cog in producing the Green football sports paper that called for organisation and a cool head against the clock. Football matches finished at 4.40 pm and the presses rolled with all the results, league tables, verdicts and late scorers 25 minutes later with a run of more than 150,000 copies. In the heat of it Gibson was in his element, the wisecracks appearing every few seconds, especially when Hibernian, the love of his life, were in the lead.
When the merger between the Evening News and the Dispatch took place in 1963, Gibson was among those kept on. By then he had made himself indispensible. Among the first to arrive in the morning, 6am starts a routine for him, he had spread his range of sports coverage and knowledge to wrestling, boxing, speedway, and football. It wasn’t enough. He began to write a daily TV criticism column for the features desk, which gave him scope for his wit, humour and his own brand of horseplay with words. He discovered that writing about showbiz suited his style and ambition and it gave him a buzz.
He moved to the features department where his talent for writing insightful interviews with celebrities took off. Not just with the Beautiful People, but with politicians, authors, scientists, those with high-profile lives and making headlines. They were his game. In his own niche and readership he was the best. Gibson knew the questions to ask, how and when to deliver them, how to put politicians at ease before trundling a mills grenade question across the table, and readers loved it.
He worked on an easy-toread style, simple language, humour and the light touch and always in mind the readers from his roots in Leith. Gibson’s criticism could be pungent, an uppercut and a left jab, the language from his one-time boxing reports, but always honest, without sarcasm or innuendo, and never vicious. Those at the butt end respected him. He abhorred the pompous, pricked their bubbles, readily lent support to the underdog, and was understanding when it was called for. At the height of his powers, John Gibson was Mr Edinburgh.
The stories about him are legend and mostly true. When a colleague on holiday visited Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas, he chatted to a barman, who caught their Scots accents. The barman asked where in Scotland they came from and was told Edinburgh. “Do you know John Gibson?” heasked.true.andwhensean Connery unveiled the statues of Alan Breck and David Balfour from Stevenson’s Kidnapped at Corstorphine, Connery asked a former Evening News editor if John Gibson was all right. “I haven’t heard from John for a month or two. Some guy!”
When retirement age came, it was unthinkable he should give it all up. Editors did not want to lose his name from Evening News columns, and therefore he carried on until it was impossible for him, his output a trickle.
As Gibson bows out now amid much speculation about the very future of newspapers, there remains one certainty – we will not see another John Gibson or his like again on the printed page.
IAN NIMMO