Alastair McPherson Alexander - The Skye Macpherson Connections | |
08 April 2021 Everyone at Skye Camanachd was saddened to hear of the passing of Alastair Alexander on Sunday 7 March 2021. Whilst Alastair Alexander will always be noted as one of football’s iconic match commentators, he will be warmly remembered on Skye as the man who brought live shinty commentary on Radio Scotland of the Islanders Camanachd Cup win over Newtonmore at An Aird, Fort William on Saturday 2 June 1990. However Alastair’s connections with Skye went deeper than that. To anyone growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, the accolade “Voice of Football” was attached to one or two key individuals in an age still largely dominated by the wireless. Alastair Alexander of BBC Scotland was one of the names and iconic voices which dominated the Scottish airwaves for a significant generation, not yet reared on the all-encompassing tsunami of football which currently engages a certain element of the population. What is not as well-known about Alastair though, is that he had strong family connections with Skye, which he never forgot. Alastair McPherson Alexander, to give him his full name, was born on November 15, 1937, in Parklea, Port Glasgow. He died Sunday, March 7, 2021, aged 83. Alastair was intensely proud of his home area of the Port and wider Inverclyde but was also acutely aware of his roots in Skye. He is one of a long list of people in that area who could trace his lineage to the Isle of Skye and the remarkable tale of serendipity and genealogy which eventually saw him commentate of Skye Camanachd’s greatest day in 1990 bears further examination. Alastair’s maternal grandmother Jessie MacPherson was born in Skye in 1877. His mother, Marion Smith, was born on Skye and lived at Tarskavaig where her father was a shepherd. Following a well-trodden path, they moved to Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire for work. And it was farming and work on the land which brought Alastair’s parents together. Walter Alexander's family had Bogston Farm in Greenock and eventually Marion and Walter met and married. Walter was to live with sight and hearing loss, and they were, understandably, huge influences - clearly demonstrated in Alastair’s subsequent voluntary work with the Rex Blind Parties and a remarkable affection for shinty. Incidentally, Marion's father moved to Renton, won the football pools, bought the show house in Dumbuck Avenue, Dumbarton and called it Tarskavaig. It was there that Alastair’s grandmother Jessie died in 1945 when he was 7 years old. Her sister Annie Macpherson (1866-1954), whom Alastair Alexander visited in Skye, was known locally as ‘Annag Alasdair’ denoting her father’s identity, and was single all her life. She lived at No.16 Tarskavaig, and is well remembered by people in the area today. Alastair met his family circumstances head on with a resilience and fortitude, marking him out as a thoroughly decent human individual, as well as a consummate professional in more than one area of life. He went to Glasgow School of Art to train as an architect and pursued a career in the building industry, while maintaining his other interests - moving seamlessly in all his different spheres of activity. Forty years of Alastair’s life were spent commentating on more than 1000 football matches and describing bowls, Glenfiddich hockey at the Kelvin Hall, and athletics for BBC Scotland, as well as the shinty and football. He first started commentating for people with vision loss at Love Street, Paisley in 1959. Six years later he asked the BBC for an audition (as one had to do at the time on the Scottish Home Service) and was on television the following week. “It was a peach of a goal” and “a balmy day in Greenock,” we can all still hear the dulcet tones of the maestro. He once proudly said, “It's what I've always wanted to do and how many people can say that they have achieved that?" He eventually spent 20 years on TV and then 20 on radio. It was a great privilege to share commentary duties with the great man in my own early days as a commentator, beginning in 1984 (just two years into my BBC career) in Oban on a blisteringly hot day. I learned a great deal from him over the next few years and he was fantastic to work with. He was, after all, the man who may have first mastered the challenges of the “selfie” - long before it became part of the current practice. However, Alastair’s use of technology most impressed his commentary colleagues through his addition of the portable heater to the draughty commentary boxes of these parishes. Technology, or more accurately a digger, failed us together one famous day in 1992 when Fort William scored a goal in less than ten seconds and went on to win the Camanachd Cup 1-0. Few in Fort William were aware of the outcome until much later in the day – there were no mobile phones – as a digger had uprooted the cable which connected Old Anniesland to the BBC studios at Queen Margaret Drive. Alastair and I blethered away for the whole match not knowing that only a few minutes had been broadcast and Tiger Tim had filled the rest of the afternoon with records. One of Alastair’s cousins, Ann McCarron, recalled: “My brother and Alastair spent a lot of their youth together on the Skye holidays and at Gran and Grandpa Smith's in Dumbuck Crescent. Apparently my brother Alistair had a Subbuteo football game and when they played it your dad used to do the commentating, so he must have had the commentating in his blood!” Such was the family’s affection for Skye that Ann’s brother Alistair’s ashes were scattered on Skye following his death a few years ago. In a nod to his mother’s roots, Alastair found the addition of Gaelic sports coverage on BBC ALBA, which he followed avidly, a fascinating addition to his world of sport – even made a cameo appearance recently talking about Third Lanark. Tributes have been fulsome and sincere. The plaudits and anecdotes could fill Hampden. Alastair was a “gentleman and a true professional” according to Ken MacQuarrie who made the formal presentation to him on behalf of the BBC in 2005. Making his way on foot to a cup final at Kingussie he met up with one of the match officials Calum Duff. They were held up by the railway crossing as the train left the station. “You never get this at Hampden,” the great man said. It was singularly appropriate that he commentated on Skye’s greatest triumph in 1990. In that famous final Alastair described Skye’s Calum Murchison on the radio as "leaping around like a salmon”. That of course meant an awful lot more to anyone knowing the shape and size of Calum and also his family’s (alleged) relationship with the local salmon fishing river in Bernisdale. Alastair never forgot that day or the fact that he was accompanied by a fellow Skyeman John Willie Campbell. I was fortunate enough to work with him on many other occasions including the memorable match in 1996 when Gordon MacIntyre, who had famously, lost an eye when playing shinty, scored the winning goal against Kingussie. I was unaware at the time of the significance such an event and triumph over adversity would have had on Alastair given his family circumstances. Alastair retained his interest in shinty and its community, often enquiring after some of the legends he admired so much such as Kerr Crawford, Tarzan Ritchie and the Fraser brothers. He also cherished the link with Glenmorangie, becoming a close friend of their Commercial Director, the late Peter Cullen. But above all, he had a soft spot for Skye. Alastair was a great man and is a huge loss to our collective knowledge of our history, sport and broadcasting. Meticulous in his presentation and fastidious when it came to detail, he was a total professional. The BBC bid him farewell with the traditional microphone presentation in October 2005 when he retired. Alastair was a very special man. I am honoured to have shared his “walk with history” as he wrote himself in a lovely story he has left with the family. I always felt I went up a notch in his estimation when I happened to live in Port Glasgow for a time twenty years ago. Perhaps the greatest tribute of all which could be paid in his home territory of the Port and Inverclyde is usually delivered in four words. “Well played Big Man.” “Sìth is sonas dhut Alasdair mo charaid.” We shall not see his like again and we know that Alastair will of course be most sorely missed by his daughters Shirley, Susan and Joyce; her husband Mark, grand-daughter Alex and grandson Callum.
Alastair McPherson Alexander - born 15 November 1937 at Parklea, Port Glasgow; died Sunday 7 March 2021.
By Dr Hugh Dan MacLennan for Shinty Memories with thanks to the Alexander family for the information, Norman Macdonald, Portree, Flora Maclean 13 Tarskavaig, and particularly the usual great genealogical research by Richard Stoddart, Brora. |