The Camanachd Association has paid tribute to one of its most distinguished former Presidents and best-known personalities of the 20th century, John Willie Campbell, who died in Inverness on Saturday, after a long illness bravely borne. He was 84.
“A voice is not very much without substance behind it”, said the late Jack Richmond on the occasion in 1992 of the BBC marking the retirement of one if its most distinctive Scottish personalities, the shinty commentator John Willie Campbell of Skye and most latterly Gorthleck, near Inverness.
John Willie, as he was universally known, was born and brought up in Skye (Edinbane, then Clachamish near Bernisdale), where he received his first education. He reckoned that Clachamish was the first-ever shinty Academy, producing, as it did, some remarkable exponents of the caman. From the local school he went to Portree and was in some distinguished company, and then, after two years’ National Service in the RAF (1957-1959) where he was part of the Mountain Rescue team, he went to University in Glasgow where he played for the Varsity, won Littlejohn Vase medals and the Southern League title and was awarded a Blue.
After graduation in 1961 a long career in teaching in Inverness followed, (including marriage to Margaret on 25 July 1963) with his stint at Inverness Royal Academy providing him with one of the highlights of his shinty career. He taught at Inverness Royal Academy from 1961 to 1967; Millburn Academy from 1967 to 1969; then Crown Primary School where he was Deputy Head from 1969 to 1972. In Millburn he was Assistant Rector from 1972 to 1994.
Along with the great Ellis Stuart, he managed the IRA senior team’s success in the top schools’ shinty competition, the prized Murchison Cup, winning it with a team which included a young Archie Robertson, who himself went on to be President of the Camanachd Association.
Shinty as a sport and way of life owes John Willie Campbell a great deal. The current Association President Keith Loades said: “John Willie Campbell was one of the most significant figures in shinty in the 20th century. He served the game in every capacity from his boyhood as a player in Skye, through University to the full range of administrative duties and responsibilities imaginable. Within the game he will be remembered as a distinguished President who navigated some quite stormy waters in the 1980s, introduced new structures and competitions, and faced many challenges with a calm and dignified manner throughout. He would never have been happier than the day Skye Camanachd won the Camanachd cup in 1990. Beyond the confines of the shinty communities, John Willie was also one of the best-known voices in Scottish broadcasting and an outstanding chronicler of the game’s playing side. There are many people who knew little of shinty itself but were regular devotees of his results reporting on BBC Scotland of a Saturday evening and his contributions to BBC Highland and Gaelic radio and television in a career which spanned over 20 years, beginning in 1968 and ending in 1991. And all of that whilst contributing enormously to shinty in schools in the Inverness area. He has left us a remarkable legacy in the shape of his records of the sport and his veritable mountain of press cuttings, meticulously kept throughout his media career. The Camanachd Association and shinty in general will be forever in his debt and his passing marks the end of an era and a contribution to our sport and heritage which is unlikely to be matched. Fois is sìth dha.”
It is probably as a broadcaster he will be most widely and fondly remembered, having reported and commentated on the playing side of the game for the BBC from 1968 to 1991, including the day Skye Camanachd won the Camanachd Cup in Fort William in 1990. It was his finest hour. “I was very emotional during that broadcast,” he confessed, “but maybe that’s no bad thing.” He could not have climbed a higher Everest and it was a lifetime’s ambition fulfilled. Fate would contrive that he stood in for Hugh Dan MacLennan on that famous day. He had, over the years, worked with many of the greats on the microphone: Douglas Lowe (Snr), Jock Brown, David Begg, Alister Alexander and then the young Derek Rae, before he handed the baton over permanently to Hugh Dan
He himself provided results for BBC Scotland, BBC Highland and Gaelic radio and television throughout that time, as well as writing for national newspapers such as the Scotsman and Sunday Post, and a huge range of local newspapers such as the People’s Journal, Press and Journal, Highland News, and West Highland Free Press.
The family had moved to Errogie pre-retirement and from then both he and Margaret contributed greatly to community life. He chaired the local Community Council and was a Justice of the Peace and Honorary Sheriff. He has left a record of the game which is incomparable in the form of results of matches and competitions extending throughout his media career which is held in the Highland Archive in Inverness. He became known as “shinty’s Bill McLaren” and the Voice of Shinty through his radio work and distinctive presentation and delivery. He was a man who placed his family and his faith above all else and will be sorely missed, one of the most distinguished servants of the sport and heritage of the Highlands, ever.
John Willie was succeeded as the BBC’s shinty correspondent by Hugh Dan MacLennan, who also knew him well through his own teaching experience. He said: “I met him first at Millburn Academy as my Assistant Rector with his great friends the then Rector Willie Weatherspoon, and Assistant Rector Colin Baillie. I was a probationer teacher and being the Gaelic teacher and a shinty player (at that time), I was well looked after by the time-tabling master. He even taught me how to use Tippex, which was a new thing then. We had shinty at lunch-times, evenings and weekends, till industrial unrest stopped all that. Before then, in the 1970s, he and Donnie Grant had coached hundreds of children in Inverness in the finer arts of the game. He also contributed to the game’s history through written accounts of the Lochcarron club and other work with the late Hugh Barron. I will miss him terribly.”
John Willie had a wry Highland/Island sense of humour. Funny in his own quiet way, sharp, erudite and sincere. He was not that comfortable in some of his public speaking engagements which accompanied his role as President. It drew too much attention to him personally. He had but one joke he told at dinners and repeated to anyone who would listen. Its short form was that he was once missing a score for his broadcast and the deadline for broadcast loomed. He phoned a woman in Wester Ross (probably a player’s mother) to enquire about the result. “I am sorry,” he was told, “I don’t have the score. But if you listen to the radio at half past five, John Willie will have them all.” That really tickled him. I bet it was true.
Jack Richmond also said that “three or four words of John Willie’s and for a multitude of people, very many of them with no shinty connection, the marvellous computer inside their heads clicks a multiplicity of connections and brings up a message which says shinty and the Highlands – loud, clear and distinctive.”
The sympathy of the whole shinty community, throughout the world wherever his contribution was felt, is extended to his wife Margaret in Gorthleck, Stratherrick, his older sister Mairi in Australia, his son Donald in Edinburgh and daughter Shona in Inverness, his five grandchildren, Eilidh, Rory and Peter (Shona’s) and Hannah and Catherine (Donald’s) as well as the extended family and friends in Skye and elsewhere.
Details of the funeral will be made available in due course
John Willie Campbell, Skye-man, former President of the Camanachd Association, science teacher, broadcaster and Gàidheal
Born: 26 May 1934, Edinbane, Skye
Died: Saturday, 15 December, 2018, Inverness aged 84