Scotsman Obituaries: Laing Speirs, Scottish journalist​ and public relations expert

Born in Galashiels in 1933, he was educated at Galashiels Academy where his love of both sport and the arts were fostered. He began writing for the Border Telegraph while still at school, until the SRU, realising he was an amateur profiting from reporting on matches he also played in, forbade him to do both. Writing won out, and he turned down a place to read law in Edinburgh to join the staff of the Telegraph in 1950.

After National Service in the RAF he returned to journalism, moving to the bright lights of Edinburgh, and a Polish boarding house in Leith which he shared with three chorus girls and an Indian mathematics student. He worked on the Sunday Post and the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch throughout the Fifties, covering news – notably the Peter Manuel trial – sport and as the Dispatch’s theatre critic.

He then joined the government information service in Saint Andrew’s House and was a Senior Information Officer under five Secretaries of State for Scotland, working across Agriculture and Fisheries, Prisons and Health and on many promotional campaigns, from “Stop Smoking”, which he did, to “Learn to Swim”, which despite his love of fly-fishing up to his waist in the Tweed, he never felt necessary.

Seconded to and later joining the Scottish Council for Development and Industry in the Seventies, he was responsible for major Scottish promotions abroad and travelled extensively in Europe, Scandinavia and the US, helping to attract overseas investment to Scotland.

Laing returned to the Borders in 1980 and a few years later set up his own public relations consultancy, Tweedside Associates. He was involved in a huge range of Border organisations and activities.

A familiar face at all the Border rugby grounds and at Murrayfield, Laing was well known as a freelance sports journalist, principally writing and broadcasting on rugby and fishing for local and national papers and magazines, including The Scotsman. He commentated on rugby on Radio Borders for many years.

He wrote the official centenary history of the Border League in 2000 and was a major contributor to Galashiels, A Modern History and to The Gala Story.

Always heavily involved with Gala Rugby Club, of which he was made a rare non-player Honorary Life Member, he was at one time Secretary of the club and contributed to virtually every club programme produced from its inception in 1961-62 well into the 2000s. Over decades, he maintained the club history and had researched every score recorded by the club in over 130 years of rugby and Galashiels.

Always a man of broad and eclectic interests and enthusiasms, who believed in and enjoyed making a contribution, Laing was variously an elder at Bowden Kirk for over three decades, President and also Secretary of the Melrose Literary Society, a keen supporter of the Borders Book Festival, a member of the Tweed Commission, and when still in the capital, a member of the Society of High Constables of the City of Edinburgh.

Back in 1957, a short news piece for the Dispatch had led to a chance meeting with a young woman demonstrating cookery at the new Coal Utilisation Board Showroom. He and Alison were very happily married for 63 years. He is survived by his two daughters, Di and Jennie, and his two granddaughters, Imogen and Phoebe.

Obituaries

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