Jock Gillespie, a former colleague and friend, has died aged 86. He was a reporter of the 'old school', though he would have winced at that cliché.
He adhered strictly to a set of journalistic rules, which he applied to the young reporters he trained at the Cambridge Evening News (CEN). Among them was Alan Rusbridger, later editor-in-chief of the Guardian. Rusbridger described him in his book Breaking News as 'a growling silver-haired Glaswegian with dark glasses and the stub of a cigar permanently lodged between bearded lips. Jock saw it as his duty to school us in hard knocks.'
Early life and career
Born Fulton Gillespie in Stirling, central Scotland, he was the son of a miner, James, and his wife, Barbara (née Myles). He began to read and write at age five. Reading was his lifelong passion, followed closely by jazz and family. He left school at 14 to become an apprentice compositor at the Falkirk Herald, where his spelling ability was spotted while correcting page proofs. His editor brought him to the newsroom when he was 16.
In a 2016 letter to Rusbridger, Jock recalled that a junior's jobs in 1956 included covering local antiquarian society debates, market fat stock prices in old pence and farthings, shipping movements and cargoes, cinema synopses, miners' welfare committee meetings, best cake at WI fetes, best bull at farm shows, sports of all kinds, courts, councils, and other public bodies. 'The editor was a gnarled ex-PoW. He checked and double-checked everything. One name wrong, one fat stock price a farthing out, then type it all out again from the beginning.'
Move to Cambridge
Jock moved from the Falkirk Herald to the Daily Record and the Sunday Mirror in Glasgow before heading south in the early 1960s when he married. He joined the Cambridge Evening News in 1963, where he stayed for the next 34 years.
His commitment to old-school reporting did not extend to learning shorthand, but his notes, carefully written on folded copy paper, and an excellent memory served him well. This was particularly evident during his nine months of meticulous reporting on the manhunt for the 'Cambridge rapist' Peter Cook, who attacked a string of women in the mid-1970s, and the subsequent trial. His CEN bosses thought he had a better oversight of events than the police.
Personal life and legacy
Crime and health reporting were the keystones of his career. He could be direct to the point of rudeness, but was highly respected both inside and outside the newsroom.
In 2000, Jock's son Scott died after an overdose of heroin, about which he wrote movingly in an article for the Guardian. He told a Commons select committee that it was not heroin that killed his son but the criminalisation of heroin, and urged decriminalisation.
Scott was one of the children of his first marriage, to Pauline (née Whitaker), which ended in divorce; they also had a daughter, Fiona, and Jock adopted Pauline's son Mark. He married Annemarie Russell (née Stark) in 1983, and she brought two children, Bernhard and Crystal, to the marriage.
Annemarie survives him, along with Fiona, Mark, Bernhard, and Crystal.
