Scotsman Obituaries: Jimmy Lees, Scottish journalist who covered some of the biggest stories of the last century​

It was an unflattering, slang description for the journalist who regarded himself as merely a conduit of the facts rather than some racy, news hungry predator. He was one of a breed of solid, dependable reporters with excellent shorthand who also had an impressive legal knowledge – attributes that stood him in great stead when they came across each other again during a scandalous High Court trial.

The 1968 Garvie Case was the most sensational murder trial Aberdeen had ever seen. Max Garvie, a wealthy farmer, was shot dead in his bed at home at West Cairnbeg, Fordoun, Kincardineshire, his body dumped in a culvert. Dowdall represented his wife Sheila when she, her young lover Brian Tevendale and his colleague Alan Peters were tried at the High Court in the Granite City. Lees was part of the team of reporters who worked a rota of 20-minute stints, providing running verbatim reports of the salacious story that unfolded – tales of Max’s voracious sexual appetite, nudism and orgies at another property dubbed Kinky Cottage. The couple blamed each other and were both convicted of murder. Peters’ case was not proven.

His memory of this and countless other decades-old stories was still pin sharp at 102 and he featured in a podcast on the Garvie case in his late 90s.

James Melville Lees was the son of a Great War veteran who died aged just 32 when Lees was not quite four and his sister just two. His widowed mother Isabella brought them up while managing a local dairy and it was from her he inherited his phenomenal memory, grit and energy. Educated at Fetteresso School and Mackie Academy, Stonehaven, he began his newspaper career on the local Mearns Leader in October 1938 after answering an advert seeking an office boy/junior reporter. His shorthand, learned at school on a commercial studies course, probably tipped the balance in his favour.

He served in the town’s Home Guard before being called up to the Army in February 1942, joining the Gordon Highlanders. After training at Bridge of Don barracks in Aberdeen he was sought out for secretive radar work. Warned never to discuss it, all he would reveal about his role was that he trained as a radar engineer and served in France and Germany with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

After being demobbed in December 1946 he returned to newspapers, taking a job as an assistant staff reporter in Aberdeen with the Glasgow Herald and the now-defunct Bulletin, from February 1947.

In April the following year Jimmy joined the reporting staff of Aberdeen Journals where, for more than a decade, he was a member of the joint staff of the Press and Journal and Evening Express newspapers who alternated, month to month, on each title. When each paper was assigned its own separate editorial staff he went to the Evening Express as deputy chief reporter, becoming its news editor in 1975.

One of the old-fashioned school of gentlemen of the press, Jimmy was courteous and compassionate to both the subjects of the stories he wrote or oversaw and to his staff, many of whom arrived straight from school or university.

He also enjoyed some of the best days of newspapers, when competition was fierce among rival publications and newsrooms, overflowing with staff, were often populated by a fascinating cast of characters – eccentrics, wits and misfits as well as brilliantly sharp writers. Each morning they were allocated a job in the daily newsdesk diary. One entry he never lived down was “Miss Simpson: the Sex Act” – an instruction to one of his young female reporters. Much hilarity ensued as she dutifully covered that day’s introduction of the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts.

Then there were the long liquid lunches enjoyed while reporters filed copy on the hoof for the next edition or winkled news out of contacts. Lunch for Lees meant a leisurely trip home at noon each day – “I’m off for my tatties” he would announce – safe in the knowledge that the last of several daily editions would still go to press on his watch when he returned.

To describe himself as a scribbler was his shorthand for a good, solid, straightforward reporter delivering the facts concisely in an uncomplicated fashion, devoid of spin and frippery. “We were the stenographers”, he said of his reporting of the Garvie trial.

At various times in his career he was offered jobs in Glasgow – on the Glasgow Herald and Daily Express – but he preferred to stay on home turf.

As a reporter he covered almost every type of story, from parochial meetings to disasters at sea, including the discovery of the stolen Stone of Destiny at Arbroath Abbey in 1951. The 1960s was a torrid decade for Aberdeen and 1963 saw the last hanging in Scotland. Lees covered that case when Henry Burnett went to the gallows for shooting his married lover’s husband.

In 1964 Aberdeen hit the headlines when hundreds of residents contracted typhoid – the result of a single tin of contaminated Argentinian corned beef. Lees was one of those who chronicled the epidemic which brought terror to the city and saw more than 500 people quarantined.

A lifelong member of the National Union of Journalists, he retired in June 1982 but continued to provide stories and tip-offs for local papers.

He married Phyllis, a former classmate, in March 1961 and after retiring they travelled extensively, visiting the United States, Australia and New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. Following his wife’s death, he eventually moved into sheltered accommodation where he joined the digital age by acquiring a computer. He celebrated his 100th birthday with a lunch party for friends, family and former colleagues and, a few months later, survived a heart attack, charming hospital staff with his affable attitude to life.

Obituaries

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