BIG names from TV and sport got into a right stramash this afternoon - to remember the life of Arthur Montford. The Maryhill Burgh Hall is an unlikely place to start your television career, but I was invited up there to do an audition because I was working at the Evening Times on the sports desk at the time.

These went well, and when BBC sports editor John Wilson joined Scottish Television in 1957, he asked Montford to join him in the new commercial visual age. I just went up, did my ad-lib, did my wee bit to camera, did an interview and I thought no more about it. A diligent rector, he was reckoned by students to be on their side, and at the height of his fame he helped all forms of charity no matter their background, lending his name to good causes such as the Simon Community and Talbot Association. Born in Glasgow, Montford was raised in Greenock where he acquired a lifelong love for the local football team, Morton. Montford remembers “very often we went to air on a Wednesday night while the film was still being processed.A couple of weeks later I thought no more about it, but he invited me back to the Theatre Royal: really to make the numbers up for someone whom they had in mind, but at the last minute he decided he didn't want the job. Montford told the academy rector, Mr William Dewar, that he would become a journalist and, after national service in the army, he joined the News as an office boy, before making the graduation through the ranks to reporter, working for the News, then the Daily Record before joining the sports desk of the Evening Times.

Jim White, who presented the show before me and after Arthur, told me Arthur told him it was a show to be looked after and cherished. He was an actor, known for Charles Endell, Esq (1979), The Big Match (1968) and This Is Your Life (1955).His dramatic exclamations and phrases during match commentaries became part of Scottish popular culture, and included "what a stramash", "up go the heads", and (all too frequently) "Disaster for Scotland". He became a sports journalist and radio broadcaster before joining Scottish Television in 1957 to present its new sports programme, Scotsport. Whilst at school he was one of a band of rebels who tried — unsuccessfully — to introduce soccer to the rugby-playing school. Greenock and the academy gave him a lifelong love of the town's club Morton FC and his friend from schooldays, Douglas Rae, owned the club later on in Montford's life.

He interviewed all the greats from Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan to Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. He also presented the Scottish version of World of Sport on STV and Grampian - with live coverage from England of events which were often not shown in their entirety due to the regional sporting events taking place in Scotland, Scotsport Special was also aired on Cup Final day, when the Scottish Cup Final was taking place on the same day as the Wembley event, with the Wrestling also being moved from its pre-lunchtime slot on Cup Final days back to the expected 16:00 slot in Scotland.It was a golden era in Scottish football, and Montford was at the heart of it from the late 1950s through the glory days of the 1970s to the late 1980s, always finding something positive to say about the game – even in Argentina in 1978.