ABERDEEN’S Town House was the setting on Friday night for a special gathering of the media to mark the career of one of Scotland’s longest-serving journalists.
Ted Kidd has retired after a lifetime of reporting from the Granite City and bowed out with a reception in the very room where it first began in 1956.
He joined the DC Thomson’s reporting team in Exchange Street, after National Service in the RAF, and one of his first tasks was reporting Aberdeen Town Council meetings in the St Nicholas room at the Town House in Broad Street.
His career took him first to the Sunday Mail in 1963 then quickly to the Daily Record, where he remained as Aberdeen staff until taking redundancy in 1988.
Since then he has reported on local authority issues for various media, including radio, TV and specialist publications.
Among the major events he has covered in his lengthy career from Aberdeen was the city’s typhoid outbreak in 1964; the Fraserburgh lifeboat tragedy in 1971; the Maxwell Garvie murder case; the Royal pardon for safecracker, Paddy Meehan; the Dons winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup against Real Madrid and the Piper Alpha disaster.
Leading the tributes at Friday’s night’s reception was Aberdeen’s Lord Provost Peter Stephen and Paul Holleran, Scottish organiser of the National Union of Journalists. Ted has been a long-serving welfare officer for the union and a major fundraiser over the years for the NUJ Extra charity.
Said NUJ Grampian branch chair, Jean McLeish: “It was an excellent turnout of former colleagues and friends from all over Scotland, which underlines the huge respect everyone has for Ted Kidd.
“Throughout his long career he has been the model professional and has always done his job with the upmost integrity and thoroughness.“
