Talented journalist, author, Indy campaigner and our friend

by Michael Russell

TERRY HOUSTON was a good friend of mine. He was also cantankerous, argumentative and on occasion verbally abusive. Most people who knew him would, at some stage use the word “impossible” to describe his behaviour, and often put a few f words in front of it, so infuriating could he be. I definitely did.

But over time I realised that it was what caused that behaviour which made him - once you had got used to it - such a valuable, loyal and influential friend, and are what so many , including me, will miss.

I can’t precisely remember when I first met him but it must have been in the late 80s and early 90s when he was a journalist in Glasgow and latterly one of the editorial team of the Evening Times.

He was a caricature of what journalists used to be - he drank, he smoked, he was (and looked) a bit rumpled, he put his foot in the door and most of all he didn’t give up until he had a story. He was a master of his craft too, with an eye for what people wanted to read, and how to lay it out on a page so that they would want to buy it.

At the very heart of the man was an addiction to the truth which he would move heaven and earth to discover and then tell. That addiction in political terms didn’t do him much good with his employers because he was a convinced nationalist at a time when being one wasn’t a positive career move.