Martin Dempster: Why working on The Pink was the craziest but most enjoyable part of the job

Former Evening News Sports editor, and current golf correspondent, Martin Dempster shares his memories of creating The Pink on a weekly basis

The Evening News offices in 1987. Picture: TSPL

My love affair with The Pink goes way back. As a youngster growing up in Berwickshire, I still recall chumming my pal and his dad on a Saturday night as he waited for it to be delivered at Ayton on the A1 then distributed it to shops in Eyemouth and Coldingham.

I was hooked on The Pink from an early age and felt very privileged to find myself working on the paper later in life, first on the production side as a sub-editor then as a reporter, mainly covering Hearts but also golf.

I then moved back on to the production side after being appointed as sports editor of the Edinburgh Evening News and I still find it sad to this day that publication of The Pink was stopped on my watch.

As Ramsay Laing, who succeeded me as sports editor, commented this week, working on The Pink in the last few hours up to deadline were the craziest part of the week but, at the same time, the most enjoyable.

Some feature pages were worked on during the week, but the beauty about The Pink was the fact the majority of the pages were devoted to covering live sport.

The main focus, of course, was on Hearts and Hibs, but it also carried reports from all the other big games in Scotland - England, too - and, at that time, most matches still kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday.

Add in another pile of football reports on East Juniors and East Seniors, as well as reports on rugby matches involving all the Edinburgh teams and, quite frankly, it was a miracle how The Pink managed to hit the streets as early as it did on a Saturday evening.

Remember, we are talking about the days before mobile phones were around and also laptops. Reporters had to be phoned over to copy-takers, who, in truth, were the unsung heroes in the exhausting process.

From 3pm to 5pm, time was of the essence - and it really was an incredible effort by everyone involved to make sure the loyal readers weren't disappointed.

I can only speak for myself, but I have to say that a spell in the pub at lunchtime before getting strapped in for that Saturday afternoon roller-coaster ride always seemed to help!

Why is The Pink not around today? Well, the emergence of the worldwide web then Sky Sports coming on the scene proved its deathknell, I’m afraid.

The Pink lives on, though, in the memory of many people and long may that continue.