Pioneering head of sport who helped nurture Scotland’s TV talent

Died: October 2, 2024

Charles Munro, who has died aged 90, had a long and distinguished career in broadcasting at home and abroad. He was head of sport at BBC Scotland, helping to bring on new talent, and masterminded the broadcast of a number of Commonwealth Games.

Born in Leith, the only child of John and Ethel Munro, the family moved to nearby Portobello in September 1939 before the five-year-old Charles was evacuated to the north-east fishing village of Buckie.

The war over and back home with his parents, he was enrolled at Leith Academy. He was more technically minded than academic and had a strong interest in sport: rugby in the winter, cricket and athletics in the summer, swimming throughout the year. He formed a close relationship with the similarly sports-minded Margaret Rollo that was to endure almost 70 years.

The young couple became engaged in 1954 during Charles’s two-year military conscription, served – partly in post-war Germany – with the Royal Signals and which he saw as the foundation stone to his successful career and warm-hearted personal life. They married in 1956.

With his signals experience behind him and following his first job with the GPO, he embarked upon what would become a successful 35-year career with the BBC, first as a technical assistant with the BBC Scotland outside broadcast unit in Glasgow.

The job entailed working on popular programmes like the White Heather Club, coverage of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland as well as sport. In 1965, he started work as a production assistant in sport, working on flagship programmes like Grandstand, the iconic BBC Scotland Sports Report and Sportsreel.

The summer of 1970 saw him involved in an event that was to play a significant part in his professional life, the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Olympic Games and World Cups would follow, meaning regular engagement with Scottish sporting aristocracy, including Celtic manager Jock Stein, swimmer David Wilkie and racing driver Sir Jackie Stewart.

As a senior sports producer and then head of sport at BBC Scotland, his production skills and wise counsel helped develop a unique generation of on-air talent, including Archie Macpherson and Bill McLaren as well as the emerging talent that was Dougie Donnelly, who Charles considered “the best in the business, bar none.”

He was also a creative influence and innovator. During his time in sports production, he was instrumental in bringing lesser-known sports including indoor hockey, curling, shinty, synchronised swimming and badminton to TV.

Away from sport, he produced a film chronicling the construction of the Forth Road Bridge, delivering live coverage of the royal launch of the QE2 in 1972 and the 1982 mass conducted by Pope John Paul II before an estimated 300,000 worshippers in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park.

Having become chief assistant, planning and resource management, at BBC Scotland, the head of outside broadcasts Cliff Morgan sought out Charles to join a fact-finding delegation to the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Australia, ahead of the BBC’s role as host broadcaster for the next edition in Edinburgh four years later.

Once back home, Morgan called, enquiring whether Charles might be interested in heading the complex production operation for the 1986 Games, as executive producer, an offer he readily accepted. It was a role of some complexity, including the planning and management of TV and radio output across 10 sports and eight venues, not just for the BBC, but also 50-plus Commonwealth broadcasters.

Such was the high regard for the job he had achieved under difficult circumstances, his services were quickly sought out by the 1990 Commonwealth Games organisers. Charles moved with Margaret to Auckland in New Zealand to successfully perform a similar role before assisting the 1994 host city, Victoria in Canada.

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Having led a couple of project teams, including the development of the High Definition TV, Charles parted company with the BBC in 1991 after 35 challenging, varied and highly successful years. But the Commonwealth Games continued to draw him in and the appeal of a state-sponsored event to be staged in Asia for the first time proved too much for him to resist. Charged by the local organising committee to develop the broadcasting plan for the XVI Games in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, he and Margaret were on the move again.

With ageing parents, as well as his burgeoning family of grandchildren to consider, spending more time at home became an imperative. He moved close to the village of Drymen, to Edgewood, formerly owned by Billy Connolly.

With much more free time, Charles also involved himself with his local community, in particular, Probus of Lomond as well as undertaking charitable work with the Order of St John, rising to the rank of Commander. He organised an inventive and profitable annual art sale and led a fundraising campaign for the renovation of Drymen Parish Church.

But by 2015, Charles and Margaret were beginning to find Edgewood and its extensive grounds too much for their needs and made what was to be their final move, this time downsizing to a bungalow in Drymen.

(Image: Dougie Donnelly)

After settling well in their new surroundings, Margaret’s health began to suffer and by 2020 the family, with heavy hearts, decided it was for the best for her to move into the Erskine Care Home. In what was a measure of the man, Charles undertook the 90-minute round trip most days, in all weathers, to sit with and reminisce with his wife before her death after almost 67 years of marriage.

Above all else, even after a 35-year career with the BBC and with six Commonwealth Games under his belt, Charles was a dedicated family man but one who always had time for friends. Such was the regard and respect in which he was held, almost 200 friends, relatives and former colleagues attended an uplifting memorial service in the Drymen Kirk he had helped restore.

Quietly charismatic, sincere and somewhat understated, Charles Munro, was, throughout his life, a proud Man of Leith making his mark, and he will be long remembered and forever missed by many.

He is survived by his daughters Carole-Anne, Gillian and Rhona, aka Charlie’s Angels, as well as four granddaughters, two grandsons, three great granddaughters and four great grandsons.

MIKE WILSON

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