HOW can I put it? Local lad makes good? Or rags to riches? Matters not. Johnny Connor was born in Edinburgh's Saughton Mains and today lives comfortably – nay, luxuriously – in Balerno's dizzy heights.
He has trousered a million or two on the way. Well, he's been a wheeler-dealer in business. Big business. And I'd need a centre-spread in the Financial Times to fill you in.
Can I just say that on leaving (under a dark cloud) St Anthony's Secondar
y Johnny joined the Merchant Navy in 1959 as a bell boy (a gofer) and worked his way up to Admiral of the Fleet.
Hold on. In reality he found a job at 22 as manager of a paper mill in Juniper Green and ten years later he owned it.
There was a bright idea he had about making envelopes from recycled waste paper, exercised at Inveresk, that brought him a fortune.
Then that lump of land he bought from British Steel at Gartcosh, where he created North British Newsprint. Enter Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.
Cut to today and Kilsyth where he's running a recycling concern, when he hardly needs to. "But I've mucked in all my life, from my milk round for the Edinburgh & Dumfriesshire Dairy, and at 65 I can't handle retirement.
"For my 65th I took the family, 17 of us, to Dubai for a week and now, while I'm still 'at work' most days, still wheeling and dealing, I find more time to indulge my big passions – horses, rugby and golf."
He'd sunk £50k into Watsonians ("until the SRU took over and killed club rugby") and now sponsors Currie RFC (£30k).
"I've a horse in training in Cheshire called Johnny Delta, the first foal from two Derby winners. Just to have a horse run in the Derby – that's my big ambition.
"And I've got a mare, La Vechi Scola, I bought for £5000 at Musselburgh in June last year. She's since won nine races. Oh and she runs in Currie's colours, black and gold."
The streets appear to have been paved with gold for the one-time milk roundsman. Same might be said of Sir Sean, of course.
Afterwords . . . . . turn-off Tony Robinson seen on C4 the other night in a First World War bunker in Belgium. Couldn't they have sealed it up and left him there?
The full article contains 402 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
