Simon Scott obituary | Advertising

My good friend Simon Scott, who has died aged 65, was some of the completed promoting copywriters of his technology. “You possibly can’t get higher than a Kwik Match fitter” was Simon’s. If he overdid it with “Financial institution of Scotland, a Good friend for Life”, his marketing campaign for the Scottish Labour social gathering in 1998-99 beneath the tag “Divorce is an costly enterprise” remains to be thought-about the explanation for the SNP’s poor displaying in these first elections to the Scottish parliament.

Simon was born in Harare, Zimbabwe (then often known as Salisbury, in Rhodesia), to Lora (nee Miller), an inside designer, and John Scott, a serious within the Cameronians regiment who later grew to become a stockbroker. In his father’s eyes, Simon was destined for the military, and after attending Fettes school in Edinburgh, the place he and I have been contemporaries, he went to Sandhurst.

Nonetheless, his time there was not successful, and a subsequent regulation diploma from Sussex College additionally didn’t carry forth his vocation. He adopted his father into stockbroking, however that didn’t match both.

Already writing in snatches and snaps, Simon joined MacLean Dubois, writers and brokers, in Edinburgh. From there he moved to Collett Dickenson & Pearce, the place purchasers included Heineken, Benson & Hedges and Dewars, after which to Saatchi & Saatchi, working for Tennents and the Scottish authorities. Subsequent he took his brio to Faulds, a brand new company, as inventive director earlier than, in 1996, he co-founded, in Edinburgh, the Union, which has since change into as profitable an company as any exterior London.

Along with his spouse Jane (nee Starrett), a graphic designer whom he married in 1984, Simon restored and furnished a variety of wonderful Georgian homes, the place they raised their sons, Tom and Jack, and entertained family and friends with nice generosity and aptitude. They purchased – and offered – a farm in South Africa, earlier than settling lastly in East Lothian.

There they appeared very completely happy. Simon beloved his household and plenty of mates; events, poetry and laughter, wine and whisky and tune. He additionally beloved shopping for and promoting antiques, studying, and, in fact, writing.

However in the long run, the vagaries of his thoughts overcame him. Simon determined, in Yeats’s phrases, which he quoted usually, that he “should lie down the place all of the ladders begin/ Within the foul rag and bone store of the center”; and he took his personal life.

He’s survived by Jane, Tom and Jack, and his sister Sarah.