Gordon Brewer
Gordon began his journalistic career on The Shetland Times after any hopes of a more technical pursuit were cruelly exposed by a short period working for the oil industry at Sullom Voe. He still keeps a nervous eye on the main flare stack, where he was supposedly monitoring the paint thickness.
In 1983 he moved to Glasgow to join the Sunday Standard as a business correspondent. The paper was closed down six months after his arrival.
After a stint as a freelance he joined the business desk of the then Glasgow Herald, where he proved so incompetent at sub-editing unit trust prices they let him loose as a business reporter. In 1986 he moved to London as business correspondent for The Scotsman, where he experienced the Thatcher boom years at first hand.
He joined the 大象传媒 in 1988 as business correspondent for network television news. After six months or so he was asked to move to a new bureau in Tokyo.
During four years in the Far East he mixed news coverage with making films for Newsnight and The Money Programme and Assignment. Despite strenuous attempts to learn Japanese, the nearest he got to fluency was with cab drivers after an evening in the bar.
He returned to London in 1993 to work for Newsnight. This was his opportunity to stop being a business journalist and he reported from Europe, the United States, Russia and the Middle East without the slightest use of arithmetic.
After the 1997 general election, Gordon became a presenter on Newsnight and then on Newsnight Scotland when the programme launched in 1999. He moved to Scotland full time in 2001.
Gordon has a degree in Philosophy and English Literature and wasted taxpayers money for three years studying for a PhD in Philosophy which he has never finished. During his career he has picked up an award for journalism and three nominations for Royal Television Society awards, although with his usual sodding luck he didn't win any of them.
