John Beattie
John Beattie presents the lunchtime news programme on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Scotland
John Beattie was brought up swinging from the trees in Borneo, following that up with schooling on the island of Penang in Malaysia and some formative years on a rubber estate.
All of which helped his upper body strength for his later exploits as a fairly aggressive Scottish international rugby player. He won 25 caps (one of them Scotland's last win at Twickenham in 1983) and went on two British Lions tours.
He's had various careers, including a spell as a civil engineer who retrained as a chartered accountant, and a stint as chairman of the Scottish Executive's physical activity task force. Apart from that he has fronted Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Scotland radio and tv programmes on music, rugby, shinty, athletics, highland games, badminton and the Commonwealth games and he still coaches a rugby team every week. He hopes one day to be editor of Grandstand's live rugby coverage where he promises to arrive on the morning of the programme and say: 'I've now decided... let's just show the lot.'
He hopes to grow up quite soon.