John Winton Brown (born in May 1946) is a Scottish

football commentator In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

. He also served as general manager of Scottish club

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

from 1997 to 1998.

Early life

Brown was born in Kilmarnock in May 1946. He is the younger brother of former

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

and

Aberdeen F.C. Aberdeen Football Club is a Scottish professional football club based in Aberdeen, Scotland. They compete in the Scottish Premiership and have never been relegated from the top division of the Scottish football league system since they were ...

manager Craig Brown. His other brother Bob was the Minister at Queen's Cross Parish Church in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

from 1984 until his retirement in 2008.The Game of My Life
Craig Brown, Kings Road Publishing, 2013, He was a supporter of

Hamilton Academical Hamilton Academical Football Club, often known as Hamilton Accies, or The Accies, is a Scottish association football, football club from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire who currently compete in the Scottish Championshi ...

as a child, attended the former

Hamilton Academy Hamilton Academy was a school in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The school was described as "one of the finest schools in Scotland" in the Cambridge University Press County Biography of 1910, and was featured in a 1950 Scottish Seconda ...

and played in the school's football teams.Evening Times (Glasgow, U.K.) 12 May 2002 He later graduated in law from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is a Cambridge University football

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

, having played three times against Oxford at

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

, captaining the team on the third occasion.

Legal career

Brown is a

solicitor A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...

by profession. He was a partner with Brodies LLP until 2010, and subsequently a consultant there until he retired in 2016.

Broadcasting

Brown started his broadcasting career for

BBC Radio Scotland BBC Radio Scotland is a Scottish radio network owned and operated by BBC Scotland, a division of the BBC. It broadcasts a wide variety of programmes. It replaced the Scottish BBC Radio 4 opt-out service of the same name from 23 November 197 ...

before moving to

Scottish Television Scottish Television (now, legally, known as STV Central Limited) is the ITV network franchisee for Central Scotland. The channel — the largest of the three ITV franchises in Scotland — has been in operation since 31 August 1957 and is the ...

where he became the main commentator between 1980 and 1990. He then joined

BBC Scotland BBC Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: ''BBC Alba'') is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. It is one of the four BBC national regions, together with the BBC English Regions, BBC Cymru Wales and BBC Northern Ireland. I ...

where he stayed until 1997. He has also commentated for Sky Sports, Setanta Sports, NTL, ITV on Digital, and News UK Ltd.

Celtic

In 1997, he was appointed

General Manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

Fergus McCann Fergus John McCann (born 26 February 1941) is a Scottish–Canadian businessman and entrepreneur. Biography McCann's wealth stemmed initially from a golf vacation company, based in Montreal and Phoenix. He is best known for his involvement in ...

. Brown was involved in bringing

Wim Jansen Wilhelmus Marinus Antonius Jansen (; 28 October 1946 – 25 January 2022) was a Dutch professional football player and manager. As a midfielder or defender, he spent most of his career at Feyenoord, winning honours including the European Cup ...

to Celtic as manager. Reports suggested that the pair did not enjoy a harmonious working relationship, culminating in the resignation of Jansen after one successful season.Brown quits Parkhead

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

, 7 November 1998. Brown was then involved in the appointment of

Josef Venglos Josef may refer to *Josef (given name) *Josef (surname) * ''Josef'' (film), a 2011 Croatian war film *Musik Josef Musik Josef is a Japanese manufacturer of musical instruments. It was founded by Yukio Nakamura, and is the only company in Japan spe ...

. Brown had a controversial time at Celtic, and he resigned in November 1998. He is the author of a book on his time at Celtic called ''Celtic Minded: 510 Days in Paradise''.

Charity

From 2013 to 2018 he was chairman of the board of trustees of CU Trust Scotland, which operates Children's University in Scotland; he remains on the board as a trustee.

References

1946 births Living people Celtic F.C. non-playing staff Scottish association football commentators Scottish solicitors People educated at Hamilton Academy Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge Sportspeople from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire {{Scotland-law-bio-stub