IF YOU are reading this article in the paper – as opposed to online – it was probably handled at some point in its journey to you by one of Ellis Watson's 4,000 employees.
Watson, 41, is the managing director of Menzies Distribution, the newspaper and magazine distribution arm of John Menzies.
The company is often still remembered – fondly by some – as a newsagents, although it is now focused exclusively on logis
tics. It has two divisions – aviation, dedicated to getting luggage and parcels on airplanes worldwide; and distribution.
Watson too is remembered, fondly by some at least, as a media world legend, albeit a relentless, mouthy, crude, outrageous and yet distinctly charming one.
Before Watson came to Menzies in 2005 he was managing director of tabloid Mirror and Daily Record publishers Trinity Mirror in London, the right-hand man of chief executive Sly Bailey. It was Ellis who had to deliver the bad news to Mirror editor Piers Morgan, when he was sacked for publishing pictures of UK soldiers in Iraq that turned out to be a hoax. Eight weeks later, Morgan was best man at Ellis's wedding.
Watson cut his teeth in the business, spending ten years in the rough and tumble tabloid division of News International. He worked with, and is still a close friend of, the irascible former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie. He became friends with NI chairman Les Hinton and had a massive falling-out with Rupert Murdoch.
Watson went on to run Celador, the makers of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The three years he was there were during those febrile post-dotcom boom days. Watson, who had converted wholesale to the new media paradigm while at NI, had a vision to make Millionaire the first multi-platform interactive media product, available online, on interactive TV and by mobile phone. By 2003 a disappointed Ellis would say you can't sell crosses and bibles until you have religions disciples and he went back into the practical, physical world of print media when the Mirror's Morgan introduced him to Bailey.
The print media world doesn't get more practical than Menzies. His team delivers 5.7 million newspapers and 2.7 million magazines every day. But to go from running the papers to delivering them is a massive change. If media were rock 'n' roll, it would be akin to being a band manager booking the gigs and administering the groupies to becoming a roadie, in charge of equipment and the tour bus.
He admits negotiating fuel inflation is not the same as having lunch with the Prime Minister, but he is clearly enthused about the business. He loves the challenges, and the people – many of whom have been employed with Menzies on average for more than a decade – and marvels at the "hairy-arsed ballet" of getting the papers into shops around the country overnight.
But Menzies was not in the end what lured Ellis to Edinburgh. He also met, fell in love with and within months of meeting her, got engaged to a Scot, Angie Strachan. He stopped one rainy night when her car had broken down on the M1, and he says this "strong willed, well bred Broughty Ferry lass" brought him to his senses.
With her help, he realised work could be "confined" to 70 hours a week rather than the silly hours he was working; and then his children – he now has two – might remember his name.
So when he joined Trinity Mirror in 2003 it was at least a better option commuting from the family home in Carnoustie to Canary Wharf than travelling tirelessly to the 100-plus countries that broadcast Millionaire.
Coming to Scotland to run Trinity's Daily Record and Sunday Mail would have been a step too far down the ladder to consider. Yet his feelers were still out for work in Scotland when Menzies came calling.
One of the few media jobs in Scotland big enough for Ellis was that of Tim Bowdler, chief executive of The Scotsman owner, Johnston Press. In conversation, Ellis casually mentions he had lunch with Bowdler earlier in the week.
If he wasn't one of Menzies' biggest customers, this might raise the eyebrows of those whose job or interest it is to wonder who the next chief executive of Johnston Press might be once the 61-year-old Bowdler tires of the job.
But Watson is clear. One thing running Trinity Mirror convinced him of was how difficult it was to run a media company for the benefit of shareholders.
According to Watson, most if not all UK listed media owners, which include Johnston Press, suffer from what he calls the "schizophrenic opposing forces between the shareholder expectation of profit and the brand owner's desire for longevity".
Of course, the same problems that beset print media – declining sales and advertising – are a problem for distributors too.
If he arrived at Trinity Mirror in 2003 when all was chaos, Menzies in 2005 was not in much better shape.
Watson's appointment was a much-needed tonic for the business. The management at Menzies – and almost more importantly its shareholders – were looking for someone who instinctively understood Menzies' customers better, and the answer was Watson.
Iain MacArthur of analyst Arbuthnot said: "Ellis is probably one of the best equipped to look forward and see through a new strategy.
"People are not going to stop buying magazines and papers but there's no doubt that the underlying publishers, the Trinity Mirrors and the Johnston Presses, see their advertising falling."
Menzies company secretary John Geddes is circumspect – in the best Edinburgh tradition – when he says the staid and venerable company was looking for a change.
"We wanted someone with a slightly different view," he says. "He has broadened the scope and he has opened it out quite a lot in terms of the culture."
Watson is more robust in his summing-up of the culture shock both he and his staff experienced.
To paraphrase for a family newspaper, he describes their reaction to his arrival thus – as if he had entered their kitchen and been caught doing something unthinkable to a much-loved family pet.
Although the City can sometimes take a dim view of big characters, Ellis Watson has his fans.
"His delivery certainly entertains but at the very heart of it is a deep knowledge of the industry," says MacArthur. "From a third party point of view, you can think distribution is a dull subject but Ellis makes it anything but."
Transforming from a flamboyant character from Planet Tabloid to credible leader in the eyes of his board and his workforce is the result of having stemmed the decline in the business.
And introducing and growing new parts of the business, such as the "tiny" digital distribution business and a magazine marketing division.
Watson has happily given up the glamour and the "bitchiness and hilarious infighting" of the media world, seemingly humbled by the responsibility of 4,000 employees counting on him to keep the business going. But nor does he plan back a loser.
"I haven't come to Scotland to be the tallest dwarf," he says.
