Brown: the first bid for power

Coming very soon to a channel near you, a newly discovered gem from the Scottish Screen Archive. Staff trawling through uncatalogued 16mm film acquired from Scottish Television discovered a 1975 interview with a member of Edinburgh Uni­ver­sity’s court just as a long-haired student, one Gordon Brown, had been elected rector. There was extreme alarm in the university establishment that Mr Brown intended to exercise his right to chair the court. The court member pronounced: “Sometimes student rectors seem to think that once they’re rector this is equivalent to being prime minister, which of course is a complete misunderstanding of their role.”