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

football commentator In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as a sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time live commentary of a game or event, traditionally delivered in the present tense. There are two main types of sports broadcast ...

. 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 Foot ...

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 Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

and

Aberdeen F.C. Aberdeen Football Club is a Scottish professional Association football, football club based in Aberdeen, Scotland. They compete in the and have List of unrelegated association football clubs, never been relegated from the top division of th ...

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

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

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 football club from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, who currently compete in . They were established in 1874 from the school football team at Hamilto ...

as a child, attended the former

Hamilton Academy Hamilton Academy was a Boarding school, boarding and day school in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was founded in 1588 as a boy's school and was open for nearly four centuries. In the late 19th century, ...

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 Sidney Sussex College (historically known as "Sussex College" and today referred to informally as "Sidney") is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. The College was founded in 1 ...

. He is a Cambridge University football

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

, 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 the London Borou ...

, captaining the team on the third occasion.

Legal career

Brown is a

solicitor A solicitor is a lawyer 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 enabled to p ...

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 national 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 N ...

before moving to

Scottish Television Scottish Television (now legally known as STV Central Limited) is the ITV (TV network), ITV network franchisee for Central Belt, Central Scotland. The channel — the largest of the three ITV franchises in Scotland — has been in operation si ...

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

BBC Scotland BBC Scotland is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Scotland. Its headquarters are in Glasgow, employing approximately 1,250 staff as of 2017, to produce 15,000 hours of television and radio programming per year. BBC Scotla ...

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 "Wim" Jansen (; 28 October 1946 – 25 January 2022) was a Dutch professional association football, football player and manager. As a midfielder or defender (association football), defender, he spent most of his caree ...

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 broad ...

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

Hamilton Academical FC

On 29th October 2024, he was appointed as Chairman of Hamilton Academical FC.

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