From Tannadice to Hollywood

A phone call to Tom Cairns, one of the Club’s historians who as a Dundee United Business Club member helps organise the display area on level one of the Tannadice Park main entrance, has now led to the Club being gifted a book filled with cuttings pertaining to the football career of Neil Paterson.   

The talented inside forward captained Dundee United during the 1936-1937 season having the previous season starred for Leith Athletic and played all his football as an amateur. James Edmund Neil Paterson studied at Edinburgh University whilst playing for both Leith Athletic and Dundee United although home for Neil was Banff in Aberdeenshire.

Neil, as he preferred to be known, went on to have a very successful career writing novels and screenplays for some memorable movies culminating in him receiving an Oscar for the acclaimed 1959 movie "Room At The Top" for which he had written the screenplay from the novel written by John Braine. 

Neil’s son and nephew recently contacted Dundee United and were delighted to find that Tom Cairns not only knew of his story but was very keen to accept their gift and put the book on permanent display at Tannadice. 

To sum up the late Neil Paterson and his feelings for our Club, perhaps the following statement in his later years tells all: "My greatest achievement was captaining Dundee United". 

Coming from an Edinburgh University graduate, a man who served his country at sea throughout WW2, who wrote numerous successful novels and screenplays, who received an Academy Award and served on the board of Grampian Television, these words are testament to the tremendous love Neil retained for Dundee United. 

The scrapbook will form part of the permanent exhibits within the main area of level one of the main entrance at Tannadice Park where in early April 2019 a new display, "The Jim McLean Years", will open to the public each Wednesday afternoon.

Saturday’s editions of the Courier will also cover the story.