Robert Barclay
Robert (“Bert”) Barclay (S 1968)
Bert Barclay attended the 5th and 6th years Daniel Stewart’s College between 1966 and 1968. He was a late arrival at Daniel Stewart’s College joining the Fifth Year in September 1966 after his family moved to Edinburgh from Glasgow where he attended Glasgow Academy. He recollects his two years at Stewart’s were spent as a member of Drumsheugh house and willing to try most things he remembers coming next to last in a school mock election, being a moderately successful last pick for the school chess team (never played since) and being CCF armoury sergeant as well as being a willing participant in the lower levels of the rugby and cricket teams.
After he left school he took a degree course in Economics with some accountancy mixed in at Heriot-Watt University and thereafter started work as an apprentice Chartered Accountant with Thomson McLintock & Co (a predecessor firm of KPMG) in St Andrew Square qualifying as a CA in 1975. Two years after qualifying he drifted into insolvency work spending the rest of his working life as an insolvency practitioner mostly in the Edinburgh Offices of KPMG and PKF (who merged with BDO in 2013) retiring in January 2015. In his latter years his work as an insolvency practitioner included the administrations of three football clubs – Dundee, Dunfermline Athletic and Heart of Midlothian – all now restored to a relatively healthy situation.
He has been associated with the FP Rugby and Cricket Clubs since leaving school becoming touch judge for the 1st XV for many years after a broken leg ended his playing career at an early age and was Treasurer of the Rugby Club between 1989 and 2000. From 1975 to 2010 he was Honorary Secretary of the Scottish Cricket Union and was a director of Cricket Scotland from its inception in 1999 until 2016 when he was accorded the status of an Honorary Life Member. He was President of the FP Cricket Club during a period of resurgence from 2010 to 2015 having previously held that position in 1988-89. He is presently the only Scot to be elected as an Honorary Life Member of the MCC and is a past director of Murrayfield Golf Club.
You can view our other previous presidents here.
