A former chairman of DC Thomson Media is to leave the company after almost a decade.
Ellis Watson, who has served as chairman and chief executive at the publishing company, will step down in March after joining in November 2011 but has no intention of slowing down, with plans to sail around the world.
Mr Watson is currently executive chairman of The Stylist Group, Puzzler, and Wild + Wolf but said the time has come to “burn his suits” and enjoy the next stage of his life.
The 52-year-old said: “I started work at 16 and despite honestly not remembering a single bad work day in all this time, I’ve decided that after 36 years it’s time to stop conventional work as I don’t want my career to define me.
“I’ve come to realise there’s not a pensioner alive who wishes they had spent more time at work and I should learn from that – I’d be a muppet not find out what else I might be or might discover if I burnt my suits.
“I’ve annoyed work teams for long enough now, so it’s time I annoyed and embarrassed my children a lot more.
“I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up and I don’t intend to rush to find out, but it’ll be fun failing well and seeing what I do with the second half of my life.”
Prior to joining DC Thomson, Mr Watson was global CEO of Syco Entertainment, running Simon Cowell’s TV empire and record labels.
He described Cowell as “extremely sincere, high integrity and stupidly hard working”.
The Syco appointment followed stints on the boards of Scottish PLCs Menzies and FirstGroup. Before that he was at the helm of Mirror Group Newspapers, running five national titles.
He said every employee of the family-owned DC Thomson, which publishes The Courier, should be proud of what they have achieved.
Mr Watson added: “A decade on I’m pretty proud of what the teams have built and we’re good for another few decades yet.
“We are as important in our communities as we were a decade ago and are set to become more so – there is not a single other media owner in the UK who can say that.”
Mr Watson’s first break came as a young marketing director at The Sun and The News of the World, moving on to take charge of the new digital business and reporting to Rupert Murdoch.
After 10 years at News Corporation he became chief executive of Celador International, taking Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to 105 countries and helping make it the most successful game show in history.
Mr Watson moved to Edinburgh from London on a whim 20 years ago, describing the decision as “pressing the sod it button”, only to find his mum who had him adopted 30 years previously was not only Scottish, but alive and well, and living only a dozen miles from him.
During Mr Watson’s time in Scotland, he has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen for services to business in 2018, appointed a Global Scot by the First Minister in 2015 and sat on the HM Treasury’s Government Taskforce for Business in the Scotland Office.
Recently, he has played a leading role in the soon-to-be-signed Tay Cities Deal and is one of just a handful of people in the world to have been asked to take part in two Ted X talks.
Asked about the highlights of his career, Mr Watson said it has always been “standing shoulder to shoulder with the people I work with”.
He added: “I’ve had ridiculous fun with everyone I’ve worked with in every team I’ve been part of.
“Everywhere I’ve worked, the three commonalities are to work with people who want to one – be the best version of themselves they can be, two – be as kind as they possibly can, both to each other and in the way we run our corporations and three – to laugh so much that some wee comes out almost every single day.
“As I get older, they all seem to happen more, regardless if I can control it or not.
“If you follow those three simple rules, in life as well as in running a company, then not much can go wrong.”
