THE man who joined forces with his brother to set up the Helensburgh Advertiser more than 65 years ago has died, his family have announced.

Ronnie Jeffrey passed away peacefully at Windmill House, Old Down, Bristol on June 29, according to an intimation published in the July 6 edition of the Advertiser.

Ronnie and his brother Craig were the men who took the decision to launch a competitor to the long-established Helensburgh and Gareloch Times in the summer of 1957.

Earlier that year Ronnie, a time-served compositor freshly demobbed from the Scots Guards, had joined Craig, who began his career in the industry as a linotype operator before becoming a freelance journalist, in his small-scale letterpress printing business in the town.

On May 24, 1957, the first Helensburgh Advertiser appeared - not as a newspaper but as a one-page printed ‘wallsheet’, containing steamer and bus times and local paid-for advertising and displayed on the walls of local business premises.

Within a few months, enough revenue had been generated from those adverts to enable the first edition of the “bright, breezy and humorous” Advertiser as a newspaper.

Reported, subbed, and typeset by Craig, printed by Ronnie, and hand-folded by both with the help of apprentice Howard McWilliam, the first edition hit the streets on August 30 of that year.

In an article published in the Advertiser to mark the paper’s 50th anniversary, still available on the Helensburgh Heritage Trust’s website, the late Donald Fullarton, who joined the Advertiser in 1965 and was still writing for the paper until a few weeks before his death in March 2022, described Ronnie as “the production man who made sure everything happened when it should” – and Craig as “a talented writer, a consummate salesman, a man of real character with a tremendous sense of humour, a 100 miles an hour man to those who knew him or worked for him”.

Within a few weeks of its launch, the Advertiser was able to boast of a circulation of 3,000, compared with the 4,500 of the somewhat staid and conservative competitor.

Amazingly, aged only two and designed with a ragbag of old typefaces, the paper was highly commended in the sixth annual United Kingdom Newspaper Design Awards, the first of many awards to be won by the paper and its staff over the years.

In 1964 the brothers launched a sister title, the Dumbarton County Reporter – later to become the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter – and the company grew to the point where it had 60 employees and was the area’s biggest private employer.

And back in Helensburgh, the Times’ circulation was overtaken within eight years - and the brothers’ decision to take on the long-established title was vindicated in the 1970s when the older title became a freesheet and, soon after, was closed down by its owners.

When the company’s four shareholders decided in 1985 to sell the business, the brothers chose to sell to Express Newspapers, whose Scottish chairman, Sir David McNee. was an old friend.

Three months later, Express Newspapers were in turn bought by United Newspapers, and the titles became part of United Provincial Newspapers. Craig served as a non-executive director for a year, and brother Ronnie was appointed managing director.

In due course both left the firm, with Craig retiring and Ronnie and his wife Tillie buying and running for some years the Helensburgh Fine Arts Gallery on West Clyde Street.

Craig died in 1997.

Ronnie’s funeral will be held at Westerleigh Crematorium in Bristol on Wednesday, July 19 at 11.30am.

His family have asked that donations, if desired, can be made in his memory to the RNLI, c/o L. & J. Gulwell, Funeral Directors, 1 Quaker Lane, Thornbury, Bristol BS35 2AD.