After his defeat in the 1979 election Reid embarked on a new career in the media in the 1980s. As we will see, in many ways this was an accidental development, something he almost drifted into. A growing reputation in journalism, however, saw other work in the media open up for him in television and he became a prolific presenter of programmes covering everything from the topography of Scotland to the Russian Revolution. This coincided with the election of the Thatcher government in 1979, which triggered a series of heroic and sometimes futile struggles by the labour movement over industrial relations reform, the Poll Tax, poverty and unemployment, symbolised in the miners’ strike of 1984. From the peripheral contours of British society there also came challenges in the form of riots in inner cities from young men and women alienated from parliamentary democracy. Over the Irish Sea, the ‘Troubles’ were not only tearing Northern Ireland apart, but leading to a wave of bombing attacks on the British mainland: most spectacularly, the attempt to blow up the Tory front bench in the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in October 1984. Beforehand, there was also war to contend with. In 1982, Britain sent a task force to retake the Falkland Islands from invasion by Argentina; after a ten-week conflict, British forces prevailed.

Reid was forced to comment on all these events; indeed, it was an extremely challenging news environment. However, his new career in journalism began rather sedately. He was initially asked to write a column for the Scottish Daily Express, but this was blocked by the National Union of Journalists as he did not hold a union card. After this setback, he slipped in through the back door, writing a weekend guest column for the Glasgow Herald reviewing television programmes. His stint was only expected to last a few issues but instead it grew from television reviews into a weekly current affairs column, so much so that he could proclaim: ‘I’ve become a scribbler. A fully paid-up card-carrying scribbler … About four years ago someone asked me to write a television column … for two or three weeks … It lasted two years’. The column in the Herald provides a unique insight into Reid's views on domestic and international affairs in the earlier part of this turbulent decade.