Ayr United historian on his 52-year labour of love with club's match programme

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The editor of Ayr United's matchday programme celebrated 52 years at the helm this week and proclaimed: "Bring on the next 52!"Club historian Duncan Carmichael, who has also penned more than a dozen books on United, has become one of Somerset's best known faces down the years.

At the age of just 17, he and best pal Douglas Symington teamed up to form their own matchday bible, Somerset News.More than half a century on, Duncan remains the driving force behind the club's official magazine, which made a welcome post-Covid return to terraces this season.And his enthusiasm for the task is showing no signs of relenting as United enter a bold new era.

Duncan told the Ayrshire Post: "As youngsters, myself and Douglas were keen collectors of match programmes and consumed every bit of material we could. "We felt the standard of the Ayr United match programme of the day was pretty poor in relation to the majority of our own collection."At that time it was published by the Ayr United Supporters' Association and we concocted the idea of putting together our own dummy programme and submitting it to them."It was literally cobbled together using pens, crayons, sellotape and sticky paper, but it did the job."Neither of us were blessed with artistic genius, but we did enough to have it accepted and from August 1970, the job was ours."Duncan originally performed the role of assistant editor and, along with Douglas, would submit weekly copy to legendary club secretary Helen Nelson (Douglas' sister).Duncan explains: "Helen did all the typing and her husband, Hugh, did the proofreading."It was a very simple but effective operation and the programme itself was pioneering in its day."In 1973/74, Programme Monthly introduced a Programme of the