The Aberdeen University professor has worked tirelessly to promote and encourage a revival in Doric and is proud of the results.

Tom McKean tells the story of how he once approached the BBC in Aberdeen, offering to provide a news bulletin in Doric on a daily basis.

As the director of the Elphinstone Institute, which was set up in the city in 1995 to celebrate, research and promote the traditions of the north-east and north of Scotland, he believed it would be another positive way of preserving the region’s rich language.

Whatever critics might argue, matters have changed for the better since the grim days of the 1950s when school pupils were threatened with the belt if they used the same vocabulary in the classroom which was part and parcel of their lives at home.