'I don't walk about every day saying, I'm John MacKay'

After more than three decades presenting STV's News at Six, John MacKay finally hung up his tie in March.

Despite covering hundreds of stories over a long and illustrious career in news, he's perhaps still best known for saying his name out loud every night.

"People don't believe me but I've been told on more than one occasion that a baby's first words have been 'I'm John MacKay' or something that effect," he told me on BBC Scotland's Scotcast.

"I didn't walk about every day saying, 'I'm John MacKay'," he says.

"The reason it started was that we had a new set and there was a new title sequence and we didn't have a caption with my name on it.

"So, as we're doing the rehearsal, they said, 'OK we need to identify who you are, so just say your name'.

"So that was it."

He says still watches the news and hadn't realised how hardwired he was to time.

"I'm really trying to train myself out of deadlines," MacKay says.

Although, he is writing another book so perhaps not by too much.

For many, MacKay was the face of the biggest news stories of recent times.

This was both as a custodian of history and the signalman for a country that has changed "beyond all recognition" since he started out, he says.

"Number one will always be Dunblane, because it was Scotland and it was young children," says MacKay, casting his mind back to 13 March 1996, when gunman Thomas Hamilton killed 16 pupils and one teacher at the town's primary school.

"And the first day of the subsequent inquiry is, still, the most significant reporting day I've ever had.

"And then of course you have the night of the Independence Referendum.

"We really didn't know which way it was going to go.

"We took over the ITV News at Ten that night and I remember standing with Edinburgh castle behind me and saying 'two capitals await' and you're thinking 'wow'.

"That really was hairs of the back of the neck stuff''.

A certain Donald J Trump springs to mind.

He was the first ever guest on STV's current affairs programme, Scotland Tonight, which MacKay also hosted.

"He'd got his golf course up in Aberdeenshire and he was fighting against the windfarms, MacKay recalls.

"He was very Donald Trump, he knows TV.

"He knows how to present himself.

"He promised me a beer - which is surprising given he doesn't drink - but it never happened."

''Management should sort this out because it doesn't reflect well on STV," MacKay says.

Amid a pay freeze and proposed cuts to news programmes – both of which STV says are necessary to respond to market conditions facing the sector and return the company to a strong financial footing - his former colleagues are preparing to go on strike on Scottish Election results day.

"You're a Scottish programme - you absolutely should be doing the Scottish Election and that should not be allowed to happen,'' he says of his former employer.

''STV is a commercial organisation. It's having difficulties which, in a global market, is almost inevitable.

"But against that STV has launched STV Radio and with a lot of hoopla around it.

"That's their decision to make, but it was handled really crassly.

"For all your commercial arguments, if you put money into STV Radio you can surely find something for STV journalists."

An STV spokesperson previously said: "We are disappointed that the planned day of action will impact our audiences and we remain committed to continuing the dialogue with the joint unions."

STV currently has two entirely separate news services - one for the central belt, the other for the north - which it is proposing to merge.

The proposals were widely condemned by politicians and business groups in the north of Scotland when they were first announced last September.

But STV has stressed it will still have journalists in Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness.

TV regulator Ofcom is due in May to say whether it will allow the changes to happen.

But as MacKay prepares to start a new chapter, he reflects on his time in front of the camera and, yes, ageing.

"Getting a hair transplant? I never even considered it," he admits.

Plus, he's a grandpa now.

"That's amazing. I mean genuinely amazing.

"I was watching a documentary on the Artemis Mission and I get sent a video on my grandson rolling, just rolling, and the effort he put into it.

"He was so pleased himself. And I genuinely thought from that wee roll to flying round the moon, that's what humans can do.

"It's incredible."

For this newsman, a new world now awaits.