DEACON Blue’s Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh have received their Scotland’s Greatest Song award for the 1987 hit Dignity.
The iconic song – the first one ever released by the band – was selected as the winner following a public vote on the Ewen Cameron in the Morning breakfast show.
The song has remained a firm favourite over the years and was famously performed by the band at the 2014 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Glasgow.
Following the win, Ross said: “Thank you so much to everyone for voting for this song. I know that people take this song to their hearts and we are very grateful for that and on behalf of all of Deacon Blue I thank you for making Dignity Scotland’s favourite song.
“It is a lovely thing that people have taken it on board as it was never really a hit record. It was one of these songs that crept up and it got released and then re-released and eventually re-released and it sort of became a folk song in people’s hearts and it is lovely that it has stayed with people
“I phoned Dougie to tell him, he and I started this band 35 years ago and it funny that this is a song that we cobbled together in a wee rehearsal room one day.
“I lost my mum this year and it is the kind of thing that she would have loved to have heard. It’s an amazing story and I’m very, very proud.”
Dignity was selected from a shortlist of 10 songs, winning over Sunshine on Leith by the Proclaimers and Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.
The other contenders were Whole of the Moon by The Waterboys, Loaded by Primal Scream, Tinseltown in the Rain by The Blue Nile, In a Big Country by Big Country, This is the Life by Amy MacDonald, Black Eyed Boy by Texas and Somewhere in My Heart by Aztec Camera.
The songs on the shortlist were selected by judges Jackie Bird, Clare Grogan, Gordon Smart and Aarti Joshi.
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