Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
January 22, 2009
A YOUNG scaffolder who died after a night out drinking with friends was a former junior boxing champion from a well-known city sporting family.
David Norris, 25, won a series of titles in the ring including Scottish junior flyweight champion in 1998/99.
He was the grandson of Walter "Wattie" Whytock, the first boxer from Edinburgh's famous Sparta gym to win a title, in the 1940s.
David had also tried his hand at acting as a teenager and was said to have shown promise. The 25-year-old, a former Gracemount High pupil, was described today as "a great wee boxer and a really nice young guy".
He died following a night out in Dalkeith's Buccleuch Pub on Friday.
Although he retired from boxing about eight years ago, friends said he was still very fit and regularly worked out at the gym.
George Forsyth, club president of the Sparta Gym since 1996, said today he was deeply saddened by David's death.
"Wattie is a great ambassador for the club, and David would have come through in the first couple of years after Bob Walker and I took over the club in 1996. I've probably still got his first boxing card. I'm shocked, disgusted and angry that a former member of our club who achieved so much has been taken away from us in this way."
Wattie Whytock won the Easter District bantamweight championship in 1946, paving the way for later Sparta champions including Ken Buchanan.
David's interest in acting had seen him lined up to play the part of a young boxer in a 1999 Scottish Screen film entitled Jesus of Leith. Although the film never saw the light of day - owing to funding - he appeared in a BBC documentary about its creation in 2000.
Screenwriter Jeremy Weller had worked with David on that project and many others since he was nine years old.
He said: "In all my dealings with David, from him being a young boy through to a young man, he was charming, reliable and immensely talented and creative. He was an amazingly intelligent person and that came out in his improvisation work. He was just fantastic."
Evening News boxing writer Brian Donald, who followed David's early career closely in the late-1990s, said: "David was a great wee boxer and a really nice young guy.
"His grandad was one of the first boxers to come out of the Sparta gym and David followed in his footsteps, and won quite a few championships in his own right.
"He was short and stocky but a very good boxer. He had great heart, and a good technique in the ring."
Solicitor Grant O'Connor, 36, a partner with law firm Allan McDougall based on Dalkeith High Street, appeared in private at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in connection with David's death.
He made no plea or declaration to charges of possessing and supplying drugs and has been released on bail.
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