David McNeil

Photographer who rose to the meaning of ‘for better or worse’ when his wife, Melanie Reid, broke her neck

- Patrick Kidd

It was just a little jump, one of dozens that Melanie Reid had made in 30 years as a keen amateur equestrian. But this one went disastrously wrong. When her husband, Dave McNeil, was told later that day that his wife had fallen from her horse, breaking her neck and lower back, and would never again walk unaided, his reaction was natural for a blunt Glaswegian newspaper photographer. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said.

Two lives were suddenly upended. Reid was an award-winning 52-year-old journalist; McNeil was 12 years older and easing down after a successful career. Dougie, a son from Reid's first marriage, was at university and they had finished work on their adored 300-year-old cottage in the Stirlingshire wilds of the Trossachs. These should have been the golden years.

McNeil went home and wept, literally howling at the moon.

“{ thought I was a tough guy because I'd done some really hard jobs with Glasgow criminals,” he later said. “I thought I was pretty inured.” Then, when the tears and rage passed, he realised that this was what they meant by “for better or for worse”.

Her accident and slow recovery became their biggest story, told until 2024 in the Times in what was called Spinal Column, and then for the past year in The Observer as Who cares?, Reid composed it at first on a Dictaphone, then by jabbing at an iPad with the only two fingers that still worked. She said it was like being a war correspondent, reporting from the front line of her body.