Arnold Clark

John Arnold Clark was born in a tenement in Townhead, Glasgow, on 27 November 1927. His father was a Clydeside shipworker. He attended Dennistoun Primary School and left home aged fourteen with no qualifications. During the war, he moved to the Isle of Arran.

He was conscripted to the Royal Air Force (RAF) towards the end of the Second World War aged seventeen, and worked as a Motor Mechanics Instructor. He reached the rank of Corporal and would later remark that during this period his self discipline developed; as did leadership qualities.

Clark married twice, and had ten children — six sons and four daughters. Clark had four sons from his first marriage, although his son Norman died in 1995 in Helensburgh at the age of 33. His second marriage was to Philomena and they had six children together. Clark settled in the village of Killearn and was a church elder. He died on 10 April 2017, aged 89.

Car collection

Clark had an "extensive collection of classic cars", including a Ford Model T Town Car (1915), a Ford Model T Coupé (1924), a Citroën Cloverleaf (1926), a Rolls-Royce Park Ward Single Tourer 20 hp (1928), an Austin Heavy 12 (1929).

Yacht

Clark bought the Maxi yacht Drum from Simon Le Bon in 1988. The 78 foot craft is sailed with a crew of 22. That year, Clark led the annual Tobermory race, before Drum was involved in a collision with a Royal Navy submarine, around five miles off the Mull of Kintyre. He loaned it back to Le Bon in 2005 and the yacht was often loaned to other organisations to raise money for charitable work.