Tributes pour in for graduate

Hundreds are in mourning after the sudden death of a recent Glasgow Caledonian University graduate.

Student journalist Darren Joliny, 21, collapsed whilst playing football at the Alistair McCoist Centre in East Kilbride earlier this month.

Paramedics performed CPR at the scene but were unable to revive him with the young man later pronounced dead at Hairmyres Hospital. The cause of death remained unknown.

Half-Iranian Darren, nicknamed Rufio, was a former Glasgow Caledonian student who planned to travel the world. Course leaders said the 21-year-old was “an integral part of every class he was in”.

The promising journalist grew up in East Kilbride and regularly contributed to STV East Kilbride. He also had a keen interest in martial arts.

More than 400 mourners dressed in bold, bright colours, flooded St Vincent’s Chapel, East Kilbride last weekend for Darren’s funeral.

In a previous memorial ceremony on January 10, hundreds of Darren’s family and friends gathered at Stewartfield Loch, East Kilbride, to release balloons and paper lanterns in honour of the popular young man.

Mourners later took a candlelit walk around the loch, while Darren’s friends who could not attend the ceremony released their own lanterns in various parts of the world.

A Facebook group page entitled ‘Darren Joliny Rest In Peace’ has been set up in his honour and has been inundated with loving messages, memories, jokes and pictures from his friends and family.

Colette Coffield wrote: “The funeral from start to finish was lovely, it was more akin to a state funeral for a superstar, and why not, that’s what you were...”

Ruairidh Pritchard added: I don’t have a single favourite memory of Darren as such, but what I will always remember is his massive smile, his laugh and, of course, his amazing hair.”

Nick Bevens, program leader of BA Multimedia Journalism at Caledonian University, said: “This is tragic news, which has stopped us all in our tracks.

“Darren was enormously popular among his tutors, his peer group, and across the university; he was an integral part of every class he was in, a larger-than-life character in every sense, always with a smile on his face.

“He will be greatly mourned by us all.”