Born in Glasgow, Montford was raised in Greenock where he acquired a lifelong love for the local football team, Morton. These went well as a radio broadcaster, and, when BBC sports editor John Wilson joined Scottish Television in 1957, he asked Montford to join him in the new commercial visual age. Everybody knew him through his broadcast journalism but he did not have a different personality away from the TV. Though again he did not shout about it, his politics in the 70s favoured the SNP, and he helped the late Margo McDonald in her campaign in Govan in 1973.

Sports coverage at the time could be mired by technical faults and of course, the weather, but processing the reels of film in time for broadcast proved the most risky aspect for the presenters.With his pleasant, distinctive voice a singular asset, he joined Scottish Television in August 1957 as a continuity announcer and sports reporter, where Montford shared the opening night announcing duties with Jimmy Nairn, [4] He was then chosen to present STV's new sports programme, Scotsport (originally Sports Desk), where he remained as anchorman for 32 years. During his time on Scotsport, Montford became famous for his trademark checkered pattern sports jackets, and some classic lines of football commentary, including What a Stramash! He attended Greenock Academy, where he was one of a band of rebels who tried — unsuccessfully — to introduce soccer to the rugby-playing school. Montford was President and captain of Glasgow Golf Club, and was Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1974-1977.

It was a golden era in Scottish football, and Montford was at the heart of it from the late 1950s through the glory days of the 1960s, the 1970s and all the way through to the late 1980s, always finding something positive to say about the game – even in Argentina in 1978.After stepping down as a director, Montford continued his affiliation with the club as an Honorary Vice-president. Montford told the Academy rector, a Mr William Dewar, that he would become a journalist and after national service in the army, he joined the News as an office boy, before making the graduation through the ranks to reporter, working for the News, then the Daily Record before joining the sports desk of the Evening Times. Yet it is precisely Montford’s verbal style that he is loved for and his erudite expressions could enliven the most trying of sporting events. Voted in as Rector of Glasgow University in 1974, Montford had a tough act to follow in Jimmy Reid, the Clydeside shipyard union leader whose rectorial address in 1971 is one of the greatest Scottish speeches of all time. Thanks to his friend, Douglas Rae, at whose house Montford’s second marriage took place with Rae as best man, Montford was appointed director of Morton FC, and latterly became honorary vice-president.

He also presented Radio Clyde’s version of Desert Island Discs (billed as Montford's Meeting Place) where he interviewed many famous people who dropped by for a chat with the STV legend that was an unmissable sample of Clyde's weekend schedule in the 1970s and 1980s as well as writing the Scotsport Annual among other books. A couple of weeks later I thought no more about it, but he invited me back to the Theatre Royal: really to make the numbers up for someone whom they had in mind, but at the last minute he decided he didn't want the job.On his retirement at the age of 60 in 1989, he concentrated on playing golf at Glasgow Golf Club at Killermont. STV were told by rivals BBC that there was no room for their cameras in the gantry in Hampden’s South Stand. Indeed, with Archie McPherson and others at the BBC, he was one of the pioneers of sports broadcasting in Scotland, his career covering the era of canned film of games that were rushed to the Glasgow studios to be broadcast to cathode ray tubes, up to the age of constant live satellite transmissions, electronic video machines and instant replays. Montford began as a journalist and radio presenter before the opening of the STV studios at the Theatre Royal offered another opportunity.