Born in Scotland, the son of a clergyman, Thomson attended schools in Dundee and Edinburgh before the family emigrated in 1955 to the United States. High School in Maine was followed by attendance at SMU in Dallas, where off-campus jobs as diverse as managing the local art-house cinema, the Fine Arts, hosting a classsical music show on KCPA-FM and taking whatever jobs were on offer in Dallas film and television studios set the pattern for a media career. Thomson spent the sixties sybaritically in London, the seventies in Paris and moved to Germany the beginning of the eighties. Cologne is home since 1992 and the locals have had get used to the sight of a gaunt six-footer resplendent in Scottish national dress.