Souness, named after former Rangers manager Graeme Souness, was an imposing beast owned by Liz McDonald, the estranged mother of actor Robert Carlyle. On her living room wall was a large framed photo of Souness – the dog, of course – wearing an Orange Order sash. When asked to give his ‘Rangers paw’ he obliged. It was only a request for his left ‘Celtic paw’ that prompted snarling defiance.
Growling Stone and growling Souness were amusing, weird and disturbing in their own ways, and help illustrate how the tribalism of Rangers versus Celtic, Protestant versus Catholic, continues to pervade life in some parts of Scotland. One thing you learn as a journalist in Glasgow is that the Old Firm sells newspapers more than any other subject – even crime and sex – but that to provoke the two clubs is to play with fire as two of my editors found out by paying with their jobs.
According to some Rangers fans I didn’t work for the Sunday Mail but the Sunday Liam, while some Celtic rivals branded it the Sunday Mason. Similarly, the Daily Record was the Daily Ranger or Daily Rebel. Partick Thistle fan, you say? Aye, right. So who do you really support? You cannot win.
An early Old Firm scrape saw me dispatched to Celtic Park, where Hollywood actor Robert Duvall was attending the 1998 Scottish Cup Final between Rangers and Hearts. Spotting the star’s shiny bald head in a swarm of people, I persuaded him to stop for a quick photo while Steve McNeil, a Rangers-supporting photographer, grabbed a scarf from a random fan. As Steve’s camera was clicking, neither of us noticed that emblazoned on the held-aloft scarf was the political and religious demand to ‘KEEP ULSTER PROTESTANT’, which prompted a minor storm. Duvall went on to produce A Shot at Glory, an odd movie charting the giant-killing cup run of fictional Kilnockie FC, whose top striker was, for some reason, played by Ally McCoist. Responding to the scarf row, innocent abroad Duvall later explained, ‘It was just something somebody handed to me and I got my picture taken. But that’s really what I’m here for. To learn more about soccer and the people who are involved in it.’
The following year I embarked on an Old Firm adventure worthy of Belgian cartoon journalist Tintin. Having saved Celtic from oblivion, Fergus McCann had quit the club and vanished from Scotland, and my boss was desperate to track him down. When a contact confidently provided me with an address for McCann in the French coastal village of Arès, near Bordeaux, I was sent straight to the airport. Accompanied by photographer Gaetan Cotton, fizzing with excitement at the thought of French wine on expenses, we found what we hoped was the McCann residence – a large house hidden behind a high metal fence and imposing gate. As hours dragged by, trapped in a sun-baked car, there was no sign of the brusque little businessman famous for his mid-Atlantic accent and trademark bunnet.
Having almost given up hope, the gates of the mansion swung open and out he stepped. Gaetan got snap-happy as McCann, without his bunnet, beetled along in a head-turning ensemble of bright red Bermuda shorts, matching knee-high socks and canary-yellow shirt. At Chez Alcide brasserie, the chic natives stopped talking to stare and chuckle in bemusement at ‘ze very funny little man’ marching past them in the midday sun.
Job done, we made the bonus discovery that McCann’s family home happened to be beside a statue carved with flying saucers and a Latin welcome message for any visitors from outer space who happened to drop in on Earth. The story signed off with: ‘It’s not known when the McCanns will say au revoir to France before heading to their new home in Bermuda. Before they go, perhaps someone should tell the folk of Arès a little green man has already paid a visit.’
Just prior to our French adventure, a video had emerged of Rangers vice-chairman Donald Findlay QC performing ‘The Sash’, a song regarded by many as sectarian and anti-Catholic, which forced his resignation.
A few weeks later, my boss told me that the Sunday Mail had a photo of John Greig, Rangers PR boss and legendary ex-captain, miming the playing of a flute with a bottle, which had been taken in Canada at a supporters’ club event where sectarian anthems were sung. It was Saturday afternoon and I was sent to Tynecastle, where Rangers were playing Hearts, with an instruction to ask Greig about it as he boarded the team bus. Jostling with autograph-hunting fans, I thrust out the picture and tape recorder and sought an explanation from the man just voted ‘Greatest Ever Ranger’.
He told me, ‘I don’t even remember that picture being taken. It’s ancient history. I was only larking about with the boys. Are you going to put that in the paper? Remember, you’ve got to come back and work with us.’
Little did I know that I was a mere pawn in what would become a battle royal between Rangers chairman David Murray and Sunday Mail editor Jim Cassidy. There could be only one winner. The edited version of the story included the following:
Greig’s ‘performance’ is sure to anger Rangers supremo David Murray, who has attempted to stamp out bigotry at the club.
He [Greig] is the latest to join the growing band of those who have disgraced Rangers. Now John Greig – the man known simply as ‘The Legend’ – joins the Ibrox Hall of Shame.
This additional editorialising was off the mark. Murray was not angry with Greig but furious with Cassidy.
In an unprecedented attack, Murray shot back:
After reading the front page article of the Sunday Mail, one has to question the motivation and integrity of an editor [Cassidy] wishing to print such a story regarding one of the most respected and popular men in Scottish football.
One must question the objective and, in my opinion, this seems to be an effort to destroy not only the good reputation of a decorated Scottish footballing legend, but also to continue to tarnish the reputation of Rangers Football Club.
While the story clearly stated that the photo was nine years old, Greig’s backers argued that its age made it irrelevant and its publication a cheap smear.
The Greig picture exposed interesting differences of opinion in the press. The Herald newspaper, friendly to Murray, sniffily dismissed it with 69 words tucked away on page two, while columnist Bill Leckie of The Scottish Sun wrote:
He [Greig] will, of course, remind us that the offending picture of him was taken nine years ago. I would remind HIM that 1990 was a year after they were supposed to have seen the light by signing the semi-Catholic Mo Johnston.
And anyway, it’s not as if he was naive to the ways of the bigot nine years ago. He’s been a Ranger to his socks for 42 years, captained them for 15, managed them for five, spin-doctored them for 10. He knows EXACTLY what it means when he goes to an official function and joins in the Fenian-baiting.
What angers me is the chairman’s rabble-rousing insistence that it’s those who highlight incidents such as these who cause the problem, not those involved in them. David Murray should be bigger and brighter than that.
Murray flexed his financial muscles by withdrawing Daily Record billboards and removing the names of both papers from ball-boys’ shirts at the next home match. The parent Trinity Mirror board in London knew that if the Greig affair escalated into a club-orchestrated boycott by Rangers fans and the withdrawal of access to Ibrox for its journalists, it would be devastating. The board did not share Leckie’s punchy defence and, a month later, Cassidy was evicted from the editor’s chair.
Greig’s comment, ‘Remember you’ve got to come back and work with us,’ was seen by some as evidence that Cassidy’s axing owed more to pacifying Rangers, protecting the company’s bottom line and maintaining an incestuous business relationship than any moral outrage.
The newspaper group had acquired the publishing rights to the club’s official magazine, which was part of an estimated £1 million of annual, two-way transactions between them and Rangers. This was an obvious conflict of interest. How could their editors independently publish stories about a football club with whom they had vested business interests?
Cassidy was replaced by pugnacious Fleet Street veteran Peter Cox, who then went on to become Daily Record editor. He lasted three years there before he too was forced out – one of
the reasons being that he upset Celtic. Cox ran an infamous front-page headline ‘THUGS AND THIEVES’ over a story about an alleged fracas between a Record photographer and some Celtic players on their 2002 Christmas night out in Newcastle. This caused a boycott of the paper by some Celtic supporters, who also lobbied for Trinity Mirror’s publishing of the club’s official magazine to be cancelled, which all sounds rather familiar – as does the ending. Cox clung on for a few months before he was sacked, to be replaced by Bruce Waddell, a good chum of Murray who now works in PR.
During this time, Murray was treated as a living deity, worshipped by the Ibrox legions and idolised by some sports, news and business journalists – grown men spellbound by bombast and boasts such as vowing to spend £10 for every £5 spent by Celtic. This was the era in which Murray was willing to allow Rangers to lose a chunk of sponsorship income from the Daily Record and Sunday Mail in order to make a point – to show who was boss after the Greig affair.
Armchair business gurus now nod their heads knowingly and explain that actually it had been perfectly obvious to them all along that Rangers was built on a mountain of Murray Group bank debt which would be called in one day. When the hubristic house of cards came crashing down, Murray was forced to meekly surrender debt-crippled Rangers to Craig Whyte for a one-pound coin, and the rest is history.
But while Murray was at the peak of his power, it was no easy task for journalists to take on the dark subject of the Old Firm and bigotry. My eyes glaze over and my ears became deaf at the Old Firm wall of noise that screams from sports pages and broadcasts. How can so many millions of words have been spent debating the tedious minutiae of two football clubs? Even worse than the obsession is the bigotry and hate. I have wondered if Rangers and Celtic are actually a single business that dreamt up a genius marketing wheeze of religious division to grow rich.
From a young age, I learned to despise the twisted glorification of terrorism. Home-grown fans shouting about the IRA or UVF at a football match in Scotland are shameful and cowardly. They never risked a sniper’s bullet or a car bomb. These morons should hop on a ferry to Northern Ireland, where they could try serenading the countless families whose loved ones have died at the hands of terrorists.
Six years after Cassidy’s sacking, BBC Panorama produced Scotland’s Secret Shame, which examined the ingrained nature of sectarianism and violence that blights the Old Firm and its fixtures. Unlike the press, the BBC could not be so easily nobbled by schmoozing or boycott threats.
Murray, ever the showman, responded by flourishing a 10-point plan which Rangers fans must adhere to. One was to wear only ‘traditional team colours’, which was a reference to the club’s earlier production of an orange shirt, explained as a tribute to their Dutch players but widely seen as a nod towards the Protestant organisation the Orange Order. A few months after Murray’s blueprint to beat the bigots, I wandered past a Rangers shop in Glasgow and noticed something remarkable about the brand-new items on display. The shelves and racks were laden with an abundance of newly arrived orange-coloured lines – shirts, baseball caps, even cute little gifts for babies.
Another of the 10 points was to ‘monitor the sale and advertising of retail products to ensure nothing offensive or reasonably perceived as offensive reaches the public’. Had Murray’s 10-point plan not reached the club’s own retail department? Or, as a journalist might cynically suspect, perhaps it had just been a knee-jerk PR exercise? When I phoned a club PR representative for comment, they frostily informed me that someone would talk to the editor about it. Going over a journalist’s head is common, but it is a most counter-productive PR tactic as it only galvanises the determination to get the story out.
A handful of sports journalists, people like Bill Leckie, Graham Spiers, Gerry McNee and others, should be commended for challenging the deep-rooted poison of religious hatred amongst some Rangers and Celtic fans, at a time when even talking about it was taboo.
Eight years after the Greig affair, when the issue of sectarianism had gone mainstream and was finally of interest to politicians and the football authorities, McNee wrote in the News of the World:
Now, as they [Rangers and Celtic] come under massive pressure from domestic and international football governing bodies, the clubs don’t want these people whose money they took and to whom they turned a blind eye when the threat wasn’t there. Do they honestly believe they can just flick a switch and be rid of them?
Sectarianism is like the foot-and-mouth virus. You can’t cut bits out. It has to be eradicated. All the causes must be culled – the music, flags, banners, songs and chants.
A strange and sinister episode that took place inside Ibrox stadium in 1999 came to my attention in 2004. As far as the official record is concerned, a man called William Taube died after falling down stairs during a function at the stadium’s Edmiston suite. Five years later, a witness approached me with some startling claims. Not only was Taube a member of the proscribed Loyalist UVF terror group, but the ‘Blue Mist’ function he attended was a fundraiser with ex-UVF prisoners among the guests. The witness, a bouncer on duty that night, provided a different take to the official version. According to him, Taube had been in a fight with another man which resulted in him falling down stairs and smashing his head. The witness claimed that Taube’s friends then gave chase down the street to the other man, whose fate was unknown. Finally, he alleged that police officers had threatened him by saying if he didn’t keep his mouth shut they would tell Taube’s UVF pals that he was delaying the release of the body.
Scotland has a blind spot with cases of sudden and unexplained deaths. Had Taube died in England, the circumstances would have been subject of a public inquest conducted by a coroner. In Scotland, the equivalent of a fatal accident enquiry only happens at the behest of the Crown Office. For Taube, there was no fatal accident enquiry and no post mortem. The police had not even informed the public about his sudden death. It was as if it had never happened. Not a single word about it was reported until the witness decided to break his silence half a decade later.
I tracked down Taube’s mother and carefully relayed the witness’s detailed claims through her partially opened front door. To my great surprise, she was not in the least surprised, telling me, ‘I said there was a cover-up at the time and still believe it. William’s death wasn’t an accident. I even fell out with the police and told one in particular he was telling us a pack of lies – he seemed determined to get it out of the way quickly. I went to the procurator fiscal’s office several months after William’s death and the woman couldn’t get me out of there quick enough. I insisted on a post mortem but the fiscal said it was only a head injury and that was all there was to it.’
Suddenly a male relative appeared behind her and abruptly ended our conversation with a slammed door and shouted threats. I was firmly told not to come back. To this day, no proper explanation from the authorities has been forthcoming.
Perhaps the official version suited everyone – Rangers, the UVF, the police, the family and politicians of all shades who were fighting to sell the distasteful elements of the fledgling Good Friday Agreement – signed a year earlier – especially the mass release of murderous monsters like Stone and his Republican equivalents.
21
THE WINDOW CLEANER
On a quietly ordinary Sunday morning I was awoken by a window cleaner at my front door.
Pale-faced and unsteady on his feet, he supported his slight frame against the red sandstone wall and politely requested a glass of water. While on his rounds he had become unwell and could not continue. I fetched water from the kitchen and returned to the door. His speech was quiet, stilted and breathy. His demeanour was sheepish and awkward, bordering on the servile. He had another favour to ask. Could I possibly lend him £20? This would allow him to go home and rest rather than stay out working, which he was clearly unfit to do.
I had no reason to doubt what he said, so handed £20 to the wiry, grey-haired little man who expressed i
mmense gratitude. With his thanks came a promise to clean my windows the following day when he was better. The £20 would be an upfront payment for two return visits. He did not come back the next day or at all.
Weeks later I saw him in the distance but he skulked around a corner and took off. A few weeks after that he was back in my street, perched precariously on a first-floor tenement window-ledge, he being a window cleaner with no ladders. I shouted up, ‘You never came back to clean my windows. Where’s my twenty pounds?’ He replied, ‘I’ve no’ got it,’ with an unexpected note of defiance in his voice. I told him to give me whatever payment he was about to get for the job being done, but he did not like this suggestion and angrily demanded me to leave him alone. The brief stand-off ended when a middle-aged woman appeared at the window and cast a look which told me to stop harassing her window-cleaner. Causing him to fall to his death seemed like an overreaction about £20, so I left empty handed, muttering a few insults as I went.
I would later learn this was no ordinary window cleaner. He did not need a glass of water from me or my £20. His claim of illness was a well-polished act of deception. Falling to his death would have been too good for him. The epiphany came two years later as, off on holiday, I eased into the seat of a plane and picked up a copy of the Daily Record. The front-page headline was ‘ODD-JOB MAN IS A RAPIST’ with the sub-heading, ‘Sex beast unmasked in hunt for Angelika’.
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