Secret Diary, Monday 23rd November

Quiet weekend on the diary front due to me having been taken along with most other Scottish journalists to a re-education camp run by Peter Lawwell at Lennoxtown. It was quite a set up, there was no heating all weekend with Lawwell there in his Siberian Panzer Commander outfit telling everyone that rather than complain about the cold, they should have worn appropriate clothing like he did. All the time he was telling us this, he had Bryan Young by the hair and was lashing at him with his horse whip. That'll heat him up I thought.

We had no contact with the outside world and before any of us could post copy, Lawwell had to personally check our work. Of course he practically does this anyway but never sitting in a draughty training hall decked out with desks and old fashioned word processors while he walked the aisles like an Edwardian teacher at exam time.

The first lesson was in basic football reporting - nothing bad to be said about Celtic and nothing good to be said about Rangers. Well, we're all on board on that one anyway so it was really only revision. Then it was onto a few hours of distraction techniques - what kind of headlines to use elsewhere in the paper to distract from a Celtic defeat, that kind of thing. After fifteen minutes of lunch - gruel - we got down to general stories supporting the catholic church and here he got Joan McAlpine up to read us her column for that weekend's Sunday Times where she waxed lyrical about how parents are falling over themselves to get their children into the East Renfrewshire school, St. Ninians, how wonderful the school was and how it provides terrific 'pastoral care' while not once mentioning the two non-denominational schools which constantly tan its arse in results and general league tables - Mearns Castle and Williamwood, but then, they don't have the great 'pastoral care' of St. Ninians... This piece was so vomit inducing that even I, a great lover of all things catholic had to leave the room to bring up my gruel. At least I think it was listening to her that made me sick although it could also have been the fact that the last time I saw her, McAlpine was being groped silly by that old satyr, Tom Devine who incidentally turned up on Saturday afternoon to lecture us on history revisionism.

Then on Sunday it was all round the telly to watch the Celtic game. What a marvellous time we had when Robson scored that penalty. The cream of the Scottish media were jumping around that room like maniacs, hugging each other and trying to out do each other in their celebrations while Lawwell, wearing his Berchtesgaden lounge suit cast an approving eye over proceedings. Then disaster. Dundee Utd scored twice to beat Celtic causing Lawwell to force us to do press ups while he stomped around, laying into us with his jackboots. He got a hold of one poor unfortunate and ranted for a whole hour, an inch from his face, about how he wanted some kind of article guaranteed to offend the Celtic minded which would get them up in arms and distract them from the result. The idiot then asked what he should write which caused Lawwell to blow his top even more if that's possible and he had us doing squat thrusts while he ranged around the room shouting examples - 'Broken green traffic lights in Larkhall! Pepperami ban at Ibrox! Sash shaped pitch! The hokey cokey! The famine song! Anything by Donald Findlay!'

Then we all gathered on the outdoor pitch to be hosed down in cold water, given our laptops back and sent home.