Secret Diary, Sunday 15th November

Last night I began a new investigation into sectarianism. I'd been lurking around Byres Road, building up the courage to go to the UB Chip when I bumped into the republican bhoys on their way to Jintys. They told me that word on the street was that Lawwell would be willing to call off the dogs only if I came up with something spectacular so in the interests of being allowed back into the fold I've decided that I am going to write the definitive expose on sectarianism in Scotland.

It wasn't long after I'd made this decision that I was sitting at home putting together my column for the Sunday Times (Scottish edition, circulation: quite a few actually but high in spite of the unwanted Scottish supplements) when my phone rang. I answered but no one spoke for a while although I could hear breathing on the other end and just as I was about to run out of patience and hang up, someone rasped, 'If you're interested in the big sectarianism story, start at Satis House'.

Later that night I found myself at the gates of some magnificent gothic house on the south side. It was dark and cold, mist swirling around my feet as I trod carefully towards the door. The house, overgrown with ivy and touched by the foreboding hanging branches of barren trees, seemed lifeless and it took an age from my ringing of the bell to the door slowly opening before a face illuminated by candlelight peered out from the darkness. The servant beckoned for me to follow him through endless musty corridors until at last I was shown into a room which looked as if time itself had stopped. Cobwebs hung from the gloom and a layer of dust inches thick lay on every surface. A great banquet sat mouldering on a table where mice scampered unheeded around the plates and dishes. In the corner sat a ghastly vision of a woman dressed in a faded wedding dress staring at a clock on the wall which was stopped at half past nine on 28th June, 2008. The skeletal face turned and looked at me with half shut eyes and I realised I was gazing at Wendy Alexander.

'Look at me,' she ordered. 'Look at what the Scottish Labour party does to someone like me. I loved it you know, loved it beyond all measure to the extent that I lost many years of my youth piling bodies into a mincer for George Galloway as he gayly cut throats in his constituency office above, and from the mincer I produced the most wonderful pies which I sold at great profit to Rugby Park. It wasn't long before I was noticed and spent four years searching the abandoned underground stations and sewers with Donald Dewar as he sought to discover the secret tunnel connecting Labour party headquarters to Celtic Park; we never did find it. Then with devolution I became a minister and served with Jack McConnell and aided him in burning all record of his education and eradicating anyone who could identify him as being the schoolboy who had supported Rangers as a youth. Yes, I had blood on my hands but it was worth it as McConnell outlived his useful idiot sellby date and the daggers came out in the boardroom at Parkhead. Too many people complained that the catholic bias within Scottish Labour was becoming too difficult to ignore so I was volunteered to rescue the party and in 2007 I was elected leader.
'I wasn't to know though that I too had a shelf life and that my refusal to conduct business from the main stand at Celtic Park was to see my reign cut short. The party I loved from the day I met it, callously betrayed me. I should've known better than to trust Charlie Gordon the moment I noticed his predilection for emerald green shirts at work but trust him I did. Not long after taking him into my confidence he'd set me up for an illegal donation guaranteed to make my position untenable. While he and the Parkhead star chamber toasted their success in fooling the public into believing that with a daughter of the manse at the top, Labour couldn't be institutionally sectarian, I was cast aside to Satis House where I remain to this day, mourning my lost love and plotting revenge on the men who betrayed me. I want you, Spiers, to be my Estella and help me find justice, bitter justice.'

The woman was clearly mad, I didn't believe a bit of what she claimed. For a start, sectarianism is just another word for anti-catholicism, I've learned enough over the years to know this. Everything she'd just told me flew in the face of all my teachings - she must be raving! But something about her tone, her face, the crazy old wedding dress covered in spiders, told me that I had to trust this woman and perhaps with her help I could discover the true secret of the bristling underbelly of sectarianism in Scotland.