I, Lennon Part 4: Hugh Are You?

After the intriguing meeting in Martin Bain's office at Ibrox I was deposited on Byres Road by Stuart Cosgrove who deigned to slow down his batmobile before kicking me out this time. I got back to the flat and had stuck on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and was bopping around in my corduroy underwear to All the Girls Love Alice when the phone rang. Letting the answer machine take it, I continued to nod my head to the music while admiring my reflection in the mirror when I heard the wife sobbing a message into the machine, something about reconciliation but I ignored it, having too many important issues on my mind like how to work for Peter Lawwell and Martin Bain simultaneously without letting Bain know I was secretly planning to betray Rangers the whole time?

Things were quiet the next day as I loafed around the Celtic training facility at Lennoxtown with my notepad, watching Neil Lennon quietly steam in the middle of the park as his players tripped and gangled their way around the pitch like the Keystone Cops on acid. That night however, things took a more sinister turn as Rangers struggled at Tannadice and a three line whip from Lawwell arrived on every journalist's mobile phone regarding Kyle Lafferty. Big Kyle had been blootered from behind by Kovacevic who received his marching orders and Lawwell, never one to miss an opportunity, saw this as another chance to rally the faultering Celtic support in a campaign against the Northern Ireland protestant and distract them from the real issues affecting the club. Why, only today I'd heard of the recent meeting Lawwell had with various fan groups where the big talking point wasn't the wholesale destruction of the team by Tony Mowbray but the fact that Celtic had poppies embroidered on their jerseys for armistice day. I don't know if this was Lawwell deflection or supporter group lunacy - perhaps both, but it was sheer genius nonetheless.

So we got to work on the Lafferty incident and Hugh McDonald was the first away with his match report but little did we know that high above us on the roof of Tannadice, crouched Stuart Cosgrove, his batcomputer hacked into the Dundee Utd mainframe. He intercepted McDonald's piece and was waiting for him as Hugh went to the loo. As McDonald walked through the door the first thing that met him was a clenched black fist straight in the nose and he wet himself as his knees buckled beneath him and he fell to the floor. Holding his face and looking up, McDonald bawled, 'What the fuck was that all about? Look at me, I'm covered in blood and piss! You punched me, you bastard!'
'No Hugh, I've only been adjudged to have lashed out at you, there's a difference as well you know,' growled Cosgrove from underneath his cowl and then from his cape he produced a cattle prod and stuck it in McDonald's arse and there was a terrible noise as Hugh's bowels went.
'Oh Christ, now I'm covered in shit and piss and blood - what was that for?' whined McDonald.
'That was to show you what a real cattle prod feels like, if you want to know why then look to your latest campaign against Lafferty and Rangers in your Herald article - this isn't rocket science you know McDonald, eventually you'll get the message.'
And with that Cosgrove turned and disappeared out the door in a flap of leather as I stood unseen at the back of the toilet, peeking over a cubicle where only moments before I'd been receiving a roasting from Roddy Forsyth.