The Ass Menagerie

The relative peace and quiet, common when Celtic are top of the league, came to an end yesterday when John Reid was leaving Hampden after thinking he'd pop in to give the SFA a piece of his mind and George Peat, obviously having had enough of being told what to do by the Celtic Chairman, put on his boxing gloves and chased Reid into the car park where he felled him with one blow. The knock to the head obviously confused Reid who thought he was back on the bevvy again and promptly phoned Dawn Primarolo and told her she was a grown woman and that he was waiting for her in his bedroom. Something must've happened to Peat too as he then went on to go on record ridiculing Celtic's complaints and calling them tiresome but then Peat isn't a man to regret anything, if he did then surely he wouldn't still be roaming the corridors of the SFA with a blunderbuss, hunting a phantom Gordon Smith who he claimed was mocking him by singing from the shadows?

The comedy continued later that night at an entertaining post-match press conference when Neil Lennon was whining about the Accies goal and his own chopped off attempt in the obligatory six minutes of injury time; he asked, 'You tell me, you guys are the neutrals reporting on games... is it fair?'  At which there was a lot of coughing and shifting in seats as every sports writer to a man tried to discreetly stuff their Celtic scarf into their coat pocket.

If you ask me, I don't think Lennon had any complaint about his last minute equaliser as if there'd been any chance of Collum giving it, he would have - Collum knows from painful experience what an Irish Republican siege of his house is like and how much it costs to replace double glazing - but since the ball was so out of play before Celtic scored that it was practically thrown back onto the park from the terracing, Collum would've risked ridicule and censure had he allowed it. But then no one asks me so I have to record it in this diary. Which no one reads. A bit like the Scottish Times really.

Celtic have the additional problem with Collum you see in that being a practising Roman Catholic working in a denominational school teaching of all things, Religious Education, Celtic can't possibly accuse him of sectarian bias. But they do. Like I said, comedy.

After the game and when everyone had filed their copy and gone to the Brazen Head, I heard from a source a little about Lennon's hearing in front of the Disciplinary Committee the other day. Apparently Celtic had taken a big shot legal advisor who was to remain nameless as he is supposedly mortified to be seen devoting his time to such rubbish. Not knowing what 'off the record' means I can tell you that it was Paul McBride QC who shuffled and had the decency to look embarrassed having been forced to attend after being blackmailed by Peter Kearney (apparently gays aren't going to heaven but Kearney can have a special word for those who help the cause). I sympathised with McBride as no one knows more than I how it feels to be sitting safely in the closet only to have someone threaten to out you if you don't do something that goes against the grain; in my case I was in a cosy dresser with Stuart Cosgrove, spying on Willie Haughey's kidnapping of Stephen Purcell when Cosgrove insisted I come out the closet with him to help Purcell - it's all in my diaries from last year if you care to look.

Interestingly, it didn't take long for what happened at the Disciplinary Committee to reach the papers so either Celtic were feeding this information to their pet journalists or the legendary Hampden Mole had struck again. It really is the worst kept secret in Scottish Football, who it is who is leaking all sorts, from panel proceedings to Hugh Dallas's emails and forwarding them to John Reid. Reid however, was still recovering from Peat's right hook when he put together an ill thought out and grammatically poor but anonymous statement on the official Celtic website as he managed to put something out there for the press which didn't include phrases like the 'Celtic story' or my favourite, the 'great Celtic narrative'.

It had been a long day and I was making my way home by bus to the west end when I was approached by two youths and an older man who should really consider the company he keeps as hanging around with such young boys is really creepy. Anyway, it was the Green Brigade and they sat beside me at the back of the no 59, the older rapey looking guy said, 'Spiers, we need to do something about Bill Leckie.'