Der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg

The Traynor's not as dumb as he seems. Oh yes, to most he'll always just be some blundering behemoth, out of time and lost in a world of young Celtic Minded turks taking over the Scottish football press with their laptops, their iPhones and their years of indoctrination but to me, now at least, he's much more. Sometimes on those dark nights when I'm alone in my bed in the dark, I wonder about him - did he know what he was doing when he tossed Raman Bhardwaj to the Ubiquitous Chip Celtic Supporters Club that is Scotland Today or was it just the act of an ignorant beast which accidentally exposed the greatest horror ever to be planned by Peter Lawwell?

Thanks to recent events though, I was perfectly happy to tag along with him as he was the only friend I had among my peers right now thanks to my little fluff at Ibrox the previous week, a fluff which led me to try to sneak up on Walter Smith only for the wily old fox to overpower me and take me to his secret underwater lair where for some reason he was also holding the Traynor and according to the Traynor's suspicions, he did something to us. I didn't feel any different so didn't share his concerns but as I said, having no other friends I was keen to cling onto the Traynor's considerable coat tails. Especially since we were now flying out to Lisbon to watch the Rangers play Sporting Lisbon.

I sat at the back of the plane, the Traynor being put in a box in the hold as usual, so it was a lonely flight for me and I sat quietly, minding my own business, writing my diaries - lips moving as I read back my astonishing brilliance, erection rising in my corduroys as I marvelled as just how wonderful I am. The rest of the cream of the Scottish media were dotted around the plane, drinking trebles, playing cards in little groups, chatting up the stewardesses and trying to keep their Celtic scarves tucked into their pockets. I only got up once and that was to go to the loo but when I got there Keith Jackson was standing outside.
'After you,' he smiled, too pleasantly for my liking then as I edged past him he pushed me into the tiny room and came in behind me locking the door, pushed my head against the mirror and rattled me roughly up the arse while I squeaked with surprise. Then he sneered, spat on me and went back to the party on the plane.

Into the Unknown

The Traynor's safe house in Dowanhill was a curious place; every room was empty, the floors covered in straw and newspapers. One room did have a drinks cabinet though, strangely well maintained and classy amongst all the chaos and dirt. I slept in a closet where I'm always most comfortable and the day after we'd been transported from Walter Smith's secret underwater lair to Glasgow in the Nautilus, a monstrous iron submarine crewed by Sikh sailors and captained by a mysterious dark captain we saw only in silhouette, we decided to hit Byres Road and shake things up a bit to find out exactly what was going on.


Our first port of call was the Common Rooms where we saw Raman Bhardwaj sitting at a table on his own drinking Stella.
'Beat it squirt,' growled the Traynor and Raman trembled.
'But the Scotland Today republican bhoys are out there looking for me,' he bleated. 'If they find me out in the open then I'm for another ducking in the Kelvin.'
'Boo hoo,' sneered the Traynor, sticking up two fingers at the chubby barman to indicate he wanted two gallons of beer. 'Now beat it before I rip a leg off.
So Raman left and was almost immediately pounced upon by the Scotland Today bhoys who let up a cheer as they hoisted him up and carried him off towards Kelvinbridge, celebrating their diversity as they marched by singing songs about beating up Protestants which is strange given that it was Raman they were carrying.

Heart of Darkness

We sailed for hours without surfacing until finally under the cover of darkness the Nautilus rose from the icy waters of the Clyde and the Sikhs wheeled us again to the airlock, across the gang plank and onto dry land where they dumped us on Clyde Street near the Jamaica Street bridge then with an iron groan, the Nautilus dipped into the river and was gone leaving behind only bubbles to show that it had ever been there. And of course me and the Traynor tied to a pair of beds.

It took the Traynor just a few minutes to gnaw through the straps now that he was fully lucid, well as fully lucid as the Traynor could ever be; and he stood up, flexing his muscles and looking at me in a damned odd way.
'Something happened to us in there Spiers,' he growled. 'I don't know what or how but I do know that Walter Smith doesn't keep us tied to beds and unconscious for days for no reason.'
'What do you think he's done? Brainwashed us?' I chirruped.
'No, everyone knows there is no decontaminating a brain where Lawwell has got his claws into it so the old fox would never attempt that. No, it must be something else...'
And just as he said this a great fleet of cars drove past, Irish tricolours flying from the windows, horns tooting, sectarian abuse being hurled at passers by.
'What day is it?' I asked.
'Sunday,' said the Traynor. 'Celtic must have beaten Rangers otherwise these guys in their cars would be at home beating up their wives. Come on Spiers, we must get out of here and lay low while we figure out what's happened to us.'
So the Traynor stopped a passing taxi by grabbing its rear bumper until it slowed down enough to toss me in and he got in after me and roared at the driver to take us to his safe house in Dowanhill which was handy as I'd been wondering how on earth I was going to get back to the west end from here.

Silence

For days I drifted in and out of consciousness and during my few waking moments I could only make out the eerie blue glow of an operating theatre within Walter Smith's secret underwater lair and the occasional half hearted moan from the Traynor who I sensed was tied to a table beside me then I'd drift into unconsciousness again and there would only be silence.

Silence, it was well named because during those faint times I was awake, fuzzy as they are now in my memory, I couldn't make out any sound (save for the Traynor) but a constant white noise. Blue glow, white noise - all I needed next was something red to come along and it'd confirm that I was in some hellish Rangers den. It didn't take long. My final dozing moments in Silence were interrupted by unseen hands wrapping me in bandages and wheeling me, still strapped to a bed, along corridors with red warning lights flashing in silence (no sirens in here, oh no) until we came to an air lock where our mysterious guards handed us over to what looked strangely like a Sikh navy! These men with their great whiskers and turbans were dressed in navy whites and took us through the air lock into a monster of a submarine, shaped like a denizen of the deepest ocean, iron tentacles clinging onto the sea bed, spotlights shining through the reinforced glass and illuminating the approaching figure of Walter Smith.

He pressed something into my hand, turned and was gone as the air lock closed and we disappeared into the bowels of what I would later learn was the Nautilus.

Whirlpool's End

I strained to hear anything that would give me a clue to my whereabouts because when I first came to, I had no idea I was in Silence. So far beneath the ocean though, there is only silence. Then I heard a grunting noise from behind me, I turned and there was the Traynor, unconscious for now but stirring. I racked my brains to remember if we were on good terms but concluded that with a sociopath like the Traynor you don’t take any chances so I shuffled along the floor as far as I could to get out of his reach. Oh yes, I forgot to say, we were tied up and I suppose I should mention why.


Having been one of the few witnesses to the creation of Frankenlennon, I was sworn to secrecy by Lawwell. Lawwell’s favoured mode of swearing journalists to secrecy is to phone their editors and threaten to withhold access to Celtic. His second is to beat us senseless with a horse whip while dressed in his favourite Schutzstaffel fatigues – if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky he does it naked, something he’s only started doing recently when Peter Kearney came on board, before then the sodomy was kept to a minimum. So I kept mum and watched with smug delight as Lennon gangled around the training ground, having difficulty coping with the new body and as he rolled around the ground, mouthing obscenities I observed that no one seemed to notice the change, such was Lennon’s behaviour in the past.

I carried the smugness with me all the way to Ibrox on Thursday night where Rangers were playing Sporting Lisbon. I was under strict instructions from Lawwell that no matter what the result, I was to lay into Rangers in my match report. Unfortunately for me my piles were giving me jip and I missed the match. Not only that, I missed an impromptu press conference where Walter Smith came out with something astonishing and I didn’t have a bloody clue what it was! I quickly got a hold of Roddy Forsyth and suggested he come back to mine for a quicky and perhaps share notes over a post-coital cigarette but the bitch refused which I suppose was for the best given the way the piles are acting up.

With my editor’s last warning still ringing in my ears, I was becoming increasingly frantic and decided that there was only one thing for it, I was going to have to kidnap Walter Smith and force him to repeat what he had said, beat it out of him if necessary. And that’s how I ended up bound and gagged and lying on the floor of Silence, Walter Smith’s secret under-water lair.

The Post-Modern Prometheus

Silence. Two hundred and nineteen metres below the Corryvreckan between Scarba and Jura, a place known only as Silence. This was where I fetched up, tired and groggy after finding myself yet again reluctantly caught up in one of Peter Lawwell’s lunatic schemes, this time to fit Neil Lennon’s head onto a monstrosity composed of body parts stolen from the Forensic Department at Glasgow University. The horrible secret Lawwell had been keeping for weeks now and which explains his silence recently - everyone thought Celtic weren’t whining about conspiracies for so long because they were winning for a change but it turns out it was due to Lennon being decapitated in a freak training ground accident, the message that he was dead not getting through to his body which caught a taxi to Ashton Lane and went on a bender in Jintys before disappearing with the Republican Ghirls for a week of degrading sex (we’d later find they were delighted as it saved them a fortune in brown paper bags). Lawwell, left with just the head, summoned Peter Kearney who always seems to have a smart answer for everything and Torquemada used his super powers to blame Protestants for the accident and keep the head alive by encasing it in chewing tobacco until Jeanette Findlay could steal the body parts from the Glasgow University morgue. It was reported that security guards caught her in the grounds making off with the bodies but just assumed that she was taking the usual gang of students back to her west end boudoir for a gang bang – she’ll lift her petticoats to anyone, no matter how many, the filthy slut. So lucky for her then and she made a clean getaway – well, as clean as that grimy slattern could possibly achieve.

Lawwell and Kearney worked through the night and stitched together a decent enough body and although the torso was that of a woman, breasts and all, the finished result did actually seem to be more athletic than the real Lennon. Then John Reid turned up and summoned the demons Wormwood and Screwtape who welded the head on and injected the body with demon blood giving it life. As Lennon’s head lifted and black drool dripped from his mouth, he spoke in tongues and gibbered like a maniac, everyone present feared they’d made some awful mistake but Lawwell and Reid just smiled at each other and said, ‘perfect’!

Dead End Street

John Reid must be slipping back into old habits as news reaches me that he was straight on the phone yesterday to Stewart Regan demanding clarification on why Mark Wilson wasn't red carded. When it was pointed out that Mark Wilson was a Celtic player and that the referee had followed Regan's instructions not to send off a Celtic player before such an important match against Rangers, Reid mumbled and hung up, presumably to phone Dawn Primarolo or something.

I wasn't at the game, spending my day on twitter instead where legions of my fans have been asking me to investigate the singing of Penny Arcade by Rangers fans. So I did what any pioneering investigative journalist and anti-sectarian campaigner would do, I immediately tweeted something ridiculous on Twitter. Yes, that's the way to get the message out there. Unlike Jack McConnell who is sign posting the direction another Labour Scottish Executive will take once in power when he complains of the SNP not taking anti-sectarianism seriously. The thing is, Joe Devine was telling me at the weekend when he hosted a naked card school at his mansion on Saturday night, using Jason Allardyce as the card table, that his church isn't too keen to resume the old McConnell summit on sectarianism as it sailed too close to the wind on the subject of denominational schools the last time and they fear they may not get away with refusing to participate if schools is brought up this time round. Everyone did agree though that Jack was very cute in citing 'vested interests' as if a Protestant establishment is putting pressure on efforts to protect the poor downtrodden Catholics. I found it telling that my card school friends all laughed when I mentioned the 'Protestant establishment'. Jack also ensured that his pets in the media quoted that lunatic, Peter Kearney, director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office who said that hostility to Catholics in Scotland was 'deep, wide and vicious' although I'll wager that it's not as vicious as Kearney when he puts on his robes and takes to the sky in the guise of Torquemada, Protestant hating, gay bashing super hero, responsible for more division in Scottish society than anyone else I can think of right now.

I kept my thoughts to myself of course as it wouldn't do to be voicing concerns about the side I've chosen; my livelihood depends on that side and my health too whenever Peter Lawwell gets the bit between his teeth. So I played to lose at poker to keep old Joe happy and made sure I stubbed out my cigar on Jason Allardyce's arse.

The Downfall of Brigadier Bill

Unfortunately for me, although it looked great from the ground and confirmed Leckie's new reputation as a swashbuckler, he had no idea how to work the damned balloon and we fetched up floating around the sky for days until we ran out of fuel and happenstance brought a southerly wind which blew us over Govan on the day of the old firm match and tempers fraying due to hunger and exposure, I let slip that I didn't have a problem with the antics of the Celtic fans no matter how vile their behaviour and this sent Leckie over the edge. Well, it sent me over the edge as he reached for his sword and I panicked and fell out of the basket. My luck was in though and my ankle got caught in the grounding rope and stopped my fall but I was left hanging there, upside down, the kilt flapping around my face just as the balloon passed the press gantry in the Ibrox main stand but as I say, no one noticed because Celtic had scored and the impartial Scottish football journalists were all screaming and hugging each other in celebration.
We finally came to outside the Broomloan Stand which was bad luck for Leckie because he was just about to take a swipe at me with his sword when the gates opened and out swarmed the Celtic fans who chased him all the way to Anniesland where I hear he was only saved by the timely intervention of a green and grey armoured car so Lawwell's stasi got a hold of him then.
A few days later I was lurking around Parkhead hoping to goad Neil Lennon into another outrageous rant against Rangers when I heard muffled screams. Further investigation led me to Lawwell's underground bunker where I could hear the huffing of an old steam contraption drowning out the sobs of a broken man. I glanced in the door and there was Leckie, strapped to a table with Lawwell and Peter Kearney both standing naked behind him, curiously for all his beliefs, Kearney was not only wearing a condom but also harbouring gay tendencies given Leckie's unfortunate position - oh well, there's always something buried deep within the most bitter homophobes. There was certainly going to be something buried deep within Leckie in the next few minutes but then he screamed, 'Alright! Alright! I'll do it! A pro-Celtic puff piece to make up for my past indiscretions and I promise I'll never go against the Celtic machine again,' and at that he passed out.

I managed to slip out of the bunker without being noticed but as I passed the manager's office I could hear a hissing sound and wondering if was Lennon letting the air out of his blow up doll, I barged through the door shouting 'Caught you again, you randy devil!' only to find Lennon sitting behind his desk, staring at the ceiling with red eyes and black drool dripping from his chin.
'Neil, Neil, oh don't tell me you've been possessed by a demon again,' I cried and rushed towards him.

The Exploits of Brigadier Bill

And so it was that I accompanied Brigadier Bill Leckie as he boozed and caroused around Glasgow and every day began the same way, with a trip to some park to line up against Celtic fans with a grievance and what other type is there as Leckie used to say? He'd dispense with them in good order and usually defend himself against a few more random attacks over the remains of the day and so it was on the way to Byres Road where I planned to show him the delights of the trendy west end. I didn't think it through though. I took him to the Chip and as the door closed behind us, you'd think someone had turned the volume off the entire pub as the Pacific Quay CFC and the Scotland Today Active Column all turned and glared at us. Before you could say swords at the ready they were all attacking him but Leckie produced a virtuoso display and jumping from table to bar and swinging from chandeliers, he ultimately triumphed with various Celtic Minded media types fetching up inside barrels, thrown through windows and hanging from coat hooks but the noise alerted the denizens of Jintys across the cobbles and they are a rougher lot than the Ashton Lane pussies who drink in the Chip so when they came gallumphing up the stairs Leckie turned to me and said, 'time to cut and run Spiers, to the roof!'.
And there on the terraced roof of the Chip, astonishingly, was a basket blowing flames into a great hot air balloon which swayed in the wind as we clambered into the basket and just as the Jinty McGintys Republican Bhoys appeared on the roof, letting up a great halloo at the sight of us, Leckie leaned over, cut the grounding rope with his sword and we were gone.

The Adventures of Brigadier Bill

Few people can say that they've seen the grandeur of Ibrox Stadium from above and even fewer can say they've seen it while swinging upside down from a hot air balloon. Naked. Well, I was wearing a kilt but of course that doesn't provide much cover when you're upside down so as I swooped past the press gantry, all of my colleagues in the football press would've got an eyeful of the Graham Spiers undercarriage if they hadn't been jumping up and down with joy as Scott Brown had just scored the Celtic equaliser.

I'd been reluctantly involved in yet another hair brained scheme of Donald Findlays, the jovial old sociopath was concerned at rumours of a News of the World expose on a Rangers player to unsettle the team before the old firm match and persuaded me that it was in my interests to find out what was going on and who was mischief making. So disguised as a male model for some dodgy photo shoot with the Flower of Scotland girl, I mingled with a dozen other guys in kilts and infiltrated the News of the World office and just as the male models were beginning to sniff the air and wonder what the smell was, for some reason eyeing me up as the culprit, I decided to sneak into the cleaner's cupboard and weigh up my options. While in there though I came across the janitor having lunch and astonishingly he thanked me for letting him write my match reports over the last few months and offered me a sandwich to show his gratitude. I suppose I should've noticed that all of my lovingly written pieces weren't appearing in the Times but since even I don't pay to read it online or buy the paper, I hadn't.
At length, whatever stench had been bothering the models, began to choke the janitor and he had a coughing fit and had to leave the cupboard so I did too in order to avoid bringing attention to myself (as if fleeing a cleaning cupboard in a corduroy kilt with a spluttering man in overalls wasn't bad enough) and as I did, I came across Bill Leckie who'd just been dropping off his latest copy for the Sun and was preparing himself for going back out onto Queen Street by buckling on his sword.
'Hi Bill, where are you off to with that impressive side-arm?' I asked, he didn't seem surprised to see me.
'Oh just heading for home, I have a busy schedule of internet dating ahead of me and if I want to get home in one piece then I need the trusty blade at my side - ever since I laid into Celtic in my column I've been challenged to so many duels by Celtic fans that I barely have enough time to sext anymore. Indeed I'm just off to Glasgow Green to meet a couple of the Green Brigade just now, fancy being my second?'
It was just too tempting, perhaps through Leckie I could find out what the News of the World scandal was going to be.
'I'm your man, Bill' I chirped and off we went but we'd only got a few yards from the News International hub before we were attacked by two surly youths bearing knives. Leckie took the first thrust in his stride and parried, cutting off the fellow's hand at the wrist. I screamed like a girl as the blood jetted over my kilt and Leckie pinked the second youth on the chin, holding him en guard and asking what this was all about.
'Ye're nuthin' bit a bigoted hun basturd' he spat at Leckie with absolutely no irony whatsoever before Leckie lowered his sword and ran him through.
'See what I mean Spiers? I get that, oh say, a dozen times a day? And that's just the random attacks, I also get the ones like this one we're going to where they have the decency to call me out and we meet for pistols or swords on the Green. I'm telling you, anyone would think Celtic encouraged these morons in an effort to put journalists off writing anything derogatory about their team - well no one silences Brigadier Bill Leckie, best swordsman in all of the Scottish football press!'
And he went on like that for the remainder of our journey to Glasgow Green, lopping off the odd limb of random Celtic supporters who attacked him as we walked.

Blow the Bloody Doors Off

I’ve been to Murray Park many times but only in the last two years has a more sinister aspect about the place become known to me. It was here last season that I watched in astonishment as the Rangers scientists probed Neil Lennon and discovered he was an android although such was his behaviour then that nobody noticed that wily old Walter Smith had switched Lennon for the robot. It was also here that I gazed in wonder at the careful study Rangers made of Peter Kearney after it had been discovered that he was the Torquemada super freak flying around Scotland wreaking havoc in the name of the Catholic church. Of course Kearney escaped and the chase led to his Inquisition 4 space station which I’ve hinted at before but the full lurid story of what went on up there will have to wait for the publication of my collected diaries in the near future.

My visit this time to Murray Park though was less grand, fallen on hard times Rangers had sold off most of the secret underground lair where Martin Bain and Donald Findlay used to plot the saving of the western world from Lawwell’s fiendish plans and my meeting with Bain this time took place in the canteen where in the background, a man in an emerald green tie checked the dishes being given out to players and counted the beans to make sure no one got any over the dozen allowed.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked Bain.
‘That’s the man from Lloyds Bank,’ replied Bain wearily.
‘I’m sure I recognise him,’ I noted and Bain said he wasn’t surprised as he’s a regular in the VIP section at Parkhead.
We sat in silence after that until we were joined by Souness who’d been changing out of his rally driving overalls and shortly behind him strolled in Donald Findlay, resplendent in evening wear and top hat, diamond topped cane tapping the floor as he sat down beside us.
‘So what’s this all about?’ I asked, looking around at these faces who had sworn off ever helping me again after my usefulness to them had come to an end at the end of last season when I was left holding the can for Rangers winning the league.
‘It’s a big weekend ahead of us Spiers,’ said Bain. ‘We’re playing Celtic and although not under confident, we have heard rumblings of a plot to discredit one of our players in an effort to unsettle the team.’
I laughed, ‘Surely you should be used to this by now? Why this happens every time you meet Celtic, you can set your watch by it!’
‘Oh we’re only too aware of that,’ said Donald Findlay, leaning into the table and speaking in a barely audible whisper, all the while glancing up at the man from Lloyds. ‘Yes, we’re only too well aware of that but this time we feel that it’s time for pre-emptive and punitive action – our enemies will never suspect it coming from a Rangers who are in a position of weakness. Your office is in the same building as the people who are hatching this scheme so we need you to be our inside man. We need you to be our way into the News of the World.’
‘Me?’ I squawked, arse dancing a tango at the thought of it. ‘Christ, I barely make it in and out of that place with my dignity intact as it is, I’d be hopeless undercover, I’m just not made out for it.’
Bain fixed me a look that froze my soul, ‘You didn’t seem to have a problem working undercover for Lawwell on HMS the Walter Smith that time you betrayed Stuart McCall. We brought him back you know, Jorg Albertz demon hunter and master of the black arts brought him back from the dead and we installed him over at Motherwell, we could take you to see him if you like?’
I recalled my close shave with McCall in Machrihanish and shivered.
‘No thanks, I’ll do what you like, just don’t let onto McCall that you know where I am – bad enough that my editor is wondering why I wasn’t at Fir Park for your last game there, the bastard docked my wages when he found out, gave ‘em to the janitor again. Let me know what you need me to do and I’ll be your man.’

And that was how I fetched up dangling by the ankles from a hot air balloon above Ibrox, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Self Preservation Society

If I hadn’t been caught in a west end gay bar with Camp Freddie Ljungberg by Graham Grant, the Daily Mail’s Celtic Minded homophobe and so called political editor who told Jason Allardyce who of course is Bishop Devine’s cock puppet and once stepped out with my wife in a hissy fit over my snubbing him one night in the Polo Lounge. So Allardyce whispered of my indiscretion to Devine who informed Lawwell and he filed it away in his blackmail folder for future use. Well if it hadn’t been for all of that, I wouldn’t have been hounded by the Lawwell’s Stasi and eventually cornered on Great Western Road after being dropped off by Andrew Smith at the end of a fabulous evening of burning crosses on the lawn outside El Hadje Diouf’s new house in Bothwell. You should have seen us, it was most exciting with Craig Burley or the Clansman as he now likes to be known, in his pointed bedsheet hood, whipping the Scottish footballing press into a frenzy as everyone donned the robes and hurled rocks through Diouf’s windows. Then the police arrived, mob handed and ready to make some arrests but upon discovering that it was only a Rangers player we were attacking, sent us off with wink, telling us not to do it again and one of them, a Chief Inspector even telling someone that he’d see him down the Knights on Saturday.
After all that, Andrew Smith offered me a lift and after stopping briefly at the side of the M8 to defile me, let me out on Great Western Road, I was then spotted by the Stasi and just as I was about to be bound, gagged and taken to Lawwell, Souness roared up in his blue mini and that’s how I ended up being driven to Murray Park in the middle of the biggest storm to hit Glasgow since, well, since Diouf arrived.

On Days Like These

I was buffeted from side to side, glad to be wearing a helmet as our little blue mini bumped down the steps at Park Circus followed by the white mini and the red mini and a little bit behind them, the green and grey armoured cars of Lawwell’s Stasi. Over kerbs and through red lights we went, screeching into Sauchiehall Street and racing the length of the road before mounting the pedestrian precinct and onto Buchanan Street, leading the Stasi cars a little circular dance as the minis orbited the tube station before veering off down a lane towards Queen Street Station.
‘You’re not going into the station, are you?’ I screamed at Souness just before he clipped the automatic doors entering the station, the other minis and the Stasi still tailing us.
‘Watch this,’ smiled Souness as he pulled the mini into a tight turn towards the George Street exit, reaching out the window and grabbing a coffee cup from an unsuspecting commuter then spilling it over me as we tumbled down the steps onto George Street.
‘Didn’t think that one through,’ he laughed as I squealed from the pain of a scalded lap.
Our little red white and blue minis then pirouetted around George Square and just as the sirens of the Stasi cars who had tailed us from Great Western Road seemed to be catching up and my bowels were carrying out the usual polka in anticipation of what Lawwell would do to me if I was found consorting with Souness again, we darted past the cenotaph and turned hard towards Ingram Street while behind us members of the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos appeared from nowhere pulling a ramp out the back of a truck - the Stasi cars couldn’t swerve or stop in time and they went hurtling up the ramp and twisted in the air before crashing into the main doors of the City Chambers.
‘Those Celtic goons will be quite at home in there,’ chortled Souness as we relaxed and made our way towards Murray Park and safety.