The Journalist who came in from the Cold

So here I was back in Glasgow having survived another season of madness and the fall out of yet another Rangers title win. The only reason there wasn´t a great round up of journalists and politicians by Lawwell after Celtic lost again was because he´d been rounded up himself and encarcerated with me, Pansy Paul McBride, Peter Kearney, the Traynor and yours truly in Walter Smith´s underground HQ, Silence. We´d spent a miserable month sniping at each other and wondering what was happening during the close season, Lawwell being particularly concerned at Neil Lennon being left alone with the transfer budget by himself, and pondering when we´d be let out, if ever.
We didn´t have long to wait and a few of us were transported in Richard Gough´s Nautilus to Glasgow where we taken blindfold to an underground car park where we were lined up in front of Graeme Souness and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos who were standing in the shadows holding sten-guns and pick-axe handles. Across the other side of the car park stood the Celtic mob, similarly armed and holding one chap with a hood over his head - it became obvious that we were to be traded like some Cold War spies. I was just beginning to twitch with the excitement of being out of Silence and back in Glasgow, my Glasgow where I have a cosy flat full of pictures of Matt McGlone naked and my Martin O’Neil scrapbook, an Elton John collection to rival no other and a safe little job waiting for me thanks to Magnus Linklater. People often wonder why old Magnus allows me to get away with writing about football while not knowing anything about it, rubbishing Rangers to the point of legal action and obsessing about sectarianism in such a one sided manner it’d make Peter Kearney blush, well I’ll get to that soon enough but first I have to tell you of the exchange.

The headlights of one of the cars at the Celtic end were flashed and met by the flash of the full beam from a Rangers end Land Rover then I felt a push in my back and I was forced forward to walk towards the Celtic end with Lawwell, Kearney and Pansy Paul walking by my side. What four prisoners of Celtic are being exchanged to allow our release I wondered and was disappointed to notice just one man walking towards us. I couldn’t see his face at first, the car park was too dark and he walked in shadows which curiously shrouded him even when he passed a neon light. Then I heard a gasp from Kearney and McBride QC and a growl from Lawwell as they understood who it was who was being traded. I looked up too late and missed his face but I could hear the admiring welcome from Souness and his Commandos behind me. Damn, as ever, my lack of observational skills had seen me undone. This could have been the story of my career that didn’t depend on lies and subterfuge and I missed it because I was too busy fluttering my eyes at one of the Celtic Stasi.

I was bundled into the very car where my mystery prisoner had once been sitting and as I was driven home to begin again another malicious campaign against Rangers, I looked at my feet and on the floor of the car lay a dead cricket.