Spiers in Wonderland

Sunday night alone in my flat, naked except for a pink tutu (I’ll get to that later), I was struggling to write something sufficiently buffoonish for my Monday column in the Times before the janitor got there before me. I considered the following:

It was quite an amazing scene at Celtic Park on Saturday. This loud, boisterous, sometimes spotty and always militant group of the club's support known as the Green Brigade were in full flow. Neil Lennon, the Celtic manager, later referred to this chanting, drum-beating mob as "fantastic”, “brilliant” and “not at all creepy, all those youthful boys being led by rapey looking old men who should know better”. You almost forgot they were there because, for the opening 45 minutes, hardly a cheep came out of this singing section which was a worry for the Pacific Quay CSC boys over at BBC Scotland who in a panic, looked out some stock sound from old Celtic matches to add to their highlights package – can’t have Celtic Park shown in a bad light and all that . Then, a series of banners were unfurled, in a carefully-planned ploy that could hardly have been executed better. As each protesting banner was made visible the whole of Celtic Park rose and asked around if anyone could read and let them know what they said, causing quite a commotion.

Suddenly, at the beginning of the second half, having spent the half time period having their arses felt in the toilets by their leaders, their singing started again, and what an atmosphere it created. Great, booming, tribal chants were flung from one end of the stadium to the other, as otherwise dormant supporters were roused by the occasion. I know I was aroused, an erection rose in my corduroys that would have been embarrassingly noticeable were my penis not the length of a fun size Mars Bar.

It gave the Celtic-Caley Thistle match a theatrical backdrop, prompting Lennon's later comments that if it had gone on any longer he’d have got into his tights and pirouetted into the centre circle.

The Green Brigade were protesting about the proposed new legislation being created for the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill. Their perception, in many ways correct, is that having feigned offence for years at the slightest cough from Rangers fans they are now worried that their constant bleating will come back and bite them on the arse and curb their rightful freedom of speech. A freedom of speech that only a few weeks ago I publicly proclaimed in front of a justice committee should be set aside to allow government sanctioned laying into the Huns. I would have got away with it too had it not been for Dr Stuart Waiton who ridiculed me mercilessly and has since sent me mocking texts and emails every night. I also suspect he turned up in the Chip on Saturday night and slipped me a roofy as I woke up on Sunday morning with no memory of my night out and wearing a tutu with no knickers. This freedom of speech business is a complicated area, mired as it has become in a trashy Old Firm game of moral ping-pong, but it is still worth exploring especially as I had no qualms about the freedoms of the Rangers fans but now that it seems the Scottish Executive is going to ignore all advice from eminent Roman Catholic historians, lawyers and media consultants to just target the Prods, it raises all sorts of interesting questions like, now that we’ve realised we can’t sing about the IRA killing and maiming women and children how can we turn the process around?

For instance, it is true that the Green Brigade's songs about Ireland and Irish identity, which have been at the core of Celtic's foundation as a football club only in the past decade when vested interest groups realised there was political capital to made out of it, are to be outlawed. One of their banners said: "Police State - Don't Criminalise Us, Just Them (You Know Who We Mean)". Another said: "Our Songs Are Not Sectarian" although you can’t get much more sectarian than an Irish Republican murder gang who were wiping out communities of Protestants in Cork before anyone had even heard of ethnic cleansing. Further points were made about a collection of chants that the Green Brigade enjoy - one of them even being Ireland's national anthem, an odd choice for a bunch of Scots who’ve barely been five miles from Robroyston - but which the Scottish Parliament might be blundering its way towards outlawing if you believe the shrill paranoid rumours spreading from Peter Lawwell’s office. The most contentious of the chants found among the Celtic support – as well as that of Rangers - is about the IRA. This is where it comes right down to the nub, and where, in truth, a zero tolerance policy probably needs to be deployed. I don’t know why I mentioned Rangers in that sentence but there you go, I’m obsessed with ‘em.

It doesn't sound very convincing these days to argue that, when Celtic fans chant about the IRA, they are in fact referring to an Irish liberation movement of nearly 100 years ago, rather than the terror group of recent times. This is a semantic we can do without. Something pointed out to me on Rangers internet message boards – what, you didn’t think I had the intelligence to think of this one myself?

The very same line of argument was tried a few years ago by some Rangers hardliners over their use of the word "Fenian". Anyone steeped in west of Scotland, Byres Road, middle class, dinner party society disingenuously claims to know that the word is a pejorative term for a Catholic and this was the very basis of my obsessive assault on Rangers some eight or so years ago, but some Rangers fans tried to get round this, saying: "No, no ... in fact we are merely referring to the 19th century political movement in Ireland” when they’re really just talking about Scottish Celtic fans who are devoted to an insidious foreign cause which resulted in the deaths of thousands of British citizens.

That argument disintegrated somewhat when thousands of fans at Ibrox would refer to Martin O'Neill, then the Celtic manager, as a "sad Fenian bastard", when plainly O'Neill was alive in the here and now, and not in the 19th century. And when the Celtic fans sang something similar to Walter Smith claiming he was a “sad Orange bastard”? Well that didn’t happen, nothing to see here, move along now.

In fact, on Saturday at Celtic Park, if you ignore all the chants in support of the IRA then there wasn't a single IRA chant to be heard from the Green Brigade..

It is the one refrain in their repertoire they need to junk, however fleeting it might be at Celtic Park especially if, like me, you listen to Celtic fans’ singing with your fingers in your ears and humming loudly. The Green Brigade, like the Blue Order at Ibrox, is to be encouraged. They are loud and brash and they provide Celtic games with a vivid percussion of pubescent noise that gets not only my blood going but that of most of the Scottish footballing media. There is also an argument that, all across the world, many football clubs' supporters express a cultural or political stance that should not be deemed to be illegal (except of course, Rangers). If these were outlawed then, never mind Celtic, the supporters of Real Madrid and Barcelona would be in deep trouble and we don’t want that – no, the only people we really wanted to see in trouble were the Rangers fans but this proposed new law seems to be going in the wrong direction: both ways!

Where most decent people want to draw a line, and be less libertarian, is where it comes to outright prejudice, principally involving race or religion. Where a football crowd starts to hurl bile in either of these spheres, I'm all for supporters being carted off to the Gulags and shot in the head. But over a club's cultural roots - which many Celtic fans feel strongly - I don't see how it can be muzzled as easily as Elaine C Smith. So remember, Celtic fans singing about blowing up children is cultural, Rangers fans even if they were to sing All Things Bright and Beautiful, is prejudiced.

The Scottish Government needs to be very careful as it meanders towards drawing up this Bill (and this might shock you considering it is the polar opposite of what I said on live broadcast from Holyrood where I was advocating introducing Orwellian thought crimes and demanding that the Rangers fans be punished for what they think). The Green Brigade may have a point: Celtic and Rangers fans could face court charges over offences that are laughable and we can’t have that, we only want Rangers fans facing court charges that are laughable. If I were Roseanna Cunningham, and I would dearly love to be – her taste in pretty dresses is rather quaint and what I wouldn’t give to wear a pair of her bloomers under my corduroys one day, the Government's minister for community safety and laying into the Prods, I would tred very warily indeed.

Once complete I read it over in my head, lips moving as I did but it just didn’t seem right so instead I got out the Martin O’Neil scrapbook and had a wank, jizzing onto a piece of A4 paper which I faxed to the Times and remarkably, they printed it! It seems I can come up with any old toss these days and it’ll still make it past shoogly old Magnus Linklater.