The Lair of the Green Worm

He was a changed man when he came out. Before descending the staircase, bump, bump, bump, he was Alex Thomson, roving reporter for Channel 4 News, afraid of nothing with one eye on a fabulous reputation gained reporting from war zones throughout the world. Well now he was in Glasgow rubbing shoulders with the denizens of Celtic Park so he hadn’t seen anything yet. When he came back out he had a thousand yard stare and was shaking.
‘He’s quite something, isn’t he?’ I ventured. ‘Charming and hospitable, was he helpful?’ Thomson just pushed past me, taking off his helmet and letting it drop to the floor where it rolled into a corner and came to rest in a stagnant dark pool of what seemed like blood.
‘Come on, Alex. What did he say?’
‘He said it was time to destroy Rangers – come on, we have work to do.’
And that’s how easy it was.

The next few weeks were a joy of working together to create a blog and a Channel 4 News exclusive interview with Hugh Adams who spent the whole interview picking imaginary mice off his sleeves and keeping a close eye on Phil McGillivan who sat in the corner quietly, keeping a lascivious eye on Adams who I must admit, did more drooling than he did persuading anyone he was a reliable source of dirt to be dished on Rangers but Thomson went ahead with it anyway, obviously under the glamour of Lawwell, just like most other reporters in Scotland.

When we next went back to Parkhead it was just after Rangers had trampled Celtic into the dirt at Ibrox. Lawwell was in a foul mood as he’d let Brown and Lennon off their chains on the understanding they’d behave themselves but vomiting in the loos at the Drake pub the night before a game against Rangers isn’t what I’d call behaving themselves.

These were strange times. Well, more strange than usual as Lawwell had gathered together some wildly bug-eyed bloggers who he told us, were going to aid Thomson in hammering the nails into the coffin of those bastards across the city. A couple of weeks later, reading Thomson’s blogs I could sense the unmistakeable stench of McGillivan, McGlone, the Tax Case mystery man and yours truly. This of course meant they would have been laughed out of town if the Scottish press pack had any honour but they don’t so they let Thomson get on with it, figuring that he was a pompous old prig who could do with his reputation being dragged through the east sewers.

Then Celtic won the league but nobody noticed.

Not long after, Lawwell’s agents in the SFA and the SPL sensed there might be a Rangers comeback on the cards as interest in rescuing them was appearing from all around the globe. A quick summons to the Parkhead dungeon and Regan and Doncaster soon put a spanner in those works while all over the country, football writers scratched their heads and wondered how they could ignore this latest outrage. One thought of Lawwell’s rack soon showed them the way and it was left to, of all people, Charlie Nicholas to point out the scandal in the actions of the governing bodies of the Scottish game but as many people read the Express as used to read my work in the Times so that too went unnoticed.

Things were becoming quiet, quieter than Alex Thomson when you ask him who was the Scottish journalist who threatened him. I had been pestering my new Best Friend Forever about this for a while but he refused to tell me, instead showing me his scrap book of photographs from his times spent in various war zones around the world. What struck me as damned odd about them was that in every one bar none, he was sitting in the plush bar of some upmarket hotel. He was still always wearing his helmet and webbing though, as he was in Glasgow. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right decision to cosy up to this impostor but I figured since I’d been getting away with worse for so many years, perhaps it was best if we stuck together. Plus you never know, I might get to kiss him at the end of all this.