Paint Your Wagon

The screaming was awful, unrelenting and poor wee Pat Nevin was shaking in fear listening to it.  No we weren't in Lawwell's torture pits underneath Hampden, we were waiting patiently to go for a pint down Byres Road with Tom Devine but he had paid for one of his trollops to visit first and refused to get dressed until she'd finished him off.

'What's my name bitch?  What's my name you little girl?' came the shouts from upstairs as Nevin shuffled nervously beside me.

'Your name is Angela Haggerty,' whimpered Devine.

'Tell me my name, come on you pussy, ride me hard and tell me my name!'

'Angela Haggerty, oh please don't stop.'

'What's my fucking name, old man?  Say it now or I swear I'll fuck your fucking cock off you prick!'

'Oh gawd, your name's Haggerty, Angela Haggerty!' climaxed Devine.

There was silence for a moment and then Devine appeared dressed for the evening, walked downstairs and straight past us, motioning for us to follow him.

'Who was that?' I asked.

'Haven't the faintest idea,' he said and slammed the door.

 

As we struggled to keep up with Devine all the way down Hyndland Road - he walked fast for such an old bluffer, even when he slowed down to swig from his hip-flask we still couldn't keep up with him - we heard a commotion and thundering down the cobbled streets came a horse drawn carriage with some people in the back making an awful din. 

'Here we are gentlemen, our transport!' guffawed Devine and put a hand out.  The cab slowed down a little and Devine hoiked Nevin on top with the rest of the excess baggage and grabbed me by the back of the trousers before catching grip of a handrail and hoisting us both on board.  Sitting there playing all manner of wind instruments were my old friends Alex Thomson, Paul Holleran, Gary Allan, Gerry Hassan and sitting in the back of the cabin adjusting her petticoats having just given the old Satyr Devine the ride of his life, Angela Haggerty.  Oh well, I thought, if I'm going to jump on any bandwagon then this is the one for me.

 

We were dropped off at the Drake where Devine ordered up a flaggon of port for himself and gin for everyone else, damning the barman's eyes as he did.  'Now where's Gerry Hassan?' he roared.  'Not taking a shower I'll wager, eh Spiers?  Not taking a shower?' and he choked on his own laughter and vomited over Holleran's head.

 

I looked around the room to see if Neil Lennon was in as nights like this were only fun if he was there shoving around his latest girlfriend but all I could see was little Jimmy Osmond sitting alone in the corner.  This reminded me to take my medication and within twenty minutes I was wondering what on earth I was doing in the company of such vile and bigoted lunatics.  I was soon to find out.

National Lampoon's Viable Threats

Exhausted by a day of winding up Rangers fans on Twitter I sought the solitude of my converted farmhouse in Ayrshire.  Taking in the fresh country air I detected a strong whiff of shit; ah, the farmer must be spreading manure on the fields again, I thought but yet again I was wrong.  No, what I could smell that day was the nasty niff of another one of Alex Thomson's blogs on Rangers - he really is putting me to shame with his obsession, something I'd need to remedy soon. 

 

My mobile phone rang in my pocket, startling me and removing me from the reverie of a peaceful few moments by the sun speckled fields.  'Spiers, it's Alex Thomson, fearless reporter from Channel 4 News' thundered a voice from my phone.  'Listen, my latest blog has caused a sensation - Special Branch have been onto me and told me they have intercepted viable threats to my safety... and yours!'

That certainly woke me up, this is what I'd been looking forward to for the past three years: vindication of my Celtic Minded credentials, surely now I would be offered another proper job in a Scottish newspaper?

'I've been advised our lives are in danger so Special Branch have told us to walk slowly to a bus stop, get on a public bus and take our time strolling through Glasgow city centre where they'll meet us, not in Pitt Street as that's too public but in a Starbucks on Buchanan Street.  You got that?  Can I trust you to meet me there for a personal safety briefing by Special Branch?'

I confirmed that I'd be there as soon as I could and climbed back into my car but only after fetching my Martin O'Neill scrapbook from the attic first - just in case I was rushed to a safe house.

 

Arriving at Starbucks I found Thomson sitting in a corner, his back to the wall; he was wearing full body armour and a helmet over camouflaged fatigues.  'Taking the threat seriously then Alex?' I scoffed.

'Don't scoff,' he snarled.  'Special Branch should be here any minute, I'd sit with my back to the wall if I were you, you never know when you might be assaulted by one of the underclass Rangers fans, perhaps with a stilleto blade smeared in Marmite or Anthrax.'

I sat down and as I did, we heard a commotion from outside and we both gazed in astonishment as Special Branch arrived clinging onto the back of a speeding police van.  As it turned quickly and skidded to a halt they all lost their grip and came flying off the back of the van, skimming across a painter's table covering themselves in wallpaper paste before crashing through the Starbucks window and coming to rest in a sack of coffee beans.

'Ullo, we're Special Branch, here to advise you on how to remain safe when presented by a viable threat by football fans,' said the first man as he brushed himself down and called for a skinny latte.

'Not football fans,' muttered Thomson.  'Rangers fans.'

'Oh sorry sir, I thought for a moment we were talking about Celtic fans.'

'Outrageous!  It's outrageous that you could for one moment believe that Celtic fans could be capable of this type of vicious campaign of intimidation and violence!  No my good man, it's Rangers fans and Rangers fans alone who are responsible for all the ills of society!'

This was going too far, even for a seasoned Ranger-hater like me but I kept my counsel and watched how this was going to proceed.

 

'Okay sirs, this is what you do if you're faced with suspicious packages in the post.  First you get a room in your house big enough to hold a party.  Then you hold a party.  Invite all of your friends and family into that room, drinks are optional, and once they've all arrived, well that's when you take a hammer and start bashing the package and if that don't reveal if there's something naughty in there then I don't know what will.'

I goggled at this lunacy but Thomson was captivated, was recording it on his digital pocket recorder and clearly had an erection which was peeking between his webbing and body armour.

'So tell me,' began my excited friend.  'What could a suspicious package possibly contain?  Could it be a machine gun smeared in shite?  How about a sword coated in rohypnol?  A dwarf?  Yes, a heavily armed dwarf!  A Heavily armed dwarf coated in rohypnol who's soiled himself - do you think that could be possible?'

'Erm,' contemplated the Special Branch officer.  'Um,  well I suppose anything's possible.  I mean, we've never dealt with suspicious packages containing erm, what was it again, a heavily armed dwarf full of rohypnol carrying a machine gun coated in shite?  It's unlikely but it's possible.'

'So it's possible!  See Spiers, this is what investigative journalism is all about!  Stick with me and we'll get you a better job than an online column about golf or whatever it is you're doing these days...  Does anyone read that by the way?'

Crazy Horses

'We'll go round the table then;  Jay from the Osmonds, you say you were threatened by Charles Green in Las Vegas in 1975, is this true?' asked Alex Thomson, his eyes flashing with journalistic zeal.

'Yes it's true, Charles Green threatened me in Las Vegas in 1975.'

'There we have it Spiers, add that to the list - how many do we have now, two including you?'

'Four if we include Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford but maybe they should count as one because they told me that when Ally McCoist ambushed them in the Hollywood Hills last year it was really just the one attack but on two people.  Hitting pensioners, it really is the lowest of the low...' 

 

I was at Alex Thomson's pre-production meeting for his Channel 4 exclusive, working title: Dirty Orange Bastards and was wondering how Thomson could converse with imaginary people who were products of my own narcissistic personality disorder, especially since I'd been seeing less of the Osmonds since I began my medication, while Stallone and Ford has disappeared off radar altogether.  Perhaps my disorder was catching?  It is a particularly nasty condition which gives the sufferer delusions of grandeur and extreme paranoid thoughts which can lead to excessively sociopathic behaviour.  I've been noting my own experiences of it in my diary over the past three years ostensibly as a form of therapy but deep down I know that it is really just so that I have on record all the strange events that occur around me that are the fault of Rangers.  And the Masons.  We must never forget the Masons.  Harrison Ford told me that.

 

It all began after I'd crept out from behind the curtains at Schoenhausen, Peter Lawwell's country retreat, and promptly barged in on Allan Rennie in his office at the Daily Record. 

'So, you were behind the curtains when all this happened?' he asked, stroking his chin.  'And you say Stewart Regan was inside a box?'

'A box, yes.  It would certainly explain why he's been missing for the past month or so especially after he vowed to kick start another assault on Rangers more than four weeks ago.'

'And no one knows if he's alive or dead you say?'

'No, he's both alive and dead!'

'Look Spiers, I have no time for this outrageous nonsense, I employ Keevins for that kind of thing, what makes you think I'd want to have anything to do with you at the Daily Record?'

'Because I hate Rangers, don't you see?  This is my spiritual home!'

'Yeah, join the queue mate.  No, I don't see me having any need for you or your quantum mechanical conundrums.  Be off with you, begone, back to your online column with the Herald.  Does anyone read that by the way?'

And as I left I heard him laughing to himself as if I hadn't heard that joke a hundred times before.

A Regular Belasco

 

I was hiding behind the drapes in the library at Schoenhausen, Lawwell's country retreat, when a curious thing happened: Lawwell had a box wheeled in and as the assembled lawyers stood around nervously sucking on their cigars, Lawwell walked calmly past the metal box and let his hand sweep along the top before inspecting his palm as if to look for traces of dust. It was all a big show, there was no dust, only pantomime and these guys were the clowns, wound up by Lawwell and thrown onto the stage of Scottish football to make fools of themselves in pursuit of Rangers. Lawwell knew his men well, knew he could count on solid Celtic men to disregard the threat to their reputations and professional standing, knew that their hatred of Rangers would see them to the end of the show and when the curtains closed then hopefully there'd be no more Rangers and Lawwell's job would be done. But Celtic men or no, just to remind them how high were the stakes, Lawwell produced Stewart Regan in a box.

There were coughs as the lawyers were told who was inside the gleaming contraption. "We'd wondered where he was the past few weeks" someone said as others continued to splutter and one brave or foolish soul asked if it wasn't all too much, keeping one of our own locked up and received a lash across the cheek from Lawwell's horse whip for his trouble.

"Gentlemen," began Lawwell. "I bring you the Regan Paradox - inside this box sits our man at the SFA. With him is a phial of deadly gas and an unstable radioactive isotope. You can guess the rest."

"Well actually, we can't" said one of the lawyers hesitantly.

"Of course you can't, you're lawyers! If you were so good at guessing then you might have guessed that this plan of ours might not turn out the way we'd hoped, that one of you morons would get all flushed in the face and blurt out that, what was it again, "you bastards have been cheating us for eleven years"? Was that it? Did you guess that was going to happen? Because I sure as hell didn't, am I paying you idiots to behave like the Green Brigade? Of course not - you cost a damned sight more than the price of a few Irish Republican themed banners so remember who you are, who you're working for and screw the fucking nut or you're next in the box!"

He was raving by now and I thought his guests had got the message but then one of them asked, "so is Regan alive or dead then?"