Spiers's Last Ride

The beauty of the morning was at odds with the mood amongst our little gang as we stood on the southern hills above Glasgow.  The sky was a dazzling blue, the sun lighting up the snows on the mountain tops out towards Loch Lomond and an odd green mist shrouded the city itself, a radiation fog with a peculiar hue that summed up our attitude more than the beautiful azure sky.

We were licking our wounds; Cosgrove, McGillivan, McNally and me - Alex Thomson had got into his Tardis citing trouble in the Middle East as his excuse for leaving to go and tweet from a luxury hotel in Izmir for a few days.  As he left we were shocked to see he had a new female companion, it was wee Pat Nevin and as Thomson shut the doors we could hear him scream, 'Please Spiers, you mustn't let him take me, you don't understand he has two...  He has two...'

'Yes, yes, Pat; we know, he has two hearts.'

'No,' screamed Pat: 'he has two dicks!'

But the noise of the Tardis leaving drowned him out so that only I could hear him but I didn't tell anyone and merely made a mental note to try and check out Thomson's trousers the next time he was passed out drunk.

The night before we had been trying to clean up the mess left behind by the Traynor when he cried j'accuse and bolted from the Daily Record but when we got there with our squad we found that Peter Lawwell had got there before us and had annexed the Record building.  We could tell straight away when we approached as a deep gloom hung over the place and we could hear the screams of the few remaining Rangers men being dragged down to the new dungeons Lawwell was having built underground.  You had to hand it to him, in a few years he now had effective control of Celtic Park, Hampden and now the Daily Record, his dark empire was spreading and although by my silence I seemed to be approving, something about it didn't sit right with me. 

I kept my thoughts to myself though and entered Lawwell's latest acquisition and followed the hollow footsteps of my silent colleagues as we walked down the stairway to the shadows down below.  I followed their footsteps through neon-darkened corridors, full of silent desperation, not talking to a soul.  The poison air we were breathing had the dirty smell of dying from never having seen sunshine and never felt rain and it was all I could do to prevent myself from gagging until suddenly we came across Lawwell himself.

'Oh,' he said: 'Spiers it's been so long since I've seen you.  Here, kiss my whip and make me bloody smile' and he lashed me across the cheek with his horsewhip.

I was on the ground holding my face in agony when a great flash of light lit up the gloom and there standing before us were the Fantastic Four.  This was all I needed, being bent down in front of Lawwell's crotch, groaning and having Mr bloody Fantastic Chris Graham appear with his big cheesy grin and louche ways - God I hate that man.

'It's not what it seems' I shouted but I was drowned out by the sound of fighting as McNally, Cosgrove and McGillivan took up arms against the Four.  I thought I'd better join them so got up and face to face with Graham I frantically scrabbled for some way to defeat him in combat so I immediately took out my iPhone and tweeted something smug and superior but Graham countered with his Blackberry and mocked me with a tweet that I could only dream of.  I tweeted back, this time in a friendly, jocular manner to appeal to his blokeish side but he saw right through this and continued to harangue me until I collapsed into a dark corner of the tunnel where I groaned and watched as my Celtic Minded brothers in arms took on the others of the Four.

McNally slithered over to Alasdair McKillop and tried to slap him but his slimy hand just slopped off McKillop's face leaving McNally open to dialogue that had him weeping and unable to respond as he sunk into a miasmatic pool of noxious fumes and bubbling liquid.

McGillivan should have been more than a match for the Invisible Spacegirlgail since he had been brought back from the dead after being accidentally killed by Lawwell's navy at his cave just outside Dunure a year or so ago - it's all in my diaries if you care to look - but although he could feel no pain, he was no match for the extraordinary swearing of the Invisible Girl who hurled brilliantly inventive expletives at him until he ran off into the darkness trying to think of another name for when he reappears with yet another new identity.

Then John DC Gow booted Cosgrove in the balls and it was all over.

Lawwell was nowhere to be seen but from the sound of the stamping of boots coming down the stairs we figured that he had gathered his goons and was heading our way.  The Fantastic Four stood in a row, regarding me until Chris Graham asked, 'Well, are you coming with us or do you want to stay here and take your chances with a lazy eyed psycho who seems set on ruling over Scottish football with an iron rod?'

'I'll stay here thank you very much,' said I and with that they were gone in a mighty blue flash of light.

By the time Lawwell and his reinforcements got to us he was in a right old fury and when he saw that the Four were gone he turned on his jackboots and stamped upstairs calling out for Tom English to be taken to the torture pits.  Oh well, with a game coming up against Spartak tonight I figured I knew now just how Tom would be reporting the result, I wasn't wrong.