Maribor One

Something rather rum happened in the corridors of power at Hampden recently.  I was lurking around at the time, looking for a curtain to creep behind or a closet to hide in as I still wasn't used to having been chosen by Lawwell himself to write his biography and allowed unfettered access to the workings of the SFA, when Stewart Regan came scurrying down the hall carrying a bundle of papers.  He hadn't seen me so I slinked behind a water cooler and watched as he stood outside Lawwell's office and gingerly chapped on the door only for a hatch to open and a boxing glove on the end of a spring come shooting out and catch Regan a cracker on the nose.  He was knocked off his feet and all of the papers he was carrying were thrown in the air and fell like confetti to the ground as the door opened and Lawwell's head peaked out,  "Oh, it's you," he grumbled.

"Yef it'f me, who did you efpect?" moaned Regan, holding a hanky to his bloody nose.

"Spiers, I was sure that oaf was sneaking around out there."

"What made you fink 'at?"

"My wank-detector was beeping." 

They disappeared into Lawwell's office and closed the door so I came out from my hiding place and approached the door to listen in case I could overhear anything important but as I did, the hatch opened again and the boxing glove came springing out only to miss me but catch a passing Ralph Topping right on the ear, knocking him through the glass partition into another room.  Lawwell's door opened and his head peaked out again.  "See?  Regan, I told you he was out there, my wank-detector never fails!"

"I'm glad it doefn't go off when I'm around" said Regan.

"Yes it does," pondered Lawwell before walking over to his desk and tapping on a contraption there which started to beep after a few seconds.  "No, you're right, it's the useful-idiot detector that goes off when you're around" said Lawwell as he reached out the door and grabbed me by the collar to pull me in.

 

He forced me against a wall and then paced back over to Regan and grabbed the papers off him and began counting them.  I squinted to see what was on them but for all I could see it was just a pile of SFA letterheads with nothing on them but Regan's signature.  "Only ninety eight?  Hold on," said Lawwell as he held the papers up to his ear and ran them quickly through his fingers.  "No, it's a hundred after all, there were a few stuck together there."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted.  "What are you going to do with a hundred blank pieces of paper with Regan's signature at the bottom?"

"Anything I fucking well please, Spiers now sit down before I nail your arse to the wall."

"But there are no seats" I protested.

"No, but there are tacks all over the floor right beside you - go on, sit down on them" and he watched expressionless, as I sat down slowly on the tacks and felt them pierce the thick corduroy of my trousers and pinch into my bottom.  "Better?" asked Lawwell.

"Yes," I said.

"Good, now to business.  Regan, I have a case full of syringes here full of Etorphine and I want you to take them down to the press office and have the boys administer them to every football journalist in there and be finished by the time I walk into the presser with Vincent Lunny's replacement."

"What's Etorphine?" I asked.

"As far as you're concerned, Spiers" growled Lawwell.  "It's elephant tranquiliser."

"But it is elephant tranquiliser" exclaimed Regan.

"Yes...  And?" said Lawwell, staring at Regan as if Scottish journalists full of drugs was something new.

"But why?" I asked.

"Vincent Lunny's on his way out, right?  Well I have his replacement and I don't want any awkward questions about his lack of impartiality when it comes to Celtic."

"And why would anyone bring that up?" I asked.

"Because it's Anthony McGlennan," said Lawwell and I understood immediately.

"Here," I said.  "I'll give you a hand with the needles." 

And then it happened: I took a hold of the case full of the syringes but Regan, sensing someone was taking yet another responsibility from him - someone who wasn't Lawwell at least - tried to grab it back off me, there was a brief struggle and then I let go only for the momentum of his pulling to make Regan fall backwards with his arm holding the case flying behind him in a swift arc.  There was a shriek and the tumbling of bodies behind Lawwell's great oak desk and when he and Regan pulled themselves up from behind it, Lawwell had about a dozen needles sticking out of his face and neck.  "Regan," he slurred.  "I'm going to saw your balls off with a..." and then he collapsed.

We stared appalled at Lawwell as he lay on the floor, syringes sticking out of him and a pool of urine spreading out from his legs across the SFA carpet which was green with a Celtic crest on it.  "What the fuck are we going to do?" whimpered Regan.

"How the hell do I know?" I said.  "The good news is though, if that's Etorphine then he's not going to remember how this happened."

"Oh, that's a good one, Spiers!  What will we do about the Tony McGlennan announcement though?"

"This is the Scottish press," I shouted at him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him.  "You could tell them Lawwell himself was going to be the new compliance officer and they wouldn't say a word."

"Oh please don't give him ideas" said Regan, looking down at Lawwell as if he was going to get up from being filled full of Rohypnol and sing the Sash.  "I've got an idea!  Didn't I hear you imitating Lawwell at a party once?  Remember when you phoned Tom Devine and pretended to offer him a place on the SFA board?"

"No," I said, remembering the incident.  "That was Lawwell, that really happened."

"Another time though, I'm sure I heard you mimicking him at a party?" 

And that was how my fate was sealed and I regretted ever doing my impression of Peter Lawwell at a west end dinner party.  If I'd known then that it would see me impersonating Lawwell in the week that Celtic were shagged out of the Champions League twice in the same qualifying sections, this time by a team of Slovenian goat-handlers then I'd have kept my mouth shut.  But I hadn't and so we took another ominous step towards changing the face of Scottish football forever.