The Fellowship

“There are eight Lawwells out there, who else is going to stop them?” asked Donald Findlay, addressing the curious assembly of a more disparate bunch of people you could ever expect to meet around a roaring fire.  The brandy was warming our stomachs and I got the feeling that Findlay was also trying to warm up my liver a little as he suspected that I was too much of a coward to take on the role he had planned for me. 

“Graeme, you cover the waterfront.  I want to know if there’s any movement from the Port Glasgow Fenian Navy.  Your codename will be Fountainhead, my own will be Highgate” said Findlay and there was a murmur of appreciation for the fact that we were all to be given manly codenames and Souness looked especially pleased at his as he stroked his moustache and lit up a cigar.

“Tom,” said Findlay to Tom Devine who was eyeing up the brandy bottle.  “You take the whorehouses, try to get round as many as you can, I’m sure it won’t be a chore.  Your codename will be Blackfriar.  Patrick,” Pat Nevin looked up, surprised to be included in such rough company.  “You keep an eye on the pubs and clubs, pretend you’re just there to tell everyone your two stories and if you don’t see anything suspicious, move on.  Your codename will be Shadowline.”  I sat up straight to show that I was paying attention and looking forward to hearing my own codename.  They’d all been so masculine so far, even wee Pat Nevin’s conjured up images of cloak, dagger and intrigue.

“Spiers, I want you to monitor Mumsnet, your codename is Chipmunk.” 

“Stop your whinging Spiers,” said Tom Devine as we made our way west from Findlay’s house.  “You have an easy task, all you have to do is sit on your lazy arse and read the blatherings of a bunch of frustrated house-fraus.  I’m the one who should be complaining, how am I supposed to get through more than a dozen brothels a night?  I mean it’s not exactly my birthday, I’ll make six if I’m lucky.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to have a shag in them all, Tom” I bleated.  “I mean, I’m a blooming radio star, I’m on BBC Radio Scotland!  How can Findlay not trust me with a better codename than Chipmunk?”

“You know Spiers, I don’t even know why they let you on that radio show; you have the voice of a castrato dwarf choking on marbles.”

“Gosh, you really know how to cheer up your friends, don’t you Tom?”

“Who said you were my friend, you limp wristed smurfcock?  As far as I’m concerned you’re a useless idiot…”

“Useful idiot,” I corrected him.

“Quite, you’re a useful idiot and the sooner you realise that the better off you’ll be.  Now get thee to a coffee shop and fire up some wifi, leave the real work to the men around here” and with that he downed the bottle of brandy he’d sneaked out of Findlay’s house under his waistcoat and kicked open the door to Angela Haggerty’s house.  “Hey Tom, that’s not officially a whorehouse!” I called over to him.

“Ha!  Sorry, force of habit.”

Dawn of the Lawwells

“Spiers, come in here.  Come take a look at this.”  This was Tom English and he was calling to me from Lawwell’s office in Hampden.  We’d been lurking around trying to find some explanation for the madness that had gripped the SFA in allowing Dave King to be deemed a fit and proper person to run Rangers.  Tom had got himself into a bit of a state over the whole affair because, well because he really hates Rangers.  Me?  I was just loafing along, running with the crowd as usual and it never hurts ones career to be seen to be laying into the Gers. 

“What is it?” I asked as I peered tentatively into the room and then I gasped at what I saw: Lawwell had had the builders in and had opened up the whole of the floor into his own personal space – internal walls had been removed and you could see the length of Hampden from one end to the other and it was all Lawwell’s.  We could tell it was all his from the ghastly instruments of torture which lined the walls: a rack here, chains there, an iron maiden in the corner.  I was just taking all of this in when I almost jumped out of my shirt as Lawwell walked in and caught us.  “Hello boys,” he said, smiling.

“Eh?” chirped Tom.

“Er, hello Mr Lawwell” said I, wondering why we weren’t hanging by the balls from the ceiling by now.

“It’s so good to see you both here, it’s saved me the bother of inviting you over” said Lawwell.

“Tom, I don’t like this, he’s being nice” I whispered to Tom.

“Hold on just a minute, Spiers” Tom whispered back.  “I have a theory…  Mr Lawwell, can you name a current Celtic player?  Any current Celtic player.”

“Efe Ambrose of course.”

“Spiers,” Tom hissed at me.  “This isn’t Lawwell.  Lawwell wouldn’t know a Celtic player if one chased him down the street and bit him on the leg.”

“Then who is this?  What is this?” I rasped, too loudly as it turned out.

“Why, I am Lawwell 8.1” said Lawwell. 

Later, in the Chip, I was having a pint with Tom Devine.  Well, I was drinking a pint; he was guzzling from a bucket, port dribbling down his chin and soaking his shirt while wee Pat Nevin sat nearby telling the regulars his two stories.  “So what happened to the other eight then?” burped Tom.

“It seems once they’d completed construction, they brought them to life with a massive charge of electricity and every one of them to a man, got up and ran out the door.”

“All at once?”

“No, they built them one at a time.  They’d finish one, zap him, he’d run off and then they’d start again from the beginning.”

“This is all very rum, Spiers.  I mean, I’m used to things being a bit odd around you but this is damned perplexing.  I mean, what on earth were they going to do with another Lawwell?”

“Ah, now that’s an easy one: they needed one to sit at Celtic Park calling Hampden demanding clarification, and they needed another to sit at Hampden taking the call.”

Tom sighed.  “So why 8.1?  Why not Lawwell 9?”

“The one that remained, the one that didn’t get up and sprint into Kings Park, well he thought that 8.1 sounded sexy.”

“And now we have eight Lawwells on the loose out there, getting up to gawd knows what?  By Christ, Spiers, I preferred it when you were still on your medication.  Talking of which, what in blue blazes were the SFA on when they passed Dave King?  See, this is what happens when Lawwell is too busy replicating himself to pay attention to the task at hand.”

“And the task at hand is?”

“Making sure Rangers remain weak of course, I mean it’s not bloody difficult.  I’ll tell you what is difficult though, that slattern Haggerty.  I had her in bed last night and was canoeing into her when she suddenly took a strange turn and bucked me off – I landed with such a thump on the floorboards that I woke up Elaine C Smith and I couldn’t get her to stop barking for the rest of the night.  Ruined my whole day.  Anyway, Haggerty stood above me as I picked the splinters out of my arse and she put a high heel on my face and told me that there’d be no more dancing the blanket hornpipe until we were sure Rangers were going to remain in Division One, or the Championship, or whatever the bloody hell it is called these days.”

“Wow, they really are scared of competition these days, eh?  But this involves me how?” I asked.

“You can be damned,” he roared.  “What I want to know is how the hell it involves me!”

 

Then I heard a chuckle from over Tom’s shoulder.  “Oh it involves all of us” smiled Donald Findlay, straightening his tie.  Beside Findlay stood Souness, his moustache bristling.

“Aw for Christ’s sake,” moaned Devine.  “Not all this again.  Spiers, do us all a favour and get back on your meds."

"No thank you, Tom.  This is far too much fun, all of a sudden Scottish football could be becoming interesting again."

They Horse Whip Donkeys, Don't They?

“Thank fuck we’re playing somebody this week, else the press might start sniffing around yet another fucking fine thanks to those morons in the crowd” snarled Lawwell.

“Who re you playing anyway?” I asked, rather mischievously considering I knew fine well.

“Fucked if I know,” he replied a little too honestly which was entirely unexpected.  “I leave that sort of thing to the manager.”

“And the manager is?” I prodded, chancing my luck.

“Delia Smith?  Ronnie Corbett?  Who gives a toss?  Just as long as you lot continue ignoring our lot and concentrate on hounding that lot, I’ll be fucking happy.”

“And what if we are accused of only holding one team in Scotland accountable for all the ills of society?” I asked.

“Then you remember your fucking training!  Jesus Christ almighty, do I have to give you fuckers refresher courses?  You accuse them of whataboutery and refuse to answer the fucking question.  Ever.  It’s not rocket science, Spiers.”

“Hold on,” I said.  “Have I missed something?  Have you already issued orders on this one?”

“Didn’t you get the memo?” he asked, smiling.

“No, no I didn’t” I said, feeling ever so slightly left out.

“Well lucky for you, Spiers, I have one right here.”

“Oh good,” I squealed, clapping my hands and hopping from foot to foot with excitement.

“Pucker up, loser, here’s your memo” and he punched me right on the mouth.  I went down whimpering and he laid into me with his horse whip until he tired, then he spat on me.  Phew, for one horrible moment I thought I was out of the loop.

Happiness Stan

“My career is in freefall, I’m skint, I’m a social pariah and if I don’t get my profile up and attract new employment soon then I won’t even make the rent this month.  Oh what is to become of me?” wailed Stan Collymore as we sat in the Chip drinking Deuchars while Tom Devine sat in a grump in the corner drinking port from a barrel through a straw.

“You can always lay into Rangers on Twitter,” I said.  “Always works for me – you’ll probably get a job on BBC Scotland out of it.”

“Really, are you sure?” he asked, brightening up.

“Totally!  Look at Tom English: rotten journalist, going nowhere, sacked by the Scotsman; he lays into Rangers and bingo!  Job on the BBC.”

“Alright then,” he said, smiling for the first time that day.  “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Belay there, young shaver,” called Tom Devine from his corner.  “Before you go near Spiers’s Twitter moral high ground, be careful you don’t have any skeletons in your closet – and Spiers knows all about closets, don’t ye young pup?  Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying” and he burped a little sick onto his tie.

“I’ll be fine, Tom.  Yes, I might have a history of domestic violence and curious sexual proclivities but compared to singing songs containing the words ‘fenian blood’, they’re nothing.”

“This set me off, “Fenian blood?  Fenian blood?  Somebody call the police!  There should be a law against this filth.  Those terrible Rangers fans should be rounded up and put in camps and thrown down wells and and and…”

“There there, Spiers.  Let’s go,” said Tom, putting a reassuring arm around me.  “I think we should get you back home and on the medication.”