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.”