The Imaginary Diary of Graham Spiers

Xenomorphosis Part Five

2012-01-27T01:13:00.000-08:00

Souness’s van lay on its side, smoke belching from the engine, one useless wheel still spinning. Lawwell’s men had removed Joan McAlpine from the rear and bundled her into their Range Rover along with the bound and hooded bodies of Colin West and Robert Fleck. Souness was nowhere to be seen and Donald Findlay was picking himself up in the middle of the expressway where he’d been tossed when the van crashed; he looked dazed but quickly composed himself as the Celtic goon approached him with the hood and wrist-ties.
‘Come on auld yin, don’t make this worse for yourself,’ said Lawwell’s man.
‘By jove,’ muttered Findlay, steadying himself on his cane before raising it and pointing it at his would be assailant who laughed at the sight of an old man brandishing a walking stick.
‘Judging from your amusement, you’ve never heard of a Von Herder cane?’ smiled Findlay. ‘Well bully for you,’ and there was a spark from the end of the cane and a small cracking sound as the goon’s knees buckled and he collapsed. I was sitting in my idling Mini wondering what to do and had turned to see what Lawwell’s reaction would be to Findlay shooting his man with a cane and when I turned back towards Findlay, he was gone. Lawwell ignored this development, content to have Joan McAlpine back and, his car loaded now, he drove off and as he did I noticed the dark figure of Graeme Souness clinging to the roof, knife between his teeth, moustache blowing in the wind.

I briefly considered following them but decided against it, choosing instead to drive straight to my flat off Byres Road and type up an exclusive story of how Donald Findlay viciously assaulted a helpless Celtic fan and try to punt it to one of the papers. When I got back to the flat though I found it had been broken into and that Alex Mosson had nicked my laptop. There was nothing for it then but to toodle over to Parkhead and see what Lawwell was going to do with Joan McAlpine. If I’d known then the danger I’d be getting myself into then I’d have just bought a new laptop and left well alone but how was I to know what fresh madness Lawwell had in mind for me?

Xenomorphosis Part Four

2012-01-23T14:25:00.000-08:00

Souness and Donald Findlay were already tearing down the road in their vans by the time Lawwell’s men had realised the tyres of their Ranger Rovers had been shot out. I was just glad I was watching from a safe distance as Lawwell took out his anger on one of his own men, lashing into him with his horsewhip while the others worked quickly to change the tyres. This gave me time to hop into my Mini and drive off in pursuit of Souness as there was a story in all of this, I just knew it and who knows, maybe I’d find a particular angle pleasing to some Scottish editor of a newspaper, an anti-Rangers angle say – that always keeps editors happy since the Great Celtic Minded Gramscian Plan came to fruition a number of years ago, and pleased with my attack on Rangers then perhaps that editor would offer me a job? You never know and that’s why I made the mistake of chasing after Souness and Findlay as they carted off Joan McAlpine in the back of one of their vans.

It took a while before Lawwell caught up with us and we were practically back in Glasgow by the time the first Range Rover started trying to edge the nearest van off the road. We were haring down the M77 at Newton Mearns and they were ignoring me at first but then one of the goons noticed it was me driving and suddenly I also became a target – six black Range Rovers nudging and barging us, someone was going to get hurt I was just thinking when I saw a black figure crouched on the bridge just ahead of us. As I passed under the bridge I heard the crump of something landing on my roof and then the dark figure had kicked out my passenger seat window and was sitting beside me, smiling. It was Catriona Shearer. ‘Watch this,’ she said and leaned out the window. Suddenly there was a blinding light as Shearer shot one of the Lawwell cars off the road with a strobe gun.
‘Woo hoo! Did you see that Spiers? Right into the bushes! Bwa ha ha ha ha, oh dear, this is the life – much more exciting that reading the news, eh?’

Another Rangers maniac, I thought but how on earth did she get a job at Pacific Quay? I was contemplating this and trying to steer the car as another Ranger Rover bumped me from behind when Shearer caught my eye and laughed, ‘I know what you’re thinking and I’ll tell you as soon as we’ve taken care of these guys. Now, what should I use this time, I have so many toys in my purse I just don’t know where to continue,’ and she pulled a spear gun out from the satchel she'd stuck in the back of my car.

We were passing Silverburn when the spear gun took care of another Lawwell car and Shearer was enjoying herself.
‘We’ll be passing the BBC shortly, think we should give them a wave?’ she giggled as Souness swerved in front of us, taking a battering in his van from the bigger and more robust Range Rover and that’s when Shearer brought out the grenade launcher, knocked the soft roof off my Mini and took her top off. Once she’d blown the three Celtic vehicles from the road she sat back down, poonts straining inside a black bra which looked suspiciously as if it contained hidden weapons.
‘Take a good look, Spiers. These babies will be back, now just slow down a little here and I’ll be off – I have a news bulletin to read in fifteen minutes,’ so I slowed down as we passed Govan and she fired her grappling hook around the top of a motorway lamp post and was lifted up and out of the car, swinging off road and disappearing into the darkness.

As the last Ranger Rover approached, Lawwell sitting by the open window, a bazooka resting in his arms I thought about what had just happened with Catriona Shearer appearing dressed in black pvc and body armour and armed to the teeth as Graham Souness and Donald Findlay escaped into Glasgow with Joan McAlpine, an alien creature wrapped around her face and I thought: it's true, it’s never dull in the world of Scottish football.

Xenomorphosis Part Three

2012-01-23T00:32:00.000-08:00

I brought up the rear as we crawled through rancid water, filthy and stinking; it reminded me of my days as a sports journalist especially when I had to sit through Peter Lawwell’s press briefings. We soon exited the culvert and crept around the field, hidden from Lawwell and his goons by the hedgerows until we reached the road and sprinted towards my house where we could hide up, suggested Findlay, until Lawwell realised what he was looking for wasn’t there and left.
‘But what about your cars? He’ll know you’re here, he’s not a fool you know,’ I bleated as I showed them in. The house was in darkness but we moved around by the light from the fire where McAlpine’s house used to be which was fairly blazing by now.
‘Yes, I’ve thought about that,’ said Findlay, searching his coat pockets for his pipe and tobacco. ‘And we’ll just have to risk that they don’t look for us here, we’ve no option – it was either hide out here, yomp across the hills or take them on in a fight with inferior fire power and numbers. Do Celtic know you have a home here?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, my windows remained unmolested the one time I dared write something negative about them.’
‘Really?’ harrumphed Findlay. ‘You really believe you’ve written something against Celtic that would merit an attack by the Young Bhoys of the BBC? Ha! You’re more delusional than we thought.’
I was about to argue in my defence but we were interrupted by a knock at the door.
‘Lawwell!’ I exclaimed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Lawwell doesn’t knock doors, he knocks down doors,’ hissed Findlay, motioning for everyone to take cover.
‘In the attic, it’s along the hall and the ladders are still down,’ I whispered. ‘And if you see a scrapbook and some soiled hankies up there, they’re not mine.’

I waited until I heard the ladder go up behind them and then walked towards the door and was just reaching for the lock when there was a crash as Lawwell’s goons forced it open and on top of me. I was lying there, under the door, my nose pressed against the peep hole when a pair of well polished jackboots soiled from walking through fields walked in and stopped at the top of the door by my head.
‘Hmmmmmm…’ I heard someone pondering then one foot disappeared from my view and it must have stood on top of the door because it became heavier and began to crush my head and chest which was some feat considering the size of the balloons I now had down there after my sex change.
‘Is that you Spiers?’ I heard Lawwell ask.
‘Mmmmph,’ I replied, the door pressing down hard on my face now.
‘Why are you sitting in the dark on your own, hmm?’
‘Mmmph mmmmm…’ I attempted to answer until he lifted his foot and the door was lifted off of me by his men and I was pulled to my feet, nose squint and tits hurting like hell.
‘Listen Lawwell,’ I squeaked. ‘You can't bully me now, I am an irrelevance to Scottish football; I have nothing you could possibly need – no power, no influence, no job, what could I have that you might find helpful?’
He looked at me from under those baleful half closed lids and said, ‘Donald Findlay and Souness hiding Joan McAlpine in your attic, that’s what you have that I might find helpful, you fucking pipsqueak,’ and he slapped me across the face with the back of his hand. I went down sobbing, ‘You hit a woman!’ I cried but he was already signalling for his men to pull down the ladders.

‘So Spiers,’ said Lawwell, regarding my front loaders. ‘How does it feel?’
‘Oh you know, they take a bit of getting used to but they do make for handy buoyancy aids when I’m swimming.
‘Not the breasts you dolt, being out of work.’
‘Oh that, well I still have Twitter to keep me in the loop and there’s always Radio Clyde.’
‘Yes, there’s always Radio Clyde,’ he smirked as his men came running back from the attic.
‘There’s no one up there,’ said one of them. ‘There is though, the most disgusting photo-shopped scrapbook of Martin O’Neil though, covered in gunk and surrounded by tissues.’
No one there, I thought and looked out the window and in the distance, running across the fields having escaped out of the dormer windows were Findlay and his men carrying Joan McAlpine and they were heading for their vehicles. Lawwell followed my gaze and pointed, prompting his men to sprint outside and make chase. Lawwell looked me up and down, smiled and said, ‘I’ll be seeing you, Spiers. Sooner than you think,’ and he strode out the gap in my house where the front door used to be.

Xenomorphosis Part Two

2012-01-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

A huge crater filled with fire was all that remained of Joan McAlpine’s holiday home after it had been hit by whatever fell from the sky that night. The heat was intense but I forged on, wondering what angle I would take when submitting this story as a freelancer to some newspaper where I hadn’t already burnt my bridges. I wasn’t the first on the scene though, alarmingly there were already figures walking around the crater and they were scouring the ground with powerful torches. I paused, some sixth sense warning me of danger, and decided to hide behind a hedge and observe before I went blundering into the scene but then I noticed one of the men light up a pipe. He was unmistakeable in his deerstalker hat and now that my eyes had become used to the glare and heat, I could make out the figures to be Donald Findlay, Souness and assorted others, presumably the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos.

I pulled myself up and walked over to them, asking if I could help.
‘By the gods,’ exclaimed Findlay. ‘I keep forgetting you’re a damned woman these days, Spiers. How the hell are you and what brings you here?’
‘I live just over the field behind the hill, what’s going on Donald?’ I asked, blushing having forgotten in all the excitement that I wasn’t wearing a bra – it had been ripped off at Radio Clyde as we struggled to tie Jim Delahunt into his chair after we were surprised by a full moon. At least I only lost my bra, Keevins had lost a finger.

‘This is none of your bisnay old girl, you’d best be out of here before your friend Lawwell comes sniffing around. This is his doing, we believe,’ said Findlay.
‘Well what is it you’re looking for,’ I pressed. ‘Perhaps I could help? I’m not just a pretty face you know,’ and as I said it I realised I had turned into a big girl in more ways than one.
‘Oh well, since you’re here, you always were a useful idiot to have around in a crisis,’ conceded Findlay. ‘We’re looking for Joan McAlpine, she’s been holed up here since she put her foot in it at Holyrood, accusing anyone not voting SNP of being anti-Scottish – well, makes a change from accusing the whole of Scotland of being anti-Catholic. At first she was just hiding from the press but then she got word that Salmond had sent a hit squad looking for her so she’s not left the place in days. Luckily Tom Devine has loose lips when he’s drunk, which is always, and we have listening devices in his home in Dowanhill so we were able to find her. Too late now though by the look of things,’ and he said this we were interrupted by Colin West who’d found something in the next field and was calling out.

We ran over to where West was waving his torch and below him, down an embankment, sitting upside down in a stream was a car. ‘Blown there by the blast?’ asked West.
‘Or driven by a woman,’ muttered Souness as he climbed down to have a look.
‘She’s not in here but she has been, her handbag’s there, emptied. Here’s her purse, a dildo, another dildo, her phone, I don’t know what that is but it could be another...’
‘Oh my God,’ groaned Robert Fleck further up the hill. ‘She’s here, but what’s that on her face? Oh Christ, it’s disgusting, it’s horrible…’
‘It’s her normal face,’ said Findlay, looking over Fleck’s shoulder. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her. Oh, hold on, you’re right Fleck, what is that?’ and he prodded her face with his cane and as he did, something that had attached itself to her face tightened its grip, a tail of some kind wrapped around her neck squeezed and she lay on the grass in the dark, still breathing but assaulted by some creature I certainly hadn’t seen before.

‘This is one for the lab,’ said Findlay and motioned for Fleck and West to carry her down the hill towards their vehicles but as they were picking her up, Souness made a sign with his fist and everyone hit the ground and lay stock still, everyone but me.
‘Get down you fucking moron,’ hissed Souness and grabbed the back of my trousers pulling me into the grass. Below us, coming up the drive of McAlpine’s old house was a fleet of black Range Rovers, windows blacked out, headlights off.
‘It’s Lawwell,’ whispered Findlay. ‘We’ve got to get out of here without them seeing us, he can’t get a hold of McAlpine in this condition, not at this stage,’ and as we crept down the embankment, West and Fleck dragging poor old Joan, and into a culvert which took us under the drive and past Lawwell and his goons, I wondered from what Findlay had said: did he know more about this thing on Joan McAlpine’s face than he was letting on to me?

Xenomorphosis

2012-01-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

It all began one night when I was standing on my own in my garden over the festive holidays contemplating unemployment, my new vagina and the stars. I spend a lot of time gazing at the stars, I also spend a lot of time gazing at my new fanny but that doesn’t lead to quite as much contemplation. I have very little else to do these days having been binned by Magnus Linklater who not only sacked me but also had me shot although to be fair, I was pointing a gun of my own at him at the time. So there I was, loafing around outside my Ayrshire barn with no light pollution and a wonderful view of the night sky, wishing I were still in residence in my west end flat and writing for a newspaper so I could lay into Rangers and have plaudits heaped on me by deranged Celtic fans who have voted me Most Useful Idiot four years in a row. I was just considering how sane my life had become since I’d extricated myself from Peter Lawwell and his sinister machinations when I noticed something strange in the sky – my favourite winter constellation, Orion had an extra star in its belt; just between Alnitak and Alnilam something else was twinkling.

This was a very curious state of affairs so I called the Times news desk to ask if they knew anything about it but I got short shrift with the girl on the other end saying, ‘Fuck off Stinkerbell, you don’t work here anymore, we don’t have to pretend to be nice to you now,’ and then she hung up on me. I checked the internet, pausing only to update my Twitter page with some nonsense, but there was nothing there either so I went back outside and by golly, the fourth star was bigger now.

I put it to the back of my mind and set off for Radio Clyde where I still earn a few shillings for pandering to their audience with Celtic Minded platitudes and spent the evening with Hugh Keevins cutting off any Rangers fans who sneaked through the public callers vetting process, allowing the usual Celtic supporters’ flights of fancy to get full airing and worrying about Jim Delahunt as it was almost a full moon outside and he was beginning to look a little seedy with hair sprouting from his knuckles and ears.

It was while contemplating this full moon on the drive back to the wilds of Ayrshire that I remembered the star in Orion’s belt and trying to crane my neck out of the window to see, I nearly crashed the new soft top Mini I’d bought with my severance pay, a severance pay I’d greatly exaggerated on Twitter to salve some of my embarrassment at being bumped from my job by a cretin like Linklater. I’m glad I did look for the star at this point because it was much bigger by now and it definitely wasn’t a star because whatever it was, it was in our atmosphere, burning up and heading straight for us. All sorts of thoughts went through my mind as I raced to get home so that if it was a meteor come to kill us all, I might die in the warm embrace of my Martin O’Neil scrapbook.

The stones in the driveway scattered as I skidded up to my barn and I ran from the Mini, fumbling for my house keys, dropping them in my haste and just as I bent down I heard a noise so awful it sounded like the sky was cracking open. This is it, I thought and the night lit up and the sky turned blue in the glare of something falling to earth. It shot overhead and in the time it took me to think of a prayer, it landed with a crash into the holiday home of Joan McAlpine which was just a few fields over from me. The explosion sent a hot wave of air rushing over me and then the debris started falling all around and I breathed a sigh of relief that I was still alive and that whatever hit us hadn’t been as big since it had only obliterated Joan’s house. Joan, I wondered, was she home? I set off through the fields to find out, not through any concern for McAlpine of course but with the journalistic juices once again coursing through my body because who knows, maybe I could blame this on Rangers?

Xenomorphosis: Prologue

2012-01-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

The creature locked in the back of his armoured truck, Souness blazed a trail ahead of us, cutting corners so fine that he seemed like he’d go up on two wheels and roll over. I was driving the Mini Cooper soft top, trying desperately not to lose sight of Souness while avoiding Lawwell’s goons as they attempted to ram me off the road in their Range Rovers. It all seemed hopeless until my passenger reached into the back of the Mini, grabbed a grenade launcher and used the butt to knock the soft roof off the top of our car; then she ripped off her blouse and stood up in her bra and in the moments it took for the Celtic thugs to ogle her bouncers, she blew the wheels off the front of the first car, knocked the engine out the second and completely obliterated the last with the best shot of the lot before sitting back down in the passenger seat, laughing and shouting at me, ‘How about that then, eh Spiers? It’s great to be a woman!’

Well I wasn’t enjoying it as much as Catriona Shearer seemed to be but I’m getting ahead of myself.

What Keeps Lawwell Alive?

2011-12-31T02:07:00.000-08:00

Wearing a wig and cocktail dress, I was in disguise at Peter Lawwell’s Hogmanay party, as staff. I was serving drinks and it gave me a terrific view of all the great and good of the Celtic Minded as they went about their business. Which is exactly what Donald Findlay wanted and why he had me infiltrate the function. It wasn’t hard, I wore a low cut top and wobbled my jugs so no one looked at my face except Steven Purcell who looked me straight in the eye briefly before turning, puzzled to find a loo. Alex Mosson leered over me for a bit but then I noticed he was only distracting my attention and had his hand in the till. Alan Thompson was brought in on a lead and a barrel organ struck up somewhere and he did a cute little dance before being rewarded with bananas and stuck in a cage. I also noticed Neil Lennon and Scott Brown staggering around, moaning and drooling; of course they’re zombies these days but no one noticed. Johan Mjallby was there, dressed badly and feeling out of his depth much like he does every Saturday; he didn’t last long though, after spotting the black drummer from the house band and following him down the corridor racially abusing him – he must’ve thought he was back in the Ibrox tunnel chasing Kyle Bartley and El Hadji Diouf. John Reid was back for the night and was over at the cocktail bar slurring on the shoulders of some young Parkhead secretary, ‘Come on, you know you want it…’ he slithered before collapsing into an ice bucket. I caught a glimpse of Kenny McAskill in a corner looking shifty until he was joined by Barking Phil Tartaglia who stood glowering at him until McAskill handed over a document of some kind – it all looked very odd indeed.

The problem was, I was seeing nothing that I hadn’t seen a hundred times before so Findlay was going to be very disappointed when I reported the same old rubbish, a bit like my old editor at the Times must have felt every time I handed in my weekly column. Ah, those were the days: working for the Times, mixing with the cream of Scottish football, a member of Lawwell’s inner sanctum, coffee at Hampden, tea at Parkhead and trebles all round with the BBC Scotland bhoys down at the Chip where we’d drink all evening until it was time to be ravished in the toilet by some coked up little squirt. Now all I have are memories; memories and a cracking set of tits. I served Joe Ledley with them in full view and he sniggered and pointed at them, ‘Look, a woman’s breasts, hee hee hee…’ and he sloped off.

The whole thing was becoming quite dull and I was considering leaving when the band struck up and everyone stood back expectantly as the lights went out and a spotlight hit the stage at the end of the hall. Peter Lawwell walked on, kicking his feet, wearing a white fur coat and hat and singing:

‘Now, let me see: those gentlemen who think they have a mission - to rid us of the seven deadly sins - should first sort out the basic food conditions.
Then start their preaching, there it all begins.
You mean this lot who make the wars and give us hell?
Should learn for once the way the world is run. However much they twist, whatever lies they tell - first they should feed us, then can have their fun.
For even honest men may act like sinners, unless they've had their customary dinners.
What keeps a man alive?’

This was astonishing, Lawwell was giving us a song and dance, the band oompah-ed away and he continued as the entire room stood, grins fixed, hoping not to attract his attention.

‘What keeps a man alive - the fact that people are being tortured, beaten, punished, killed, oppressed.
Man lives on other's pain, could be his brothers; for his own greed he will just keep us all repressed.
Remember if you wish to stay alive: just once, give something back and you'll survive,’
and as he sang this last line I saw him winking at the SFA referees in the corner.

Then to great cheers from the crowd, some dancing girls came on, dressed in traditional can-can dresses, kicking their height and exposing their bloomers – it was Jeanette Findlay, Joan McAlpine, Gillian Bowditch, Roseanna Cunningham and Stephen McGowan. They high kicked onto the stage and joined in:

‘You tell us girls our daily work is sinful.
You leave your wives and then to us you run.
You make us sweat and want us to be grateful.
First fill our stomachs, then come have your fun.
All hypocrites who talk of high morality - those institutions that create the law.
They take their pleasure putting us to shame - they'd better feed us, we are not to blame.
For even honest wives can act like sinners - unless they've had their customary dinners.
What keeps a man alive?’

And then Lawwell joined in again and urged everyone in the audience to join him and before I knew what was going on, the whole place was singing and dancing, the band skipping around the room, tubas blowing, harmonium whirling, Joan McAlpine pulling Lorraine Davidson onto the stage where the pair of them did a striptease, then the Young Bhoys of the BBC came running, sniffing out of the toilets and joined them naked in a dance and that's when the room descended into orgy and I decided it was time to leave. As I was tip-toeing out I heard a door open and from inside the room a voice rang out above the merriment.
‘I know it’s you, you know,’ it was Steven Purcell. ‘Happy new year Spiers! Happy new year every one of us!’

The Threepenny Bits Opera

2011-12-30T05:59:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Souness was right when he suggested in the middle of a bloody melee that this is where I belong? Last season, or was it two seasons ago, somebody called me a weirdness magnet and insinuated that I was useful to all and sundry because I seem to attract all the freaks and monstrosities in the land and you know, it’s very hard to dispute this when I’ve just witnessed the waterfront slaughter of a battalion of the Green Brigade by that science pirate, Richard Gough and his cut throat Sikhs and have just sailed around Scotland in a great iron beast, the Nautilus while Gough waits for things to quieten down a bit.

I had been given my own quarters and was only there an hour before Donald Findlay knocked on my door; he was in a jovial mood and was whistling Mack the Knife which I found unusual since he’d only recently witnessed the murder of his housekeeper, Mrs Hudson and should have been in no mood for jollity.

‘What-ho, Spiers. I hear you had quite the blood lust last night, what? Blood lust? That’s a new one for you but then again, so is losing your dick and gaining a whopping great set of thrupenny bits, eh? Ho ho ho!’
‘I’m pleased you find my predicament amusing,’ I sneered. ‘But these blasted things have been the ruin of me – who takes seriously a woman sports journalist?’
‘Who took you seriously when you had a penis?’ chortled Findlay.
‘Laugh all you like Findlay but I’m done being used and abused by all and sundry. Last night was just the beginning. I had the power to save those wretches in the Brazen Head – Gough gave me the choice; me, Graham Spiers! I had their lives in my hands and I told him to spare not one of ‘em!’ I was quite ranting by now but Findlay interrupted.
‘Actually, you had nothing in your hands. I was the one who gave Gough the order to raze the waterfront. They dared break into my house and murder my housekeeper? They dared attack me and my guests? How dare they? Well now they’re reaping the whirlwind because last night I sent in the navy. Today we rest, consolidate and ensure Ibrox and Murray Park are secure but tomorrow? Tomorrow I let slip the dogs of war, tomorrow the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos are coming out of retirement.’

He wasn’t jovial anymore, that was for sure. His eyes darkened and he stood by a porthole gazing out into the murky blackness of the North Sea.
‘For too long we’ve sat back and allowed ourselves to be attacked. First it was the small things: I was in purgatory for singing a song at a private party while practically the whole Celtic team was caught on film singing their own offensive songs with nary a whimper from the press – where was their banishment, eh? Where were their years in the wilderness? Then individuals weren’t enough, they came after the fans en-masse and next thing you know the Billy Boys is gone as they disingenuously changed the meaning of one word, claiming it offended them. Well if it offended them so much, why do they still use it to refer to themselves? If all this wasn’t enough, they then discovered there was capital to be gained by complaining to anyone they could think of about Rangers fans and look where that’s got us, freedom of speech gone, thought crime on the statute books and halfway towards Dystopia. Yes, some thought the new legislation would even things up but what do they say now that we’ve witnessed fifty thousand Celtic fans singing about the IRA and then calling us all huns only for the Assistant Chief Constable to praise them for their good behaviour? Imagine that shoe was on the other foot, Spiers? I can almost hear the squeals from the cabal of Celtic Minded academics as they rush to condemn the whole of Scotland of bigotry. The same type of bigotry they’d see in themselves if only they weren’t so pompous and standing on a moral high ground built of sand.

‘You know, I used to think that the whole sectarian charade was a convenient smoke screen for Lawwell to hide the deficiencies of his team but now I’m not so sure. Now I think there may be an even greater end game although what exactly it is, I couldn’t say. Once Souness and his commandos have shaken things up a bit then maybe we’ll know a bit more. I can just imagine him now: dressed in black, knife between the teeth, swimming towards Parkhead. Or Hampden. Our enemies are everywhere now, Spiers. Even in here, in this room.’
‘Me?’ I squirmed.
‘Have you forgotten the last ten years? You think that just because you now have a marvellous pair of tits that we’re going to forget all about your behaviour? Your constant attacks on the club and support? You were their main cheerleader. No more though. What are you now but a big unemployed lassie? You’ve been overtaken by the young turks, Spiers and if you know what’s good for you then you’ll do as we say and maybe, just maybe, you’ll end up alright.’

He ended that sentence with a tip of his top hat and left me alone to think about what he’d said. I could hear him whistling down the corridor and then he stopped whistling and started singing quietly and I remember the words because they were in German which seemed odd.

Denn die einen sin dim Dunkeln
Und die andern sind im Licht
Und man siehet die im Lichte
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht.

Pirate Jenny

2011-12-30T02:36:00.000-08:00

As seedy waterfront bars go, the Brazen Head used to be my favourite. Before, when I was a man, I used to frequent here to hear ribald tales of a perverse religion centred around football and violence. Oh there were characters in those days; city councillors and MPs mixing with dollymops and doxies, cracksmen and fawney droppers. Sit long enough and you’d meet every kind of rogue and villain, all joined in the one cause: Celtic, a football club. I drank there as a respectable journalist and campaigner for the rights of these curiously tribal people in order to further my Celtic Minded credentials – more’s the better in order to advance in the media in Scotland these days. Then, while not exactly accepting me as one of their own, at least they humoured me.

Now, having been fired from the Times and turned into a woman by Peter Lawwell for some nefarious purpose, I can’t get work anywhere and tired of moping around my Ayrshire hideaway, I came into the city and got a job in the Brazen Head as a cleaner. Nobody recognised me as the previously dashing, corduroy clad champion of the downtrodden. They watch me as I’m scrubbing the floors and they never know who I am. They growl and snarl at me if I get in their way and they never know to whom they’re talking. The night of the Celtic win over Rangers I was there, on my hands and knees as usual, scrubbing vomit and urine from under the tables when I heard a contingent of the Green Brigade wondering aloud how they would have reacted had it been a Celtic goal not given in the manner Rangers had a perfectly good goal ignored. Such an innocuous query and yet it led to such scenes of violence as the very thought of it happening brought out the beasts in them and they began fighting amongst each other; blows were traded, chairs were smashed, one chap called Macheath even pulled a knife and I got caught up in it all, pushed from one groping ruffian to another until my shirt was half off and my bra ripped. The sight of one of my poonts popping out quieted them for a moment and then a lascivious look came over them as one and I was backed into a corner as the crowd advanced on my, their thoughts being most ungentlemanly. Not even the zombie Neil Lennon smashing his way into the Sky broadcasting room at Parkhead live on television could distract them and I feared that I was about to be gang raped until everyone stopped and looked up as reports were heard from the direction of the Clyde and a whistling sound heralded something coming towards us. I grinned. ‘What’s she got to grin for?’ asked one green and grey clad flimp. Then there was a scream from outside and I gazed out the window. ‘Who’s that kicking up a row?’ asked a doxy.
‘What’s she got to stare at now?’ cried a glocky.
‘I’ll tell ya,’ I said. ‘There’s a ship, the black freighter, turning in the harbour,’ and as they all rushed to the windows to look, a great crashing explosion tore the room apart. Down in the Clyde, Richard Gough’s Nautilus was firing mortars from its gun ports and his Sikhs were streaming onto the wharf and pouring up the street towards the Brazen Head. All their thoughts of raping me were now gone as everyone dived for cover or fled in the face of impending massacre but it was too late, the Sikhs were upon them and every man jack of the Green Brigade and all the assorted villains rounded up and held among the burning timber, the flames the only illumination in that horrid place. What was left of the door was kicked open and in marched Gough.
‘This is for Donald Findlay’s housekeeper, from now on you don’t attack us with impunity. Spiers, I can see you cowering there, come out.’
I pulled my torn shirt over my breasts and walked towards him, eyeing the chained men who moments before were about to molest me.
‘Kill ‘em now or later?’ was all Gough asked me.
A fog horn sounded miles away and in the quiet of death I said, ‘Right now.’
The bodies piled up and I said, ‘That’ll learn you,’ and as Gough and his Sikhs returned to the Nautilus I walked with them and as the ship disappeared out to sea, on it was me.

Magic, Mayhem and Melancholy

2011-12-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

Blackbirds sing outside. I can’t see them but I have grown to know their sound from my enforced solitude in an Ayrshire barn conversion. I’m lying on the floor gazing up through the dormer windows at the grey sky, the only movement the steady stream of rain water as it trickles down the window. I have one hand clutching my phone and the other absent mindedly caressing one of my breasts. Yes, this is why I am living in self-enforced exile, I’m now a woman.

Of course the gathered ranks of the Scottish football media used to call me a big wuman all the time anyway but now I find myself sans-penis and although exciting at first, I now don’t know quite what to do with myself. I’ve also been fired from the Times which makes it worse. I thought I was so untouchable, me – Spiers, the curse of Rangers and champion of downtrodden Celtic fans everywhere, but then I pulled a gun on Magnus Linklater only to discover later that he had one of Lawwell’s agents hiding behind me with an even bigger gun, one that fires darts and can knock out Elaine C Smith at full charge from fifty yards. Then I woke up, post-op in one of Lawwell’s underground chambers with Graeme Souness eyeing me most maliciously and before I knew it I was in 221b with Donald Findlay laughing at me so hard he coughed on his pipe and had to hold onto the fireplace while his housekeeper fetched him sherry.

‘Oh, oh, oh, Spiers! What are we going to do with you?’ he roared. ‘I mean, I’m not complaining – that’s a magnificent set of bouncers you have on you but in the name of the wee man, what possible good was this going to do Lawwell? I simply don’t understand and that worries me.’
‘Honey trap, it has to be,’ muttered Souness darkly, his moustache bristling.
‘Sex magic,’ suggested Jorg Albertz Demon Hunter without expanding which was a shame as this sounded quite interesting.
Findlay recovered slightly and straightened his back, ready to expound some theory of his own but then he looked at me and burst into shrieks of laughter again and had to be helped into a chair.

Once Findlay had calmed down they sat around a table by the huge bay windows and pondered how best to approach the current stalemate with the SFA.
‘Lunny’s working to nothing but the BBC’s own pro-Celtic agenda,’ growled Souness. ‘He doesn’t quite realise how he’s being manipulated in that he doesn’t know or doesn’t believe that the Pacific Quay CSC are working for Lawwell, suppressing anything damaging to Celtic while highlighting ad nauseum all minor incidents involving Rangers. He told me this under torture so I believe him. Regan knows fine well what’s going on but he’s been nothing but a Lawwell puppet since Celtic annexed the SFA before the season even started. Our problem lies not only in the disproportionate punishment of Rangers by Lunny but also the knock on effect it is having on referees who are now too scared to award anything our way for fear of being dragged through the media mud once the Young Bhoys of the BBC have edited the footage to suit Lawwell. This is extremely concerning to us as we have a game against Celtic in a few days. My suggestion is that you allow me to take out Lawwell once and for all – I’ve never understood your desire to give him a free hand to do as he likes, not when you’ve got me, and indeed Jorg Albertz at your disposal, not to mention Richard Gough and his navy or the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos. With all this in our armoury we should be taking the fight to Lawwell, not letting him ride roughshod over Scottish football while his confederates, Devine, Kearney, McBride and all the others do the same to Scottish society. The country is teetering on the edge of something awful and for what, a game of football?’
‘Now now Graeme,’ puffed Findlay, composed at last and sucking on his pipe. ‘You’ve trusted me for three seasons and haven’t I always delivered? I think you should have more faith in my reasoning and calm that itchy trigger finger of yours. A time for cool heads, I’ve always said, don’t you think Spiers? Eh? Cool heads? Now,’ and he regarded me with a smirk. ‘Now, I think I have a use for you after all,’ but before he could continue his sitting room door burst open and there was Findlay’s housekeeper standing with eyes and mouth wide open, the business end of a huge sword sticking out of her belly – she’d been run through from behind.
‘Mrs Hudson!’ screamed Findlay and in a twinkling had opened a vial of orange liquid he’d produced from his pocket and was gulping it down just as Souness had produced a pistol from his dinner jacket and Albertz began trying to find an unlocked window.

It was the Green Brigade. We knew instantly as they were but teenagers although very dangerous teenagers since they’d been brainwashed by the old rapey looking guy who was leading them and who’d run through Mrs Hudson. They screamed in delight as they saw us trapped in there and pushed the housekeeper aside and made for Souness first, cutlasses held aloft. Souness downed the first eight with his Walther PPK so that the next wave had to jump the bodies of their comrades to reach him by which time he’d picked up a fallen sword and was busy pinking anyone who came near. Their numbers soon told though and Souness was forced into a corner and had to resort to the Maltese Cross manoeuvre to keep them back. I was pressed against the window which Albertz had failed to open and was now rushing with a chair. ‘Don’t break my bloody window!’ shrieked Findlay before convulsing and writhing on the floor, his body growing and tearing open his lounge suit and smoking jacket, revealing muscle upon muscle out of which coarse black hair was sprouting – I’ll say it again, one touch of the hard stuff and that Findlay is an animal! He stood up and his head nearly touched the ceiling. The Green Brigade who almost filled the room now, all stopped and stared at him, perhaps remembering tales of how the beast Findlay had ripped the heads off the first incarnation of their little organisation.

There was a crash and I turned to see Albertz had thrown the chair through the window; an absolute shame as it had been the original Georgian glass. This was the final straw for the Findlay beast and he reached down, picked up three of the Green Brigade and took off their heads with one bite. The room was now a chaos of struggle and screams and gore. I heard another crash and Souness had fallen backwards through the middle bay window from the weight of the Green Brigade who were hurling themselves on him.
‘Sorry guvnor, time for me to go,’ winked Albertz before taking off through his hole in the window. Looking up one last time before following him, I saw Findlay holding the rapey looking leader of the Green Brigade by the neck with his teeth, he was shaking him like a dog would a doll until old rapey stopped thrashing and his body fell limp into the fire, his cheap nylon shell suit catching light and just as I plunged out the window, tits first, I could tell that the room was going up in flames then I was rolling across the lawn and I came to at the feet of what looked like a giant Sikh sailor. I looked up at him and it was Richard Gough!
‘By the gods, Spiers! You’re a woman!’ exclaimed Gough before throwing himself into the fray, his Jack Tars in turbans right behind him waving their tulwars.

The scaling ladders went up and as Gough and his sailors poured into the room to aid Findlay, I felt for broken bones as usual and realised for the first time that I was no longer checking my manhood first to make sure it was still there.
‘Yes, you’ve still got a fanny,’ muttered Souness who kneeled beside me reloading his Walther and when he finished he got up and looked down at me, almost in pity.
‘This is where I belong, Spiers; amongst the madness and bloodshed. You do too, only you don’t know it. I’m going back in there, you can do what you like,’ and he started to leave but I called out to him, ‘But it’s crazy! It’s beyond lunacy,’ but before I could finish he winked at me and said, ‘You think this is mental, wait till you see the game against Celtic on Wednesday.’

I ran as fast as my jiggling boobs would let me and as I left the grounds of 221b, an explosion rocked the neighbourhood and sent me sprawling. I got up and kept running and didn’t look back.

That was Christmas Eve and there was nothing merry about it. Now here I lie, in my secluded barn watching the grey sky turn into night; the blackbirds the only sound I can hear. My phone sits quietly in my hand. No one’s asked me to work at the Rangers Celtic game yet. I’m becoming desperate.

A World Well Lost

2011-12-19T23:32:00.000-08:00

So I’m a woman. I sat regarding my tits and struggled to remember anything after Magnus Linklater had me shot at the Times. I thought I was dead. Well, I didn’t think anything but it certainly felt like I was dead, all that nothingness, the cut to black but here I am, lying on an operating table in Lawwell’s dungeons and in possession of a remarkable set of diddies. I gave ‘em a little jiggle to see how it felt but this only brought a sigh from Souness who was eyeing me with suspicion from the other side of the room.
‘What are we going to do with it?’ he asked. Jorg Albertz was with him and he thought for a while.
‘Well we can’t leave it here, who knows why Lawwell had this done but I don’t trust for a moment what he’s going to do with it. Nothing good, that’s for sure.’
‘We’ll take it to Donald Findlay, he’ll know what to do with it,’ suggested Souness. ‘He’s a politician. Well, he’s a QC but you know what I mean. He should have some idea just what new monstrous outrage Lawwell is planning to carry out with a female Graham Spiers.’
There was no denying it, I’d pulled the sheets back and my cock was gone.

I didn’t argue with Souness or Alberz as they bundled me up and out of Parkhead, I wanted to get to the bottom (not for the first time) of this. Why in the midst of fighting off a concentrated attack by his own people in the media had Peter Lawwell taken the time to give me a sex change? If I’d known the trouble it’d get me into and the danger and being scared half to death, I’d have let it lie and just got on with life as a man with a woman’s body – it’s worked for Janette Findlay for long enough – but I just had to know and as we sped through the streets of the east end, the rattle of defensive machine guns sounding behind us as Lawwell fought off everyone with any media interest except BBC Scotland who remained sandbagged within Pacific Quay broadcasting the Boys of the Old Brigade, I thought to myself that this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship with my new body if only I had the slightest idea what to do with a vagina.

Souness: Revenge of the Ranger Part Five

2011-12-19T22:46:00.000-08:00

Peter Lawwell’s Celtic is a wounded beast, limping through the undergrowth trying in vain to hide the painful and open wounds inflicted by the UEFA fine and unprecedented media attention on its fans’ sectarian singing. I’m Souness and I saw those open wounds and decided what they needed was a dose of vinegar.

My first thought was to arm up and take the Mini Cooper through the front doors but a phone call from Jorg Albertz warned me that there was an easier way.
‘How did you know what I was planning?’ I asked.
‘Because I know what you’re thinking.’ He replied.
‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m Jorg Albertz Demon Hunter,’ he replied.
Satisfied, I met him at George Square and wore the cheap suit and emerald green tie he’d requested. When Albertz turned up he was wearing the same. The disguises got us into the City Chambers without anyone batting an eye and there he showed me the tunnel that led from the headquarters of Glasgow City Council to Celtic Park.

A half hour yomp later and we came out inside Parkhead from a broom cupboard. The first thing that happened was that we met a Celtic security guard. I was reaching for my Walther but Albertz held up a pack of cigarettes and said to the man, ‘This is an ID card. It says I’m an employee and so is this man. You’re going to let us go on our way.’
It worked and the man left us be.
‘Oh, and you’re going to leave here and go take a shit in Alan Thompson’s office,’ he shouted after him. I’d seen this before, auto-suggestion, hypnosis, call it what you like. Albertz calls it magic, I call it dealing with morons.

We made our way to Lawwell’s dungeons, Albertz remembering the four digit code to get into the subterranean base: 1967. They hadn’t changed it since he was last here with Richard Gough. They never change it. So caught up are they in their own self-mythologising, they make it easy for us to access every code they have. We crept past the torture pits, past the skin flats and the inquisition chamber until we got to the operating room. This was where I intended to plant the first high explosive, not to bring down Parkhead – no, that wasn’t my plan at all. The football club was safe with me, my intention was to strike at the bristling underbelly of the institution and where better to start than Lawwell’s underground empire?

I was reaching into my bag of tricks when Albertz nudged me and motioned for me to follow him into the operating room. It was empty save for one table in the centre. Barely lit, the only illumination came from this table where a body lay covered in a single sheet. It was a woman, we could tell from the protruding breasts. Intrigued as to what Lawwell was doing with a woman inside his dungeon retreat we walked cautiously towards the table and Albertz leaned over and pulled back the sheet. What fresh madness was this? It was Spiers!

Souness: Revenge of the Ranger Part Four

2011-12-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

I hooked the pulley over the zip slide, jumped from the roof of the hotel opposite Pacific Quay and in seconds I was careering towards the headquarters of the greatest enemy of Rangers outside of Celtic, BBC Scotland. The BBC in Glasgow is just an extension of Celtic these days, much like the SFA. My job tonight was to do something about that. Celtic had been found guilty by UEFA of sectarian singing by their fans but the media in Scotland, under orders from Lawwell were playing it down. The BBC more than most. Word had reached me that they intended to give it ten seconds, buried at the back of the programme in the sport section. The memory of the headlines attacking Rangers when they were in a similar position a few years back made it more clear than ever that the Pacific Quay CSC had an agenda, I couldn’t contain my rage and set off for a little revenge, Souness style. Findlay didn’t know of my work tonight and wouldn’t have sanctioned it had he known. Something about this made my zip slide across the Clyde more invigorating. I was back in the shadows, working for no one but myself.

I hit the roof and rolled and coming to, spotted a dark figure approaching me. Recognising it immediately as Stuart Cosgrove dressed as a bat, I fired three shots into his chest anyway and he staggered backwards and fell off the side of the building. A stupid way to die. The grappling hook appeared as expected and Cosgrove was back on the roof.
‘Souness, you maniac – you knew it was me, lucky my Kevlar breast plate saved me but then you knew I was wearing it, didn’t you? What were you trying to do, put me in my place?’
I grinned and said nothing. Didn’t have to. He had me sussed.

I asked him what he was doing on the roof. ‘I work here, where else am I going to begin my nightly patrols?’ he complained.
Nightly patrols. I have so much in common with this man and yet so little. I’ve never understood him and for that I detest him. I put this to the back of my mind and smiled as I remembered his expression when I shot him over the edge of the roof.
‘Are you here to gather information on the BBC’s burying of Celtic’s UEFA fine?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m here to shoot the people responsible for it,’ I replied. No point in gathering information. We know the BBC is culturally and institutionally biased against Rangers. Nothing will change that. Shooting a few of them will make me feel better though and that’s all that matters just now.'
‘Well I wouldn’t hang around here too long if I were you,’ said Cosgrove. ‘It’s dark, and they mostly come at night. Mostly,’ and then he shot his grappling hook skywards and took off towards the Science Centre.

I wondered what he meant but before I had time to ponder his words too much, I heard a noise from behind me and there was Chris McLaughlin crouched by a door, hissing at me. My Walther was out of its holster in a second and I fired two silenced shots into his chest. He kept coming. I put another two through him but he only halted briefly before coming on again. One right in the forehead snapped his head back but he straightened it and snarled at me, fangs glinting in the moonlight. One each to the knees and I was off back across the Clyde on the zip slide.

Back in my car, burning rubber as I tore through the streets I thought about Neil Lennon and Scott Brown, spewing filth across Scottish football. I thought about Chris McLaughlin sucking the life out of it. Zombies and vampires. This is a new world and I don’t like it. I don’t like anything that won’t stay dead when I shoot it.

Souness: Revenge of the Ranger Part Three

2011-12-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

I move in the shadows; silent, deadly, moustache bristling. I was at Parkhead and had infiltrated Lawwell's inner sanctum - the underground dungeons where he skulks and plots. And tortures. He had Vincent Lunny on the rack and Lunny was squealing like a stuck pig, promising anything Lawwell liked if only he'd make the pain stop. I let him continue longer than I should have, enjoying Lunny's discomfort and because I waited, I left myself open to two of Lawwell's goons stumbling upon me in the corridor. They reached for their weapons, their first mistake; I didn't allow them another. Two shots from a silenced Walther PPK and one fell forward, his left ventricle in tatters while the other buckled at the knees and collapsed, his right ventricle exploding in his chest . I wonder if they appreciated the symmetry? Lunny screamed and I decided it was time.

A casual observer might think that the silencer was resting on Lawwell's temple but it wasn't, it was touching it and every inch of the pistol was under my control. Lawwell knew this, Lawwell knew me and silently unstrapped Lunny who dragged himself from the rack and sobbing, gathered his clothes.

'Thank you, oh thank you whoever you are. This man's a maniac, a sadist!' cried Lunny as my pistol stayed aimed at Lawwell's head as the beast himself regarded me through evil eyes. That's why I'm here; to battle a monster you must use a monster. Lawwell thinks he's a sociopath? Wait till he gets a load of me. 'See you later you lazy eyed psycho,' I grinned and winked at him.

Getting out was easier than getting in, I just held onto Lunny and ran through the corridors shooting anything that moved. As I passed the players' changing rooms I came upon Neil Lennon staggering towards me, his arms outstretched. I put two through his lungs but it made no difference and he kept coming at me and that was when I remembered Spiers's wild claims of Lennon being a zombie. I was aiming for the head when I was disturbed by Scott Brown coming at me from a side door. He had a bite mark on his neck and looked as brain dead as Lennon, thick black tar drooling from his mouth, skin pale, eyes vacant, moaning. Instinctively I put one in his heart but he too kept coming. Zombies, both of 'em. My boot crashed open a fire exit and I was out of there with Lunny bleating behind me about how thankful he was to be rescued. My car roared and as we left Celtic Park I could see Lennon and Brown stumbling out of the open fire exit and heading off into the night, towards Ashton Lane no doubt. No one would notice they were any different.

'Listen, I don't know who you are, I'm not really that knowledgeable about football but thank you anyway,' gibbered Lunny. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you!'

'You're welcome,' I said. 'But one thing intrigues me. Lawwell's one of your own and he's doing that to you. What I'm about to do is because I'm your enemy but one of your own? Why was he doing that to you? Think about it.'

I let him think about it until I got him to my warehouse. I let him think about it as I tied him to a chair. He was still thinking about it when I attached the crocodile clips and and turned on the power.

Souness: Revenge of the Ranger Part Two

2011-12-05T01:17:00.000-08:00

The interesting thing about the Green Brigade meetings is that they’re always the same – some rapey looking old man will stand up and rave about social injustice, blame it all on Protestants then he’ll get a round of applause and everyone will burst into a few verses of Boys of the Old Brigade before they all get tanked up on Buckfast and go out looking for Church of Scotland ministers to attack. It’s not sectarian though, it’s political. At least that’s what people you’d think would know better would have us believe. A cabal of bigoted academics have been pushing this agenda since Strathclyde Police had the temerity to report Celtic to UEFA for their fans’ sectarian chanting. The academics aren’t alone as they’ve been joined by the Scottish Labour Party who have been taking it in turns to speak up in defence of songs glorifying the IRA from their complimentary seats in the main stand at Parkhead. Then there are Lawwell’s poodles in the media; they’re all on my list if only Donald Findlay would sanction my plans for a massive punitive strike but he won’t although he’s tempted to let me loose on BBC Scotland which I’m looking forward to.

The rafters were dark and cold as I observed the Green Brigade’s latest meeting and for a change they had something a little different this time.
‘Comrades, we are pleased to announce a very special guest this week,’ announced the rapey old man and a hush fell over the assembled teenagers and juvenile delinquents. ‘I introduce to you, Phil McGillivan!’
There was uproar as a door opened and in staggered a putrid and rotting figure of a man. He shambled onto the makeshift stage opened his mouth and spewed filth and excrement over the front three rows, lost whatever balance he had and then collapsed in a pile of his own vomit. He got a standing ovation.

‘Comrades,’ said old Rapey, standing up and continuing the applause. ‘I think you’ll find that Comrade Phil is never wrong so you all know what to do,’ and at this, they all got up and left the building and headed to Dundee to prove their edgy Marxist credentials by singing songs in praise of terrorism and ethnic cleansing. I would have liked to have done a little cleansing of my own, the Sterling submachine gun snuggling cosily in my arms but I had strict instructions to observe only. Such is the life of a soldier.

Souness: Revenge of the Ranger

2011-12-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

I'm Souness. I’m a soldier. Donald Findlay’s a politician. Well, he’s a QC but you know what I mean. He’s had me hamstrung since the beginning of this season, putting the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos out to grass and allowing me only to work on my own and in the shadows. To make matters worse, he’s become too caught up in Jorg Albertz Demon Hunter’s mumbo jumbo and now they’ve brought in Mo Johnston, a powerful ally to have with a proven track record of bringing fear to our enemies but the problem with him is he’s a renegade and you never know whose side he’s on at any given time. So after I'd rescued the mincing fool, Spiers from Tartaglia’s hit squad in Val D’Isere and using him to flush out a Lawwell assassin who was stalking Ally McCoist, Findlay got Spiers all riled up about something or another and he ran off to Queen Street to confront Magnus Linklater about his future on the Times. That was the last we heard of Spiers, apart from some whimpering on Twitter and now he’s gone.

I can’t say I’m sad to lose him; Findlay liked to play him like a pawn in a giant chess match against Lawwell but all I could see was a prancing queen with a hard on for corduroy and a sociopathic need to attack Rangers. Craig Whyte called him an irrelevance as nobody reads the Times in Scotland anymore and Spiers lost his fan base among the Celtic community the moment the Times put a pay wall on their website. Reduced to writing provocative rubbish on Twitter, a medium which seems to attract narcissistic morons like Spiers and which seems to take up all of Stewart Regan’s days now that he has nothing else to do with his time, the SFA having been annexed by Celtic, Spiers was no longer a threat to Rangers. Even his influence over politicians waned when Stuart Waiton exposed him during the recent summit to discuss the SNP’s proposed sinister, dystopian sectarianism in football bill which meant there would be no more dripping poison into the ears of anyone with the clout to pursue UEFA in an attempt to have Rangers banned from Europe in order to affect their revenue stream and give the government team, Celtic an advantage.

So the weirdness was gone, his legacy being one of immense double standards when it came to offensive singing from football fans, a topic he raised to the same level of importance as football itself and paving the way for the SNP’s illiberal legislation. So you could say that if Spiers had kept his mouth shut then freedom of speech wouldn’t be at risk in Scotland right now. After all, what are a few fruity songs amongst all the industrial language at football matches? Then again, the fool did his damn best to have a clause inserted in the new legislation allowing Celtic fans and the Green Brigade in particular to sing anything they like, no matter how offensive or even illegal in existing law. He wasn’t the only one but he was the main cheer leader, sometimes right down to the little skirt and pom poms and that is why I’m sitting here in the rafters of a derelict building in the east end of Glasgow, listening to the Green Brigade as they discuss their plans and hopefully give me a clue as to Spiers’s whereabouts. You see Donald Findlay wants him back. Donald Findlay believes only an imbecile like Spiers can help him in his latest plan. I don’t know what that plan is though; Findlay keeps it from me in case I’m captured because Findlay is a politician. Well, he’s a QC but you know what I mean. Me, I’m a soldier.

Made in America

2011-12-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks have been a blur since Donald Findlay tricked me into meeting Mo Johnston again. In spite of Tom Devine’s insistence that it was all an elaborate con, I know what I witnessed at St. Mirin’s Cathedral that night and no amount of Celtic spin can make me change my mind or say otherwise. BBC Scotland employs vampires who are sucking dry the husk that is Scottish football and that’s that and if that makes me sound like an idiot who doesn’t deserve to work for the Times then so be it, let them try to sack me, they wouldn’t dare.

Jorg Albertz explained to me before we started that being in the vicinity of so much magik would affect my perceptions of time and reality. He said this before deciphering the runes from the island where we were cast up after the awful crash of the Celtic AGM.

‘The first line says, ‘know the law well because it is not true’. Well that’s very interesting, can be interpreted in a number of ways, don’t you agree?’ asked Albertz. Mo Johnston nodded, his golden face radiating beauty and quite putting me off our task.
‘On one hand,’ piped up Donald Findlay. ‘It could mean we must know the forthcoming legislation well as it might be dangerously illiberal and threaten freedom of speech.’
‘No might about it, it is dangerous,’ interrupted Souness. ‘I insist that you allow me to let loose the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos and we’ll soon put Salmond back in his place. In fact, I’ll bring him to you in a cage.’
Findlay smirked, ‘Again Graeme, this is not the time for running off half cocked with a knife between your teeth, the runes could mean something else entirely. Know the law well… Know the law well. Know the Lawwell? Know the Lawwell! If anything isn’t true it’s that bastard! Could these wise and ancient magi have been warning us about Lawwell, the beast who would terrorise their island before returning to Scotland to continue terrorising the Scottish media?’
‘If this is true then we must get to Stewart Regan and warn him what he’s dealing with,’ exhorted Albertz.
‘Are you joking? You think Regan didn’t know exactly who he was climbing into bed with when Lawwell offered him the job at the SFA?’ growled Souness.
‘Of course I’m joking, squire. Anything to lighten the mood, it’s all getting a bit morbid around here and for good reason, I sense impending doom for one of our little band of brothers and if all these years of arsing about with demonology, witchcraft and magik has meant anything, it means my sixth sense is never wrong.’

I bridled at this, feeling very uncomfortable looking around the room at all these old warriors and me sitting with them, never been in a fight in my life. If someone here is facing destruction, it sure as damnation’s not going to one of these ruffians which left me. I looked up and noted that Mo Johnston was gazing down at me, his blue eyes glowing. I blushed and looked away and then everything went hazy and the next thing I remember I was in a toboggan with Souness, racing down a hillside, gunshots sounding from behind, snow kicking up all around as Phil Tartaglia’s men pursued us.

Everything went blank again and the next thing I remember is standing with Souness, looking down at a body bleeding out into the snow, awful crimson wings of gore spreading from behind someone I recognised as one of Lawwell’s goons. A little puff of smoke played around my nose and I glanced at the steaming silencer on the end of Souness’s pistol; it intrigued me, this man’s end.
‘Do you think he felt any pain, knew he was finished?’ I asked.
‘He knew nothing, one minute he’s aiming at Ally McCoist’s head, the next, it goes black then there’s nothing. There’s no afterlife, Spiers, no heaven. Death isn’t a door from this life to the next, it’s just death. Darkness forever and the sooner you religious types begin to understand that then perhaps we’ll have less trouble from extremists like Lawwell and his fellow travellers. We’re all the same you know, pieces of meat trying to get through life; the days of attributing God’s works to anything we don’t understand are long gone and anyway, I’ve never met anything I didn’t understand that couldn’t be explained by a double tap from a Walther PPK.’
Well that cheered me up no end and that’s where my memory of the snow ends. My recollections by now are like old film stock flickering through a dusty projector: lucidity followed by gaps and jumps.

‘This isn’t a Catholic problem; it’s a Celtic supporting Catholic problem,’ said Findlay, filling his pipe and tugging at his whiskers. ‘Most Catholics don’t give a damn about the IRA but the majority of Celtic supporters do as they glorify them in song every week as they follow their team and it’s hardly the minority of a small group of one particular supporters’ organisation as every Celtic Minded politician, journalist, or academics with Lawwell’s pistol pointed at his head is claiming. No, it’s most of the crowd as any of these fools could hear if they’d stop singing Boys of the Old Brigade long enough to listen.’

Do you know what I’d love to see? What would please me now more than anything, even Rangers winning four in a row? For one, just one eminent Roman Catholic to come out in public and say that they’ve got a bit carried away, that they’re not being persecuted and that everyone should calm down. I think I’ll settle for four in a row though as there’s no way any of them will speak out against this offensive tribal posturing.’
There was no stopping him now, his pipe was ablaze and he puffed furiously as he considered what I’d told him of Lawwell’s latest mischief.

‘Unlike other years when I’d rather forget these, my declining days and thus ignore my birthdays, next year I’m rather looking forward to it what with Celtic playing at home on St. Patrick’s Day especially after they came out and lambasted Rangers for cynically ‘abusing’ St. Andrew’s Day for their own purposes. I’m sure I’m not the only one filing away Lawwell’s thinly veiled diatribe until next March,’ and he got to his feet and kicked the coal scuttle.

Then I felt dizzy and when I came to I was in the office of the editor of the Times and I had a pistol in my hand. How it got there I don’t know, what I was doing, I also can’t recall but there was one thing in my mind and that was to take out Magnus Linklater and for some reason, scratching away at the back of my mind was the idea that it was him or me. Wobbly old Magnus looked at me with sadness and rose from his desk. ‘I’m sorry Graham,’ he said and

Lies, Damned Lies

2011-11-23T05:27:00.000-08:00

‘Of course the statistics lacked detail and were so small as to be almost insignificant when compared to the overall number of assaults in the country. They even paled against racist assaults; homophobic assaults too and that was only the ones committed by Barking Phil Tartaglia,’ this was Donald Findlay. I could tell even though my eyes were still closed from being knocked unconscious by Souness on Byres Road as I’d joined in with the West End Liberal Elite celebrating their diversity by singing IRA songs.

‘We had our suspicions that the Organisation had advance knowledge of the contents of the report considering Barking broke into the First Minister’s office to verbally thrash him and threaten to withdraw the Catholic vote if he didn’t release the religious hate crimes figures pronto and while he was at it, why not hand over a state sanctioned license to indulge in his own prejudices against the gays. Why would he be in such a hurry if he hadn’t been tipped off about the contents? Who would do such a thing remains in the realms of conjecture.’
‘I’d like five minutes alone with Kennny MacAskill. Just me, him and an electricity supply, I’d soon find out,’ interrupted Souness.
‘Yes, quite,’ reflected Findlay, packing his pipe. ‘No, we must deal with fact here, Graeme, not supposition. We don’t want to fetch up like our separated brethren, shrieking about myth, lies, hearsay, paranoia and skewed statistics until the Scottish people get tired of their constant whining and begin to resent them thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hmm… Is that what they’re after, I wonder? Eh Spiers, is that what they’re after?’ Damn, he’d noticed I was awake. I shouldn’t have let my mind wonder onto Martin O’Neil, the ensuing bulge in my corduroys gave the game away.

‘Where am I?’ I asked.
‘Why, 221b of course. There’ll be no underground dungeons or gulags here you know,’ replied Findlay, lighting a stick on the open fire and lifting it to his pipe.
‘I heard what you were saying when you thought I was out cold,’ I whimpered. ‘And you’re wrong, you know – the statistics prove beyond a doubt that Catholics are being persecuted in this country.’
‘The statistics prove nothing,’ puffed Findlay. ‘They can be read many ways for instance, they could just as well prove that Catholics are more than punching above their weight as 17% of the country’s population indulge in 37% of all religiously aggravated crimes but you don’t hear us bleating about it. No, we’d rather work diligently towards creating a more peaceful society with people of all religions and none working and living together as one while old Barking Phil and his friends in the political/media complex are quite content to create division and resentment. For goodness sake, they even wheeled out Joan McAlpine this week and how she managed to keep her head out from between Tom Devine’s thighs long enough to pen a piece for the Scotsman I’ll never know. Wonders will never cease, eh Graeme?’ and he looked at Souness who got up from his seat and spat in the fire.
‘I’m telling you Donald, let me get the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos back together and I’ll soon put an end to all this nonsense.’
‘Sorry old friend, this is a time for cool heads, not running around the country bumping other peoples together. No, we must allow Tartaglia, McAlpine, uncle Tom Cobbly and anyone else who wants to come out and attack us in the press to get on with it, we can’t be seen to be denying anyone their freedom of speech even if it means hearing things we’d much rather not hear.’
At this I thought he was having a dig at me and said so but Findlay just laughed and Souness spat in the fire again and glared at me.
‘Yes, you, Spiers. I suppose you’ve been wondering why we asked you here?’
‘Asked me here my foot, you knocked me unconscious and dragged me!’ I squealed and Findlay chuckled.
‘If you say so old sport. So since you are wondering why we asked you here, now that you’re awake we can get on with it. I hear you have runes you wish translated? Runes from your little island where you all had the most splendid vacation with our friend Lawwell? Well I have just the man who can tell you what they say.’
‘Well I was intending to ask Jorg Albertz,’ I stuttered, amazed at how Findlay always seemed to know everything.
‘I know. That’s why you’re here now, Jorg is with us in this room.’
I took a look around the room and there was only Findlay, Souness and me and I was just about to ask another damn fool question when I noticed the painting above the fire. It was an old house sitting in the darkness, wreathed in fog and most importantly, it had one window illuminated and as I gazed at it, the light from the window went off. Then it came back on and all those feelings of horror from the last time I was put in the picture came flooding back, I felt dizzy, my gorge rising and just as I thought I was going to pass out I heard a voice say, ‘alright squire, how you doing?’ and there was Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter standing before me, mist swirling around his feet and he wasn’t alone; behind him stood another man. I heard Findlay chortle behind me and Souness shifted in his chair. ‘Spiers,’ said Findlay. ‘We believe you’ve met Mo Johnston.’

For Your Ears Only

2011-11-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

Having hosed Barking Phil Tartaglia off Lorraine Davidson, the janitor spent the rest of the day mopping up the mess so it was up to me to write my own column this week and I’ve got to tell you, it was making me nervous. I hadn’t written a word in ages you see so I decided it was time to get back to basics which is to say, come up with some real down and dirty Celtic extremist appeasing, Rangers bating, nonsense. So I took a tour of all my usual haunts: Heraghtys, Brazen Head, Jintys to hang with the Republican Girls who teased me about my hair and finally, to the Chip with the Young Bhoys of BBC Scotland who at first hailed me but after a while, returned to their old ways of teasing me and forcing me to take a line off a young web editor’s cock. Suitably high on illicit drugs and murky Celtic Minded ideas and paranoia, I went home and after a brief pause to have a tantric wank over my Martin O’Neil scrapbook, I wrote my column. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Job done and feeling beyond satisfied with myself, I changed from my corduroys into another set of corduroys and toodled off back to the Chip hoping the Pacific Quay CSC would still be there. Of course they were, hooting and guffawing that their team nabbed another three points in a game anyone wearing green feared they were going to lose. Of course the referee made sure that didn’t happen and red carded an Inverness player for breathing close to Samaras, the Greek beauty going down as if stabbed in the neck just to make it easy on the ref as he knew he was under orders from Lawwell not to make it look too suspicious lest anyone begin asking difficult questions about his role at the SFA since Celtic annexed Hampden after being invited in by Stewart Regan.

I had a few appletinis and was enjoying the night as the BBC Bhoys began singing examples of the type of songs currently causing Celtic problems. I sat at the bar and listened as the IRA songs flowed until the barman could no longer allow it and he approached the ring leader and told him to cut it out as the songs were offensive. Now was my time, I thought so I interrupted and told the barman, ‘Listen here, my good man, it’s their social, cultural and political right to be allowed the freedom of speech to sing these songs you know.’
‘You should’ve thought about that before going after the Rangers fans then stinky,’ said the barman. ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite, you know that? And anyway, this is a public bar and it’s here for the enjoyment of everyone, not just you and your rabble so cut it out.’
So we took it out onto Ashton Lane and continued our loud, tribal chants as I’d quite joined in by now and our noise attracted the denizens of Jintys who came outside and sang along and before you know it, Neil Lennon himself staggered out, moaning and stumbling, his gums beginning to rot now with blackened teeth falling out and rancid thick ooze dripping from his chin. Of course nobody noticed that Lennnon was now a zombie and he was hailed by all and hoist on shoulders and carried off onto Byres Road to continue the sing song there. I’d taken a step back and was marvelling as they celebrated their diversity by singing songs about murderers and ethnic cleansers when I felt something cold on my temple. I stopped, suddenly frozen with fear as my eyes darted to the side and followed the line of the long black silencer, along the barrel of the Walther to the strong and steady hand and arm stretching out from the shadows of a doorway.
‘Alright loser,’ said Graeme Souness, winking. ‘You’re coming with me,’ and he brought the gun down on my head and everything went black.

The Curse of the Republican Reptiles

2011-11-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

Fascinating weekend as Celtic went on the warpath, releasing Barking Phil Tartaglia to their poodles at the Scottish Sunday Times. Barking got a bit carried away and took Lorraine Davidson over a table before being hosed off by the janitor who was miffed at having to take time off writing my Monday column. Davidson didn’t mind though, Roman Catholic or Labour Party, usually both, they can ride her any old way and she’ll always forgive them; it’s in her nature.

So with Tartaglia assaulting the inkies, Lawwell took to the pitch to sort out ESPN, striding the Inverness ground like a colossus, laying waste the trackside microphones to ensure the petulant singing of IRA songs by a majority of the Celtic fans wouldn’t be heard at least through the media. You’ll notice I say majority of Celtic fans. Of course we all know it’s a majority of them but you try putting that in print and surviving the weekend as Lawwell locks and loads and comes after you with a bazooka. So the entire Scottish press accepted the three line whip from Celtic Park and what started off as offensive singing from the Celtic support, became illicit singing from a minority of the Celtic support. As the days went on, even this wasn’t good enough for Lawwell as he frothed and foamed in the dungeons under Parkhead and before you know it, we’re reporting illicit singing from a minority of the Green Brigade. Yes, you read that right, a minority of the Green Brigade. As if anyone who is a member of that lunatic fringe has any common sense and wouldn’t be singing along with gusto to every sectarian song they can remember from those secret indoctrination lessons from rapey older men they have to endure before being allowed to become members. Lawwell was walking a tight rope though, as he was the one who encouraged the Green Brigade by giving them their own section at Parkhead and tacitly supported their every chirp about the IRA by turning a deaf ear and blind eye to their behaviour.

Then as if these events didn’t astonish enough, Lawwell wheeled out Neil Lennon to appeal to the Green Brigade. The problem here is that since his accidental shooting last week, Lennon’s been a zombie and has been seen staggering around Ashton Lane late at night, moaning and grabbing at people, black tar oozeing from his mouth. Nobody noticed any change in him though so Lawwell felt secure in unchaining him from the wall and having him groan to the press who reported everything he said with the aid of an interpreter supplied by Lawwell who kept an eye on proceedings while holding a cocked schmeiser. The Scottish press, compliant as ever, rolled over like puppy dogs and proclaimed Lennon a great peace maker and champion of progressive and intelligent thought. One charming young journalist even went so far as to offer to blow him there and then but I was shouted down and told I was enough of a laughing stock. Meanwhile Tom English sat at the back of the room and scribbled something in his note pad. I leaned over and had a sneaky peak and noticed it was a note to himself to look up the date that Lennon had called the Rangers support and management bench ‘Orange bastards’ and to look up any footage of Lennon pumping his chest and accepting the plaudits from the Celtic support that ‘like me and you, he’s a provo too’. I didn’t like the look of this one bit and told English so but as usual, he stared at me, shook his head and walked off without saying a word. Then there were a few moments of excitement as Jonathan Sutherland of BBC Scotland was dragged from the press pack, nailed to a desk and had his feet blow torched. We got the message and everyone trotted off like sheep to keep digging to bury ever deeper, the stories of the Celtic fans and their majority support for a murderous Irish Republican terrorist organisation.

Also over the weekend, some games of football were played but no one noticed.

The Resurrection Man

2011-11-14T06:25:00.000-08:00

Lawwell slept soundly in the drivers seat of his car while I lay in the back, exhausted from digging a grave and filling it in again. At least the hard work kept me warm but it was beginning to wear off now and as the sun glanced over the horizon and the birdsong began, I shivered and wished corduroy was just a little warmer and then pondered whether or not I should switch to tweed. I was just considering this when Lawwell woke up with a cry of ‘Mother!’ then shuffled in his seat, noticed me in the rear view mirror and let me know in no uncertain terms if I breathed a word of how he’d just woken up, it’d be me being buried next, ‘and not in a magical grave yard, got that?’

We got out of the car and stomped about for a bit as daylight spread across the sky and then we walked cautiously towards the cemetery. A low mist hung over the place but it didn’t seem as eerie as hit had in the darkness the night before. Then we reached Lennon’s grave and we both stood and gawped at what we saw there. The grave was disturbed, like someone had climbed out of it and muddy footprints headed off in the other direction and disappeared in the field behind the graveyard wall.

‘Well, it’s worked but he’s gone. I didn’t see or hear anything, did you?’ I asked Lawwell but he didn’t seem too perturbed.
‘Are you not bothered that Neil Lennon’s a zombie and is probably staggering towards Ashton Lane as we speak?’ I asked but Lawwell just shrugged.
‘Who’s going to notice any difference?’ he asked and turned and walked back towards the car.

Lennon Sematary

2011-11-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

The clouds bruised a deep purple as darkness fell over the moors as I sat in a car with Peter Lawwell with the quite dead Neil Lennon in the boot. We were waiting for complete darkness before sneaking into an abandoned cemetery which Lawwell insisted would sort out the Lennon problem leaving no-one any the wiser.
‘Run this past me again, please?’ I asked, bewildered at the chain of events that brought us here and how quickly my life can a turn for the worse thanks to a newspaper column that although not written by me, ticked all the boxes and could just as well have been.

A piece about Celtic being investigated by UEFA for sectarian chanting? Bring up Rangers as often as possible although a similar piece about Rangers last season didn’t mention Celtic once – check. Equate the chanting with the word ‘political’ to make it sound less contentious and distance the charge from sectarianism – check. Mention ‘whataboutery’ – check. Frankly I’m amazed that I get away with the whataboutery argument – it’s a good way to silence any arguments whenever people question what I have to say about Celtic and their own problems whenever I’m getting all self-righteous about Rangers fans, I just say there’s no place here for whataboutery and you’ll notice, I never answer the question. Ever.

So when I first read my piece I didn’t fret too much as I thought the janitor had done well under the circumstances as the story was growing wings and going nationwide and if there’s one thing Lawwell can’t do, that is control the national press. Oh he might have all of the Scottish media by the balls, either through their own desire to help the cause as they’re as Celtic Minded as he is or they’re scared of him – one word from him and Lawwell would bring Kearney into it and next thing you know, your name is mud as someone somewhere accuses you of anti-Catholic bigotry, sometimes a Bishop but mostly just Kearney himself. They can’t do that with the nationals you see so I shouldn’t have been so sure of myself when I was summoned to Parkhead; I should’ve known Lawwell wanted someone’s hide and mine was as good as any.

So even although I think Neil Lennon is a remarkable person, I was glad the bullet missed me and hit him and I’ve got to be careful how I word this as no one wants the police turning up at their door, Paul McBride behind them in is wig and pink bow tie, pointing and shouting, ‘that’s him officers, he’s the man who mentioned killing Neil Lennon on the internet’.
Lawwell had stood behind me, shaking his head and not looking too worried. ‘We’ve been here before, Spiers so you can stop sobbing. Here, help me get him in a car; we’re going to the moors.’
And I thought at that, that we were going to roll him up in a rug and bury him but no, Lawwell had another plan.
‘It worked with Phil McGillivan you see,’ he told me as he drove us out of Glasgow. ‘When we found out we’d been tricked by Jorg Albertz into killing him outside his cave on the Ayrshire coast. At first we didn’t know what to do but Father Wormwood who you’ll recall helped us briefly last season, suggested a place where we could restore him; a magical place, an old cemetery where if you bury someone there in the light of the moon then they’ll be brought back to life. Well it worked for McGillivan although it seemed to have an adverse affect on his sanity – already clinging onto it by threads, his death and resurrection seemed to snap him entirely and his blogs haven’t been quite the same since. In saying that, he still somehow keeps the fans happy as they’re just as nutty as he is and that’s without being buried dead and then pulled out alive.’

And that’s how I fetched up in a cemetery with a shovel, burying Neil Lennon by the light of the moon while Lawwell leaned against a gravestone and puffed at a cigar, telling me how he’d recruited Neil Doncaster. ‘Sodomy is a wonderful thing, Spiers. Once you’ve done that to a person, things can never be quite the same again,’ and as he said that I dug deeper and more quickly and began to wonder if I’d ever get back to the west end from here.

The Sound of Pips Being Squeezed

2011-11-14T06:19:00.000-08:00

Lawwell was sweating as he held the horse whip under the chin of the boy from the Herald. He’d administered such a thrashing that his body glistened and steamed in the heat of the dungeon underneath Celtic Park. Lawwell had been naked when he began, a habit picked up on the island but the boy from the Herald, and he was only a boy, the experienced old inkies refusing to take the job and sending out a cub reporter, well he was naked now, his clothes having been stripped from his back from the blows of the whip.

‘You understand now, don’t you boy?’ panted Lawwell, breathing like a race horse and the boy nodded, wincing in the process.
‘Now, we’re going to gift your something from our back burner; something we’ve been saving up for a rainy day, a Tory tweeting about the UVF and just to make sure you do the right thing, here’s a spokesman from Nil By Mouth to help you,’ and he nodded towards the man in the Republic of Ireland replica football shirt who was manacled to the wall, his face a mask of blood and snot.
‘Now be off with you and when I look at the Herald in the morning, I want to see this taking the place of any stories you had in mind that may have included the words Celtic, investigation and UEFA, got that?’

The two broken men were led away to do their work and Lawwell showered and climbed into his Wehrmacht combat uniform and motioned for me to join him upstairs in Parkhead proper. He seemed calm now as he sat down behind his great iron desk and he allowed me to sit in the soft chair in front of it, designed to force anyone sitting in it to look up to him. As I sat down it rasped like a fart and I shifted uncomfortably as I noticed Lawwell smirk – I’d heard of this chair, it farted every time anyone sat in it, a favourite joke of Lawwells, especially when he has the First Minister in.

‘Spiers,’ he began, looking me in the eye. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by allowing pip squeaks like you to write what they want about Celtic Football Club so I have something for you,’ and he reached into his desk drawer. Now I’ve been around Lawwell long enough to know when I’m being lulled into a sense of false security and realised that if he wasn’t luring me into a trap, he’d have had me on the floor and not his Salmond chair so I was up and already pounding towards the door by the time he’d pulled his Luger from the drawer and I was out the door just as he let off two rounds one of which stuck in the door, the other going through the thin wall and hitting a passer-by who fell to floor and jerked once before going still. I stopped, appalled at what had just happened – Lawwell had accidentally shot Neil Lennon!

The Sound of Bowels Collapsing

2011-11-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

You’ve got to take your hat off to Peter Lawwell, he moves fast and decisively whenever thunder clouds rumble on the horizon of Celtic’s reputation. Take this weekend for example, someone from Strathclyde Police broke ranks and reported Celtic fans for offensive chanting at the Rennes games and before you could say horse-whip, Lawwell had swept over the Scottish media in a wave of blackmail, inducements and violence.

Of course I wasn’t going to report anything and neither would anyone else on the Times (a newspaper some wag suggested had a superfluous ‘e’ in the title) where they don’t wear poppies at this time of the year as there’s no room on their lapels for all the white feathers. The Herald? Don’t make me laugh, they were all down at Whitehill School with the Green Brigade complaining about the proposed new legislation threatening their God given right to sing songs about terrorist organisations before realising there were more Rangers fans there than there were of their own and scampering down the street like skelped dogs. The red top journos were all hanging from meat hooks in the bowels of Parkhead so they weren’t in a position to do anything and the Scotland on Sunday decided to put on a show of parity by reporting it but gone was the outrage and demands for something to be done (even suggestions in some cases as the Scottish football press donned their Celtic scarves and put ideas into the heads of UEFA) that accompanied similar pieces about Rangers and instead we had a thinly veiled accusation that there was nothing to the story but we better report in anyway lest anyone suspect anything, Celtic had no case to answer and we should all move onto the convenient anti-Rangers story which any old inky worth his salt would recognise as the real nothing piece, the smoke screen so to speak.

Another story which should have been doing the rounds but wasn’t thanks again to Lawwell’s iron fist, was Stewart Regan’s misjudged joke about the number 11 on Armistice Day. You can say many things about Lawwell but at least when he takes over the SFA, he looks after his own. For anyone of responsibility be drawn to a social media like Twitter in the first place indicates that they're not right for the job. I get away with it because since no-one reads the Times in Scotland anymore, if I didn’t use it then I wouldn’t be able to get the message out there. Then again Regan’s been compromised from day one considering how he was head-hunted by Celtic, appeased Celtic by throwing Dallas to the wolves and then invited Lawwell and Celtic to blitzkrieg into the SFA and annexe the place with Hampden now echoing to the sound of jackboots marching up and down the corridors.

His comments were hardly offensive, we've all said worse, I know I have but his 'joke' was inane, unfunny, uncalled for considering the sensitivity surrounding the day (hey, 9/11 - there's another opportunity for a joke, Regan old boy) and had the faint whiff of nudge nudge to his pal Lawwell.

All of this was going through my mind when I bowled up to work today to wink at the post boys and make sure they’d got my column for tomorrow which I’d just had passed by Lawwell but as I handed it over, the subby told me they already had my piece, it had been approved and was being printed as we spoke – I’d been fraped b’gawd! It turned out it was actually the janitor who’d heard I was down at Celtic Park and figured I’d be hanging up with the rest of ‘em and so wrote my column for me as he does when I’m off adventuring or being held captive somewhere so who can blame him? Not being important enough to warrant a cry of stop the presses, I loafed off home and bit my nails, wondering what I was going to be saying to get me into trouble this time.

The Sound of Tables Turning

2011-11-11T23:54:00.000-08:00

Warning lights flashed and sirens sounded throughout the BBC Scotland headquarters at Pacific Quay giving me quite a start. I had broken in there in the middle of the night in an effort to locate the painting where once before I’d noticed a light going on and figured that now I needed to locate the mysterious Jorg Albertz, this was the place for me. Unfortunately for me, I chose a night when news began to break of UEFA investigating Celtic fans over discriminatory chanting hence the sirens summoning the Pacific Quay CSC from their beds in order to bury the news.

I was hiding under a table as the skeleton staff began the fire fight and at last one of them answered the Parkhead hotline which had been ringing off the desk in the centre of the room. It was Lawwell and I could hear his screams from under the table.
‘If there’s even one sniff of this story on the BBC news then not only will you never have a seat at Parkhead again, I’ll flay your fucking hides. Christ, the amount of work I’ve put in over the year to head off any poppy scandal and now this happens. Get that stupid looking cunt McLaughlin over here now; I don’t care what time it is!’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ quivered the poor part timer who’d answered the phone, I’m not even a Celtic fan, I’m not qualified for this…’ but before he could continue, security turned up, truncheoned him to the ground and dragged him off.
‘Daft prick,’ said his colleague. ‘I told him never to mention that. Although how he sneaked through the employment process without them finding out, I don’t know. I suppose anyone would think a guy with a name like Declan O’Flaherty would be one of us, eh?’ and he left the room giving me a chance to get out from under the table, nab the painting and flee the building in all the confusion. On the way out I passed the massed ranks of a panicked Young Bhoys of the BBC, still out their nuts, as they queued at the security doors to get in, shovels sticking out their backpacks in preparation for burying another Celtic bad news story.

Painting under my arm and job done, I felt rather smug with myself as I whistled across the bridge heading back to the west end and then my own mobile phone started to ring – was this Lawwell summoning me? No, it was Tom Devine. This was puzzling as Devine wasn’t known to be conscious around these hours, the buckets of port having taken their toll usually around 2am.

‘You’re back in, Spiers,’ grunted Devine.
‘Not that I’m not pleased to hear that,’ I replied snootily, ‘but what happened to the golden boy, Gerry Hassan?’
‘Poor Gerry. He bumped into someone at the bar shortly after you left. Spilled the man’s martini and got shot on the leg for his troubles.’
‘It was Souness, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course it was, excuse me Spiers. Not so fast you silly slut… That’s better. Now, Spiers, back to you.’
‘What was going on there?’ I asked, wondering about the interruption.
‘Oh I’ve got Joan McAlpine here – left a bit Joan, aaaaaah…’
‘Listen Tom, call me back later when you’re not being pleasured, there’s a good man,’ and I hung up on him. Things were looking up then. Now all I had to do was get into the office and ensure nothing of the UEFA investigation got into the Times and I could look forward to a quiet weekend off.

Of course there’s no such thing as a quiet weekend off when Peter Lawwell is on the war path.

The Adventure of the Black Fingernails

2011-11-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

Tom Devine took a lengthy pull at his pint of port, burped then vomited a little on his shirt. ‘So Maurice Johnston is Spring Heeled Jack?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And he rescued you and Jorg Albertz from St. Mirin’s Cathedral?’
‘Yes.’
‘Slaughtering the Pacific Quay CSC in the process?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who it transpires are vampires?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Bishop Tartaglia thought they were angels?’
‘Yes.’
‘But they’re not, they’re vampires?’
‘Look, I see where you’re going with this but…’
‘No you don’t. So, Maurice Johnston killed them all?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you witnessed this?’
‘Yes.’
‘You saw it happen?’
‘Well no, Albertz told me to keep my eyes shut, but I heard it!’
‘I see. Albertz, infamous demon hunter, magician, conman…. He told you to close your eyes while ahem, Maurice Johnston laid waste the gathered hordes of the vampires of BBC Scotland?’
‘I know it sounds crazy, but I saw it, well I heard it – I did open my eyes at the end and saw Johnston floating, holding a golden sword and then the crickets swarmed through the place and everything disappeared and I woke up in my bed at home. Believe me Tom, I know it sounds ridiculous but is it any more preposterous than some of the other things we’ve witnessed the past few seasons? Any more ludicrous than underwater headquarters or mountain top lairs, pirates, werewolves, Peter Lawwell running the SFA?’
‘Excuse me Spiers…’ whispered Devine as he stood up and put away his cock, Colette Douglas Home appearing from under the table.
‘Ow was that then guvnor?’ she cackled and danced off to the other side of the pub to pull up her petticoats and flash her suspenders at some other poor chap.

‘Now, where were we?’ asked Devine, finishing his drink and holding up the goblet for the barman to see and replenish. I took a deep breath and let it all blurt out, ‘we were discussing my replacement! Now, just because no one reads me anymore doesn’t mean that I’m not getting the message out there – haven’t you heard of Twitter? Don’t you ever tune in to Radio Clyde?’
‘Twit what? Radio Clyde? Don’t be stupid. I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it, Spiers; you’re yesterday’s news. Even David Leggat’s getting bored exposing your inadequacies such is the amount of ammunition you’re giving him. No, it’s over, you’re just going to have to get used to it. Gerry here is on the up and up, never misses an opportunity to lay into the huns and he has a blog! Do you have a blog?’
‘Well I do actually but I don’t write it, at least I don’t recall writing it but it appears every now and then so someone’s writing it…’
‘More piffle. Hassan, make sure the barman gets my drink in and pay the slut for me, there’s a good boy.’

Gerry Hassan. He’d hardly been on my radar, hardly on anyone’s radar but now here he was, taking my place in the Organisation. He had been sitting with us, taking notes as I explained what happened in Paisley and I didn’t like him one bit. His face looked like a plastecine Mr Potato Head toy put together by a blind child and then hit on the back of the head with a frying pan, a pair of pretentious glasses stuck on the front so we could work out where his eyes should be. He smelled off, like he’d spent all day scratching his arse without washing his hands and his clothing sense was awful; shabby, threadbare, stained with spilled Guinness from Heraghtys. No, I wouldn’t allow it, this imposter couldn’t just appear and take my place!
‘He’s friends with Phil McGillivan you know,’ murmered Devine so that Hassan couldn’t hear.
‘Impossible! I saw him dead on the shore near Dunure. Last I saw of him, Mad Joe O’Rourke was gnawing at his shins.’
‘So who’s writing his blog and stirring up all sorts of trouble for Rangers then? A ghost?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him!’ I cried and having had enough, I got up and left, leaving Devine and Hassan laughing behind me and as I reached the door I could hear Devine retching and the splash of vomit on the floor. I didn’t turn back and stepped out into the fog, determined to find out how McGillivan had come back from the dead and whether or not Jorg Albertz had pulled the wool over my eyes with the Mo Johnston thing. As I wandered down Byres Road, mist swirling at my feet, I thought I could hear a giggle from a doorway, like Donald Findlay’s chuckle but when I looked round there was nothing there.

And Close Your Eyes with Holy Dread

2011-11-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
Drive thru your suburbs…

I kept my eyes shut as Albertz had suggested and listened to the screams of dying Pacific Quay vampires to a soundtrack of some song I swear I’d heard somewhere before.

Into your blues, into your blues, yeah
Into your blue-blue blues
Into your blues, oh, yeah!

‘Albertz, what’s happening? Where’s the music coming from?’ I cried, eyes still closed.
‘What music?’ shouted Albertz which struck me as odd.

I see your hair is burnin' hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar…

‘Oh you should see him move, Spiers. It’s beautiful. Like watching Nureyev at his peak only with a fucking great sword that lops off wings and heads. Keep your eyes shut though,’ shouted Albertz above the shrieks as metal sliced through meat and scraped off bone.
‘See who move?’ I called as I felt something wet hit my face and stick. I pulled it off and felt it soft and hairy in my hand, like a scalp.
‘It’s a scalp,’ said Albertz. ‘Thomas McGuigan’s I believe. No more covering up Chris Commons scandals for him by the looks of it.’

Drivin' down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman...
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone…

‘Albertz, you’ve got to tell me what’s happening? Who’s killing who? Where’s that infernal music coming from and more importantly, am I in any danger?’
‘Don’t open your eyes, Spiers, I’m warning you. It’s for your own good. This guy’s temperamental at the best of times, no one knows exactly whose side he’s on at any given moment but right now it seems he’s on our side. Fuck! You should’ve seen that one! Mark Daly’s head on a spike! Craig Whyte would have loved to have seen that! Oh my goodness, was that an elephant?’
‘Who? What guy? Elephants?’ I was becoming impatient now.
‘Well you lot call him Spring Heeled Jack for some reason, dunno where you got that one unless you thought the guy with the crickets was Jack Irvine?’
‘Well who else could it be?’ I asked as blood sprayed my face and the carnage continued with inhuman shrieks and the sound of talons tearing flesh and bared teeth being smashed by something blunt.

Motel money murder madness
Let's change the mood from glad to sadness…

And that was when I decided that I could keep my eyes shut no more. What with the sound of slaughter all around me, body parts and gore slapping off my face, noisy wings flapping above only to fall screeching to the ground and all the while, Albertz watched and gave an awe struck running commentary which made it sound like Spring Heeled Jack or whoever he was, was winning some glorious battle with the vampires of Pacific Quay CSC. So I opened my eyes and looked up.

He was beautiful. He seemed to hang in the air as if suspended by invisible wires and he held a sword in one hand and a spear in the other; now this was the vision of an angel. Albertz was right, his every move was like a dancer, carefully choreographed with light leaps and dazzling turns and as smooth as if he’d spent a life in zero gravity. In fact, his movement was like slow motion in real life as the BBC vampires lunged at him, clumsy and vulgar in their advances only for him to pirouette and lop off an arm or a wing or as in most cases, a head. His wondrously flowing blonde hair undulated in the air and his eyes burned golden with an intensity that could have made me weep with joy as I was taken back to those school days and remembered Coleridge, ‘Beware, beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair.’ No wonder Albertz didn’t want me to watch, he wanted this vision all to himself, the selfish bastard!

The slaughter was ending, the last of the vampires falling at the beautiful one’s feet. He turned and gazed at me and crickets came swarming out of the crypt, in the doors and through the windows. They swirled and rose through the air as one, raising up the dust of the bodies of the Pacific Quay CSC and as the dust cleared, I knew who he was. There was no call for a name such as Spring Heeled Jack; the Scottish media couldn’t have been more wrong there but what’s new in that? The music continued and I realised what had been staring me in the face all this time.

Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Got to keep on risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mojo Risin', gotta Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', gotta keep on risin'…

The Doors of Perception

2011-11-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

I was tied to Jorg Albertz, both of us standing on the main alter of St. Mirin's Cathedral as Barking Phil Tartaglia raved about angels while all around him flew, not heavenly messengers but vampires. Not any old vampires either but BBC Scotland vampires. I recognised most of them, especially the leader, Chris McLaughlin who had manhandled us from the crypt and upstairs to be fed upon by the host. They swooped in and out of the cloisters, leathery wings brushing against us as they disappeared into the shadows and out again, howling their blood lust at the thought of destroying another Rangers legend in Albertz - yes, this was BBC Scotland alright.

How had it come to this? How had all those Senior Editorial Assistants or whatever self proclaimed titles they were giving themselves these days, gone from merely Celtic Minded bigots mischievously doing Lawwell's dirty work for him, to blood sucking vermin persuading Barking Phil that they were a force for good. Or did Tartaglia know? Was he like those senior executives at the BBC, disingenuously proclaiming these young turks' impartiality while knowing fine well they behave like a tax payer funded Celtic Supporters' Club? It looked like I'd never find out as back to back with Albertz we were served up for supper.

Eventually the Pacific Quay vampires calmed down and settled in the blackness of the ceiling, hanging from beams and lurking among the cobwebs and shadows, the only evidence they were there being the occasional squeak from the dark.

Tartaglia approached us, his whip gone now, replaced by a red hood which he pulled over his head.

'Not another bloody Inquisition,' sighed Albertz. 'Tell you what, squire. How about you allow me one last fag. I'm sure Spiers here would like one too but not the kind I'm talking about, know what I mean?'

'Silence!' spat Tartaglia and made the sign of the cross which brought hissing above. 'Lord accept unto thy bosom these two unworthy sinners...'

As he continued, imploring God to forget all our little indiscretions and let us in anyway which I thought awfully magnanimous of him, Albertz turned to me and asked, 'Think you're going upstairs then?'

'Absolutely, why wouldn't I?' I stuttered.

'No reason.'

'What about you, surely with all your antics you'll be going straight to hell?'

'Not a chance of it, I'll be in heaven an hour before the Devil knows I'm dead. Don't worry about me. Anyway, it's not our time, Spiers. I suggest you close your eyes and keep your mouth shut...'
'Eh?' I spluttered, not comprehending.
'In about five, four, three, two, one...'

And then there came a sound, faintly musical, like an off key, feedback heavy version of... of the National Anthem! The reaction from the BBC Scotland vampires was instant: they couldn't stand it and fell screaming from the ceilings, holding their ears, collapsing in heaps writhing on the floor and among the pews, retching in agony. Then the noise ended and a beat began - someone was playing us more music, this was extraordinary. I vaguely recognised the song and as the first line rang out through the cathedral, the vampires rolling in pain, Tartaglia with his hood off looking around in panic, Albertz grinning:

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow.
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows.
Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light
Or just another lost angel...City of Night...

And then all the lights went out and the screaming really started.

Stained by Blood from Angels' Wings

2011-11-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

Albertz was easily found, lying at the bottom of the staircase, the only thing in this secret chamber. He was tied up and had tape wrapped around his head, covering his eyes and mouth which made for a disturbing sight but then again, I’ve seen worse at some of Paul McBride’s parties. I ran to him and putting my torch on the ground, I heaved at his bonds but they were too tight. I had a knife in my pocket so I searched for that but could hear that he was trying to speak so I peeled the edges of the tape until I had a hold of enough of it to begin to pull it from his head. His eyes appeared first, wide and angry, staring straight at me; then his mouth and as the tape came away, he gasped for air and spluttered, heaving great breaths and blowing grime from his nose until his chin was a mess of snot and saliva. I was just cutting through the rope when Albertz stopped breathing so heavily and sighed. I stopped moving and looked him straight in the eye but his gaze was now directed behind me which didn’t please me one little bit.
‘Is there someone behind me?’ I asked.
‘Uh huh,’ he nodded. I looked around and felt the stinging whip across my face of a lash. I collapsed back into the darkness and felt Albertz under me as I struggled to avoid more blows from the many tails of that awful instrument. My thrashing stopped as suddenly as it began and in the straining light of my torch which lay away to my side, I could see the robed figure of Barking Phil Tartaglia, out of breath and holding his whip.
‘Flagellation is for the pious. Are you worthy, Spiers?’
Before I could answer though, Albertz was up, his ropes falling from him, my cutting having been enough to allow him to wriggle free.
‘A honey trap is one thing, Tartaglia but it was your one chance,’ ranged Albertz. ‘You don’t have the first idea who you’re dealing with here.’
‘Oh but I do, Albertz – a practitioner of the black arts, a warlock, a conman, a magus. You are all of these things but one thing you cannot do is defeat the angels and we have angels on our side,’ laughed Tartaglia, raising his arms and as he did, there was a fluttering of wings and something flew down from the church above, into our chamber and moved with such speed that we couldn’t see it but could feel the wind from its wings as it passed in between us, over us and beneath us. Then it settled on the bottom step, its wings folding shut behind its shoulders and as it looked at us with those awful eyes, mis-shapen head and two front teeth sticking out like little flint knives, Albertz whispered, ‘Noseratu,’ but he was wrong.
‘It’s Chris McLaughin,’ I said.
Albertz laughed and Tartaglia turned towards him, face blazing with anger but Albertz kept laughing which I found unsettling considering Barking Phil was wielding a whip and had a creepy looking McLaughlin crouching behind him hissing.
‘Oh Phil. Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil. I don’t know what you think you’re doing here but that’s no angel,’ taunted Albertz. ‘That’s a fucking vampire mate.’

Gaze Not Into the Abyss

2011-11-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

St. Mirin’s Cathedral, Paisley, fifteen minutes until midnight. I’d been hiding in the grounds all night, keeping an eye on the doors, counting them in and counting them out. When the last wee man coughed and dropped his key before bending over to pick it up again, lock the doors and leave, I gave it another hour before risking leaving my position and picking the lock. It had been as cold as a whale’s arse in the grounds so my fingers were quite frozen and it took me all of my skills picked up from Jack McConnell to break in. It wasn’t much warmer inside but it was darker so I pulled the torch from my corduroy action trousers and shone it around but there was nothing peculiar to be seen. I walked slowly down the nave, sweeping the torch all around, sometimes catching the face of some saint or other, peering down at me disapprovingly. What type of person breaks into a church, they seemed to say so I took a deep breath and whispered, ‘the type of person who would sacrifice everything for the truth. Or at least to bury it.’

I was just approaching the main alter when I heard a voice from the cloisters.
‘Spiers. It’s me, Albertz. I’m bound and gagged just now and speaking to you from the ether, the synchronicity highway. It’s draining, even for me so you have to listen. I’m beneath you.’
‘So are most people,’ I replied smugly.
‘No, I’m underneath you. Look behind the alter, there’s a secret panel marked with cross keys – remove it and pull the lever, you’ll find me there.’

This was exciting, I truly began to feel like an investigative journalist rather than just someone who stole stuff from internet blogs and ponced them up with fancy words to make them suit a particular agenda. I located the cross keys panel and felt around it with cold fingers until with a click, it came away and there was a lever protruding towards me. I gasped, it was shaped like a cock.
‘Take it in your right hand and put your mouth around it,’ said Albertz from the shadows above me. In for a penny, I thought and took a hold of it and plunged down on the lever until it nudged the back of my throat.
‘Only kidding, chump,’ chuckled Albertz. ‘You only have to push it down to the floor.’

I blushed at having been caught out by such an obvious prank and heaved at the lever until it touched the alter floor and there was a grinding noise from behind me as the ground opened up and I was hit with the waft of a damp and rotten smell which took my breath away. Vowing to wash my armpits and change my shirt when I got home, I stepped cautiously into the abyss.

The Tyranny of the Hyper-Sensitive

2011-11-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

The tape reels rolled slowly and Alex Salmond’s voice crept out of the speakers. ‘Of course we’ll still allow the people freedom of speech, so long as it’s the right kind of speech, blandly expressed, offending no one as decided by perfect arbiters of truth such as…’
‘Tom Devine? Peter Kearney? How about James McMillan?’
The second voice was Bishop Tartaglia – by the Gods, how did Souness and Donald Findlay obtain this? They had a recording of Salmond’s meeting with Barking Phil Tartaglia, one of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland’s most feared bully boys. Findlay watched and smirked as my eyes opened wide in amazement at what I was hearing.
‘If you insist Bishop although I must warn that we have to tread carefully as your flock in the past few years has done immeasurable damage to social cohesion in Scotland, encouraging a poisonous culture of victimhood, grievance and entitlement…’ Then there was the sound of fast footsteps and the noise of a glass smashing and then whispering.
‘This is where we believe Tartaglia had Salmond pinned to his desk and was choking him with his own tie,’ said Findlay. ‘We don’t think he appreciated what Salmond was saying just there. This man is throttling the First Minister with impunity, Spiers. Do you not now realise how lucky you were that we pulled your fat out of the fire in Barcelona? If he can do that to Alex Salmond then what do you think he’d have done to a pissant like you?’
‘I’ll tell what I’d like to do,’ growled Souness, tugging at his moustache and eyeing me most malevolently.
‘We all know what you’d like to do to him Graeme but unfortunately as is ever the case, we need Spiers for our plans to work and he’ll be no use to us with his balls stuffed up his nostrils.’

The tape continued and we sat back and listened as Alex Salmond explained to Bishop Tartaglia how the new Justice Bill would be manipulated to make sure only one set of fans, the Rangers fans of course, would be on the receiving end of the most authoritarian legislation to come out of Holyrood yet.
‘So no changes then?’ asked Tartaglia.
‘No changes,’ said Salmond.
'And what about the poofters?'
'Oh I think you'll find there are those within the SNP just as prejudiced as you when it comes to the Dorothys. Getting back to the football though, I can’t vouch for the behaviour of House, I’m afraid the Chief Constable is a loose cannon and has been rounding up fans of all football clubs for offensive behaviour and this is before we’ve even passed the bill. If you could see your way to having a word with him I’d really appreciate it.’
‘Of course you would, First Minister. Now kiss my ring and I’ll see myself out.’
‘What’s that on your shoulder Bishop? Why it’s a cricket! There, it’s off, no harm done.’
And there the tape ended.
‘Cricket?’ I asked Findlay who smiled and lit up his pipe.
'Right, so you wanted to know where to find Jorg Albertz?' he asked, puffing away. 'He's being held by the very man you've been hearing out of those speakers. The Demon Hunter is a captive of Bishop Tartaglia. And Spiers? We want you to free him for us.'

Casting the Runes

2011-10-28T01:55:00.000-07:00

It’s always in the dark. In the dark they come, the nightmares. In the summer when I was incarcerated in Walter Smith’s underwater lair, Silence, it was crickets and I soon found out that these dreams were a premonition of the terror to come as Spring Heeled Jack fell upon the Scottish media, BBC Scotland and myself in particular and every time he struck, there were crickets.

Now in the dark I dream of the cave. Not a premonition as I’ve been to the cave. The Traynor took me there on the island. It was always dark there too as we soon learned to sleep by day in order to stay alert at night when the darkness crept out of the jungle and even the circle of fires on the beach was no defence against Lawwell after he’d gone native.

The Traynor had taken me deep into the interior and into a cave, dank and dripping and black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. The Traynor fired up a torch and led me deeper and deeper into that awful place until we could go no further and he held up the torch and showed me the runes.
‘Can you read runes, Spiers?’ he asked.
‘I can hardly read my own match reports,’ I told him and he grunted.
‘Who can? Well something tells me these runes are important. I can’t tell you why, it’s just a sense I have, I can almost smell their relevance.’
‘No, that’s me you can smell.’
‘You think I can’t tell the difference between your weather beaten corduroy and body odour and the malignancy of these ancient carvings? Look at ‘em, dug deep into the wall; hundreds of years before Christ. Imagine who put them here. What maritime disaster brought the rune writers this far south? And what foul message do they contain?’ Then he paused and I thought he was pondering his own questions until I noticed the feather dart sticking out his neck and he keeled over.
‘Spiers? I know you’re in there!’
It was Lawwell and he’d blow piped the Traynor which meant it was the machete for me so I was off in a twinkling, skipping on my tip toes through the cave in the dark, the only source of light left burning beside the unconscious body of the Traynor back at the wall. Somehow, miraculously, I managed to avoid Lawwell and made it back to the beach in one piece unlike Mark Daly who sat by the fire, shivering having been ravaged by Lawwell as soon as the sun went down. Chris McLaughlin was holding Daly in his arms and caressing his male pattern baldness and curiously, eyeing up his neck but there was no consoling him, even when I tried to tell them of my close shave in the cave.

Since then the runes have come back to me in my dreams. I’ve written them down as best I can and am taking them to an expert to decipher. Perhaps they’ll tell me something of the warning which concerned the Traynor before he was struck down? My only problem is, the expert. It’s Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter.

Why We Fought

2011-10-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

And so it begins. The only time of the year that sees the monster Lawwell quaking in his boots, if he’s wearing any considering how he’s taken to going naked since our time on the island. The only time of the year when a hush falls over Celtic Park and everyone steps carefully lest the dreaded word is spoken: poppy.

Okay, so it’s a tad early this year but it seems to be appearing on the lapels of some people so Lawwell called in a select few and told us, ‘This is a task of supreme importance so I’ve chosen only the most loathsome of the Scottish press; only the most insidious journalists who are willing to risk their reputation and moral standing…’
I looked around, there was only me.
‘In order to come to the aid of the Celtic party at this, our most crisis ridden time of the year.’ He was clothed when he began but I noticed that once talking, he began to strip off his Hugo Boss grey Schutzstaffel suit until he was standing in his shirt and nothing else.
‘Of course our policy of pandering to the extremists among our support means no member of the Celtic family can be seen wearing a poppy but we also don’t need a repeat of last season’s vilification when the Green Brigade broke free of their reins and embarrassed us nationally for the second time running.’
I looked at his cock and trembled as his speech seemed to be exciting him.
‘So Spiers, your task is this, I want you to begin to ridicule the wearing of the poppy, make it seem it’s perfectly normal to object to wearing one and perhaps people won’t think it’s just the preserve of the Irish republican Catholic mindset peculiar to Celtic.’
‘Yes sir,’ I said, making my excuses and leaving quickly, citing eagerness to get to work on my latest project and start tweeting something appalling before Lawwell in his excitement does to me what he did to Mark Daly on the island.

Home & Abroad

2011-10-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

My bedroom was as I left it before being taken into outer space for the Celtic AGM, sparsely but tastefully furnished. I fell into bed and switched off the bedside lamp and all was black and I lay there feeling the comfort of the bed and the relief of being off that hellish island sweep over me like the waves had swept over me only a day ago. I considered trying to piece together everything that had happened now that I was safe and could allow myself the leisure of devoting part of my mind to anything except survival. On the island there was no slacking for one moment; once Lawwell upped that ante if you didn't pay attention for a second then you were next on the funeral pyre. Or over the cliffs. Or washed up in the morning with the tide before anyone had noticed you were missing. I couldn't think of all that then though, it was dark and warm and I was in bed with the lights out and I couldn't keep my eye lids from closing and feeling the sweet release of sleep at last. Then I noticed all was not dark after all; a light was on in my walk-in cupboard. A perfect rectangle of white framed the door in the corner and two faded triangles of light stretched across the ceiling. I hadn't noticed this before when all was dark and I was settling down to relax for the first time in two weeks. I tried to take no notice of it, to consider it an oversight and conclude that I'd left the light on before and in my weariness, hadn't noticed it. But I couldn't. My eye lids no longer drooped and my dreams drew back from my consciousness once more until I was wide awake, staring at the light from the cupboard door. Then I saw the shadow of a shape scurry past the door from inside the cupboard and briefly, the light peeping out disappeared and that was it, I was sitting up in bed feeling the old sensation of fear crawling up my back as my scalp froze and the only sound in the room was my heart beating like the jungle drums on the island when Lawwell had his blood lust up.

But this was ridiculous, I was imagining things, surely? But then stranger things had happened recently. If someone had asked me if it was possible that Lawwell would terrorise the Scottish footballing press by holding them on a deserted island for two weeks, horribly murdering any who didn't immediately support his increasingly insane and wild plans for the remainder of the season, then I'd have scoffed at them. If anyone had posited that BBC Scotland was institutionally biased against Rangers, I'd have tweeted that they were stupid to think so. If anyone had suggested that I suspected Spring Heeled Jack was hiding in my walk-in cupboard right now then I'd have guffawed and asked for a line of what they're having but here I was, getting ready to bolt for the door and not come back to my flat until the sun was up. And that's precisely what I did.

I visited Matt McGlone on the southside and asked to sleep on his sofa and he even went so far as to give me his bed as he was staying up all night putting together a fake Rangers cash flow spreadsheet which he planned to distribute to create more interest in the Rangers tax case. I can't believe how obsessed the Celtic fans are just now with this whole HMRC thing but I suppose it keeps their minds off their team's dire performances at home and in Europe and if they're speculating about Rangers then at least they're not moping about the current rumours doing the rounds about Neil Lennon and his night time activities. So let them get on with it is what I say, as long as it's laying into the Rangers then who's going to complain - the BBC?

Talking of which, the Craig Whyte documentary aired while we were away and Rangers responded by baring their teeth and withdrawing all co-operation from that venerable old institution. I watched it in McGlone's flat the next morning as he had it on Sky+, something I'll need to invest in myself as those old Betamax tapes of mine are beginning to really play up, and I couldn't believe how poor it was. I'll never say this in public of course but I'm really regretting appearing on it now. Mark Daly seems to be an award winning journalist but there was no sign of why in this piece of nonsense. Full of conjecture, supposition, innuendo, ifs, buts and maybes, I almost couldn't sit through it without feeling nauseous at the constant stream of close ups of Daly nodding in agreement or arching an eyebrow at some latest suggestion that Whyte isn't all he seems. I almost felt sorry for Whyte, if he hadn't bought Rangers then he'd be left alone to the solitary and private life he so obviously desires yet those hypocrites in the BBC won't allow that as he chose Rangers, anathema to all of them and one day, if I ever have the balls I'll ask them why Whyte and why not Desmond who has more skeletons rattling around his closet than even Lawwell. Well, I won't, the answer's obvious and I'll get to it in a moment. As the programme went on I marvelled at Daly as he stood in front of buildings in Monaco and Cleveland, Ohio talking to camera in that slow, dramatically effete voice (which proves that Daly is more suited behind a typewriter than in front of a microphone) when stock footage or photos could have saved cash strapped, redundancy worried BBC Scotland a few quid. Two hundred thousand it cost to make this rubbish which irks me especially as I'd work for the BBC for a fraction of that if only they'd let me but no, I had to go and claim I was a Rangers supporter so there's no way in now for me.

Which leads me to this whole institutionalised bias of which Whyte speaks. Well, everyone knows it's true but the BBC in its usual way, denies it. I suppose if the denials are coming from someone senior in the BBC then he might consider he's telling the truth, after all it's not as if there is a charter within Pacific Quay which states that Rangers fans are verbotten and Protestants frowned upon but what they fail to see is that the bias stems from the personalities of their employees, Rangers haters to a man (and woman) who due to the Celtic Syndrome, feel it is their duty to denigrate Rangers and protect Celtic at all costs even if that cost is the truth. They also think it's a hoot and haven't I been witness to a few of their parties as they boast of their subliminal messages in news reports and online articles. So no, the BBC isn't officially biased against Rangers but their staff certainly are and as long as the current crop remain in situ then nothing will change as those bigots are never going to allow a Rangers sympathising individual anywhere near the place, even a Rangers hating Baptist is only allowed in as a guest, never a paid employee (thanks to Section 18).

I told McGlone all of this and he snorted, asking me if this was the case then how come he's never had a job with them? I thanked him for the bed for the night and told him that they might be Celtic Minded to a man but they weren't morons and there's your answer. He threw a slipper at me as I ducked out the door and left him to publishing his crazy spreadsheet on some Celtic internet forum.

Back at my flat I approached the bedroom with caution, peeking around the door and seeing with a sigh of relief that the cupboard light was off. I must have been imagining things last night after all. That's what comes of jumping at shadows on a deserted island as a naked Lawwell stalks the night with a blowpipe and machete; I was becoming paranoid. I eyed up my bed and the Martin O'Neil scrapbook sitting on the bedside table and considered a quick wank before taking off for work but first I decided on one glance inside the cupboard, just to make sure you understand.

The swarm of crickets engulfed me the moment I opened the door. They were in my mouth, crawling in my ears, tangled in my hair, clinging to my corduroy and I ran screaming from the room, tumbling down the stoop and onto the west end pavement where I sobbed as the last of them flew off towards Byres Road. I vowed there and then that I was going to take no more of this, that Spring Heeled Jack was not going to victimise me anymore. It was time to get to the bottom of this mystery, to find out who was worse, according to Donald Findlay, than Jack Irvine.

The Circle of Fires

2011-10-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

I didn’t dwell much on what Duffy had said, no one did but then the next night we heard the howling again. There wasn’t quite an uprising against Lawwell but there were murmurs as some questioned whether or not he had deliberately tried to fool us or if he’d just served up Chic Young by accident. As the howling continued, the murmurs became louder and it took Lawwell appearing from his tent, naked as usual and shaven headed now to calm things. He held the conch and in the flickering light from the circle of fires he asked us if we wanted him to return to the jungle and catch the other beast that had discovered our presence on the island. ‘Other beast?’ asked Mark Daly from the BBC fire.
‘Yes, other fucking beast. Do you want to make something of it Daly?’ growled Lawwell and Daly retreated behind Chris McLaughlin who interestingly had taken to only coming out at night since we fetched up here. Lawwell stood in silence for a moment, glaring at Daly before raising his horse whip and pointing it straight at him, turning to his body guard and saying simply, ‘him’.

Lawwell didn’t go into the jungle that night and the howling continued until the first glimpses of sunlight appeared beyond the hills and then it stopped. The fires in the circle went out one by one except the BBC fire which the Pacific Quay CSC boys kept burning. All except McLaughlin who’d disappeared into the darkness of the jungle edge which was surprisingly bold for him considering the howling that had just stopped. I decided that since it was light and since the BBC had the best fire that it might be wise of me to ingratiate myself with them through McLaughlin so I loafed over to the jungle edge to look for Chris but he was nowhere to be seen. I stayed a little longer, emboldened by the increasing daylight and was kicking ferns when I heard a noise from the bushes. ‘Psssssst.’ I looked round and saw nothing. I stood stock still and heard only the breeze rustling the leaves so put the noise down to my imagination and turned to move on and then I heard it again only more this time.
‘Psssst, Spiers!’ Christ, it was the beast and it knew my name! I peered into the foliage and fingers reached out of the grasses and parted them and two fierce eyes glowered at me. It was the Traynor.
‘Well what were you expecting,’ he asked. ‘Elaine C Smith?’

The Conch and the Beast

2011-10-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

We were awoken every morning by the hooning of Lawwell blowing on the conch. He’d discovered that not only was the pink shell a symbol of leadership but if you chopped the end off it you could use it as a horn to gather the survivors of the Celtic AGM crash around you. And if they didn’t come when he blew the conch he still had his trusty horse whip to change their minds.

The conch wasn’t the only symbol on the island. Lawwell had stuck a severed pig’s head on a stick and placed it at the edge of our camp in order he claimed, to scare off the beast who lived in the dark beyond our boundary. No one but Lawwell had seen this beast but some of us had heard snuffling in the foliage and once, as the sun set, we all heard an inhuman howling from the jungle which set everyone on edge and I doubt anyone slept properly that night. The next day Lawwell came out of his makeshift tent, naked and covered in green dye, vowing to go on his own to hunt the beast for all our goods. All he wanted in return was our complete subservience. Well since most of the survivors were Scottish journalists, he had this anyway but you know how Lawwell is; nothing is ever enough, no distance too far, no act too awful to further the cause of Celtic.

The day passed slowly and I lazed on the sand listening to the waves while the BBC boys stayed huddled around the fire they’d made on the first day and had kept burning constantly fearing that it might run out and bring the beast into the camp. They whispered and argued with each other and seemed to be planning something but anytime I got close enough to hear, they clammed up and eyed me suspiciously until I took the hint and went back to the sea. As the sun set and darkness encroached, all the other little parties gathered on the beach and built their own fires, the boys from the Mail here, the Express there, STV close to the woods and me, the sole representative of the Times hopping from fire to fire looking for companionship and finding none, being shoo-ed away by everyone who had heat and light so I joined the lads from the Sun and the Daily Record who huddled together under a tree because they didn’t know how to make a fire.

A scream in the distance had all our eyes popping as we strained to see into the blackness of the jungle, eager to know what caused such a horrible noise. Then the howling started up but from a different direction than the scream. Then the hooning of the conch which could only be Lawwell. That did it for me and I ran into the circle of fires and dared anyone to shift me but they were all too busy shaking in horror at what might come out of the night to notice me. Then a figure strode out of the dusk, dragging something behind it and waving the conch in the air in triumph – it was Lawwell. ‘I have the beast’ he shouted and threw a muddied and bloodied figure into the circle of fires and without hesitation the assembled hacks of the Scottish media laid into it with their sticks and rocks, screaming and tearing at it as someone started hammering on drums and we all descended into a base, animalistic frenzy of blood lust until what was left was a gory mess which floated pleasingly into the sea once we were finished with it and afterwards Lawwell accepted our plaudits and oaths of loyalty as he stood naked with the conch raised high above his head, the moonlight glistening on the blood which covered his body. It wasn’t until later that Gerry Duffy sidled up to me and said, ‘that was Chic Young. That was murder.’

Lord of the Lies

2011-10-21T00:36:00.000-07:00

Lawwell held the conch and refused to let anyone take it from him and since the rules of the island stated that you can only speak up while holding the conch, no-one else got a say in how we ran our little community on the remote desert island. So Lawwell was in charge and the Scottish media sat back and let him do what he liked – no change there then.

We’d fetched up on the island after the remarkable crash and burn of the Celtic AGM when the Inquisition 5 burned up on re-entry from its visit to the stars in an effort to ensure Celtic’s failings were seen to be not of this earth. Of course I was on it when it came down, thanks to Souness and his interfering. He just had to get on board the Inquisition to find out the truth of what was being said as obviously he couldn’t rely on the spin put on proceedings by the Celtic obsessed fans with typewriters in the press. Me included.

I’m not sure if the AGM crashed and burned due to some mischief by Souness or if it happened under the weight of spectacular Celtic failure on the field crushing the hopes and dreams of the fans and small shareholders that no amount of snide digs at Rangers could disguise even if John Reid did try his hardest. I suppose there are only so many AGMs at which you can get away with that as the trophy cupboard remains bereft of the league title.

Once the space ship broke up on its return to earth and landed on some remote island, rumours began to circulate among the survivors that it was Lawwell who had sabotaged the re-entry in an attempt to distract from the results from the AGM. He shouldn’t have bothered as all the journalists present were already conspiring on how to spin it in Celtic’s favour. So you can imagine how bitter they all felt that they ended up living in such a barbaric manner, living hand to mouth, filthy lives while Lawwell refused to allow them a voice. Again, nothing much had changed. Save for the presence of the conch.

Andromeda

2011-10-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

I stood and watched as the Inquisition 5 disappeared into the clouds, on its way to the stars. I wasn’t one of the unlucky ones thank God, who had been chosen to travel into space with Lawwell for the Celtic AGM. So I gazed at the wonder of all that work and expense to make sure that whatever is said at the AGM isn’t of this planet and considered how easily the Celtic support will lap up whatever extraterrestrial nonsense Celtic come out with. Then I picked up Pat Nevin and we went to Braehead to do some shopping.

While there, something extraordinary happened – I’d bought Pat an ice cream cone or as he insisted on calling it, a pokey hat (honestly, sometimes it’s difficult to know what he’s on about) and as he sat and munched at it, looking all cute with ice cream all over his chin, we were approached by a security guard who said he wasn’t comfortable with me taking pictures of wee Pat with my camera phone. I pointed to Nevin wearing his basque, suspenders and stockings and asked what could possibly be wrong with such an innocent sight but the security guard blushed and told me it just wasn’t right so we bolted before he called the police, me putting Pat’s dufflecoat back on him to cover any perceived embarrassment.
‘That reminded me of my time at Chelsea when we played Rangers in a friendly,’ began Pat but I stopped him, having heard it all before.

On the way out of the shopping centre we saw Chris Sutton in the car park, he was swinging punches at thin air and swearing at no one in particular.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Pat.
‘Precisely,’ I told him. ‘He used to be one of the blessed Martin O’Neill’s hod carriers, could give it out but couldn’t take it and would go down as if stabbed in the calf if you even looked at him. A bit of a fairy really but he’s got no relevance today except to publish a book no one will buy but will be used in the trashy papers to attack Rangers and attempt to deflect from the many failings of Celtic.’
‘Talking of Celtic Graham, are you not a little pissed off that they’re off into space without you?’
‘Not really, I’ve been up there with them before and barely escaped with my hide intact. I’ve got no intentions of putting myself in that position again; I’ll swim through blood first.’

And as I said it, a car backed out of its parking space and stopped in front of us, its passenger door opening as it did.
‘Get in Spiers. Fuck off Nevin,’ said Graham Souness leaving no scope for mistaking his intentions. ‘We’re going on a little journey, loser,’ and he winked at me.

And that’s how I fetched up at the Celtic AGM after all.

Live and Let Liewell

2011-10-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

We sat outside a little bistro on the Boulevard Boramar by the port of Collioure just a few miles into France from the Spanish border, Souness with his back to the wall, one hand on the stem of a Martini and the other resting on his chest where he kept his Beretta holstered. The ripples on the sea glittered from the last rays from the sun as it set behind a hill where a windmill sat lazily as smoke rose from just behind it. This was where Souness had dumped the helicopter before stealing a bicycle and giving me a backy into the village, me squealing all the way and complaining about chaffing from my corduroys.

We were waiting for Souness's handler to appear with documents to get me back into the UK, my passport, tickets and a suitcase full of corduroy having been left at my hotel in Barcelona after our impromptu departure. It wasn't long before the handler arrived and I don't know why I was surprised as I caught a glimpse in the distance of a jovial old fellow in mutton chop whiskers as he whistled down the boulevard swinging a cane.

'Well met,' grinned Donald Findlay as he stood in front of us regarding me with the usual amusement and blocking my view of a nubile young man in tight speedos I'd been eyeing up on the beach. 'Garcon, creme pour moi, s'il vous plait et un autre Martini pour le thug,' said Findlay, sitting down beside us. 'Don't understand a word the blighters are saying, don't ye know but I can order a drink in any language in the world' and he giggled, twirling his cane between two fingers and glancing at Souness who remained stone faced, keeping a vigilant eye on anyone who came too close.

'So what are we going to do with you then Spiers, eh?' said Findlay, suddenly serious. 'Who knows what Tartaglia would have done with you had he got you back to Scotland, handed you over to Lawwell I'd wager, hey Souness? Hand him over to Lawwell?'

'I'd have thrown him into the sea half way home, let the fish eat him,' muttered Souness.

'Now Graeme, we all know what a blood thirsty lunatic you are, that's why we love you. That's why you're the best agent we've ever had and why, Spiers, you're still alive today. We're going to get you back into the country but we must be sure first that you're going to be thankful. Thankful enough to help us out with a little piece of mischief we've been planning.' And so he told me some of his plan, not all of it obviously as no one ever tells me the whole story, leaving me to work it out for myself which is difficult when you're as shallow as I am. As he was speaking we could hear bells and horns from some kind of parade in the alleys behind us and just as Findlay had finished filling me in, a little line of musicians dressed in white appeared, tootling away on their instruments and behind them some villagers carried a little statue of the Virgin Mary.

'Very pretty,' sighed Findlay, sitting back and enjoying the moment. 'You know, here I am, this supposed Protestant monster and yet I'm appreciating a little moment of Roman Catholicism in this picturesque setting. Off they pop to their little church and it's all very nice, very nice indeed. I only wish the Scottish people would feel the same way about our own little parades; it's only a demonstration of a culture after all, hardly different from what we've just seen here. No need to get all offended and write to the government, the newspapers, whoever will listen, quoting their favourite word, 'triumphalism' every two sentences and demanding an end to all sorts of freedoms the parades are celebrating in the first place, just to get one over those 'Orange bastards'. Without seeing the irony of course.' He sighed again but sadly this time, not in appreciation of a pleasant moment during a relaxing evening in the sun.

'These are strange days, Spiers. Not like the last two seasons when we battled demons and foul creatures of the dark, super powered freaks and ghosts. This season it's different. This season we battle the government. Well, the Scottish Executive but those Brigadoon Parish Councillors do like to call themselves the government. I like to call myself a national treasure but I doubt many would agree with me either, eh Souness?' and he roared with laughter on his own, sitting back and sipping his coffee and wiping tears of mirth from his cheek.

'There's just one thing,' I piped up. 'If I do this for you, how about calling off Spring Heeled Jack? At least from me? He's making life a misery for us just now.'

Findlay looked at Souness who met his eyes and shrugged.

'He's not who you think he is you know,' said Findlay. 'Oh I know all you clever dicks think it's Jack Irvine creeping around terrorising you with his crickets and fancy tricks. It's not.'

'Who is it then?'

'Someone worse, much worse...'

For Souness Eyes Only

2011-10-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

I should have known better than to visit the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia while Phil Tartaglia's men were looking for me but who would have known the Bishop of Paisley would have the will or the means to send assassins all the way to Barcelona just to take care of one discredited journalist who had the audacity to question his latest attack on the Scottish people via a thinly veiled threat to Salmond's Executive?

I was grabbed by the hair from behind and my neck jerked as I was dragged down the steps and into the boot of a car. Then the car revved up and we shot off across the city with me in the dark and stifling heat, cursing my choice of corduroy over linen on such a day and wondering how I was going to get back to La Ramblas now.

I shouldn't have worried too much as eventually the car screeched to a halt, the boot opened and as I squinted at the harsh invasion of sunlight, I was punched in the face and hauled out, groggy but still able to make out my own hotel just across the way from the cruiseship terminal where my unknown assailants seemed to be taking me. There were two of them, holding me by an arm each and they didn't say a word during our whole stride through various gates and towards the helipad. I groaned, they were taking me home for summary justice Roman Catholic Church style which meant being handed over to Lawwell and Kearney for torture either in the bowels of Parkhead or more likely, in Hampden now that Celtic had annexed the SFA.

I was dripping with sweat and was glad of getting out of the heat of the midday sun as we passed into the shadow of a terminal building and as we did, I could hear a scraping sound coming from the wall as we approached it. There was a large round grill there, covering what could be air conditioning or something similar; the sound was coming from there and wasn't noticed by my assailants until a boot swooshed down the pipe and kicked out the grill and a figure all in black rolled out in front of us, raised a silenced Beretta and shot my captors off of me. 'Come on loser,' said Graeme Souness as he gripped me by the elbow and we ran towards the helicopter which was warming up on the pad. When the pilot saw us running towards him he reached for a pistol of his own but Souness shot him on the run from a hundred yards and he fell from the vehicle, the cord from his earphones stretching out behind him, still attached to the dashboard as he hit the ground. Souness took the headset from him and we bundled in, taking off before a gang of men running down the Sant Bertrand Wharf Terminal, purple robes flowing behind them could get within accurate shooting range. I looked at Souness as we gained height and turned towards France and he was smiling. He caught me gazing at him, stunned at how quickly events had transpired - why only half an hour ago I was taking in the bells and smells of the Santa Eulalia, all the troubles of Scotland behind me and now, here I was again in the hands of a complete maniac who isn't bothered in the slightest that we could've been killed. I sat back in my seat and half closed my eyes and I could almost hear the swooping strings of some John Barry title theme.

Scottish Press Stays Silent as Celtic Fans sing Sectarian Songs

2011-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

‘If I see one broken Celtic crest or Club in Crisis headline, I’ll feed you to Elaine C Smith,’ growled Lawwell as we hung upside down and naked in a butcher’s warehouse. ‘And not a mention of any of the singing from our fans today, got that?’

It had started off a normal day with hordes of the Scottish press travelling to Tynecastle, not because it was the first game there for Neil Lennon since some ned ruffled his hair and got a kicking and seven months in jail for it but just because it was the Celtic game and everyone in the media wanted to see their team. BBC Scotland were there mob handed with a special editing team to replace the IRA songs with stock crowd noise and surrounding shops sold out of cotton wool as the dirty inkies bought it all up to stuff into their ears so they could say with all honesty that they never heard a thing. Then we got the worst result possible when Hearts won two nil especially since I had a cheeky fiver on a one nil/Skacel double at sixty to one. By the end of the game Lawwell had us all rounded up and we were administered a sound thrashing while shivering in a refrigerated room in our underpants while Lawwell marched up and down wielding his horse whip and repeating our mantra that Neil Lennon still has the dressing room and since everyone saw him today in the daylight then we could put that other rumour to bed. What rumour? I thought. Have I missed another juicy piece of gossip by leaving press conferences early to meet Pansy Paul for a knees-up down the Polo Lounge? I made a mental note to investigate as we were cut down and handed our clothes and complimentary Celtic scarves on the way out.

The press bus was quiet on the way home as everyone sat at the back of the bus, leaving Chris McLaughlin on his own down the front, the crickets buzzing around his head. Chris had been handed his arse on a plate by McCoist yesterday when he yet again made Celtic the topic of a BBC interview while discussing a Rangers game. McCoist simply reminded him that Motherwell were Rangers’ nearest challengers as the sound of tiny legs rubbing together began to rise from Chris’s pants and he ended the interview early and fled Ibrox lest Spring Heeled Jack get him.

Spring Heeled Jack. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not some figment of our imagination, a result of mass hysteria on the part of the Scottish footballing press. One begins to think like this when a decent amount of time has elapsed between the now and some traumatic event. In my case, it’d been a while since I’d been terrorised by Jack so I now doubted his existence.

I shouldn’t have.

Bring on the Dancing Reagans

2011-09-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

I have of late lost all my mirth. It was only a few seasons ago that if I ever needed a laugh all I had to do was wander over to Hampden for the Peat and Smith show, sit back and watch them throwing pancakes and pouring bags of soot over each other. Things have changed there now. Since Celtic annexed the SFA it is no longer a thing of joy but yet another deadly hurdle to be overcome as to get to Stewart Reagan one has to manoeuvre past Peter Lawwell’s office. Lawwell had Peat and Smith’s rooms combined to create his own and used Peat’s drinks cabinet to give Reagan somewhere to sit. Nothing is said or done within the corridors of power of Scottish football without Lawwell casting a malignant eye over it first. I had cause to visit yesterday afternoon and wasn’t looking forward to it. Lawwell had been quiet recently, preferring to work in the shadows rather than in everyone’s face, naked, wielding a horse whip. To tell you the truth, I preferred his old ways. At least you knew where you were when he had he Scottish football media lined up for a whipping after a Celtic defeat – play down the game and make up some awful lie about Rangers to take the result off the front or back pages and you were safe. At least until the next bad performance and with Lennon at the helm, these came fast and furious and all the time, the press took their punishment like docile sheep while Lawwell sweated lest the swivel-eyed Irishman pull the plug on the money.

These days though, Lawwell has let others do his dirty work for him and things in Scotland have become darker, more sinister. No joy, see? At least when Peat was around you could be guaranteed an occasional laugh as someone walked into a wall or fell off a ladder.

So there I was, in my stocking soles having taken off my light loafers as an aid to sneaking past Lawwell’s door without being heard but as I was creeping down the corridor I caught a glimpse of Reagan in Lawwell’s office which dismayed me as it was Reagan I was here to interview. Lawwell had him on his knees in front of his desk, wearing a leather mask with a chain leading from the mouth piece to a set of handcuffs which held Reagan’s hands together as if in prayer.
‘So remind me,’ barked Lawwell, taking a slice at Reagan’s back with his whip. ‘If a Celtic player gets away with an elbow in the face of an opponent without the referee noticing, what do we do? That’s right, brush it under the carpet. Don’t you worry about it appearing on television, with a culturally anti-Rangers BBC at work you need never fret about that. No, our agents in Pacific Quay will only highlight incidents when it involves a Rangers player. So what must we never do? That’s right, we must never come into my office complaining about us being too obvious again – you got that?’ and he booted him in the face, sending him sprawling across the floor.

I didn’t hang around. I was out of there in a twinkling and onto a bus into town hoping that Lawwell wouldn’t check CCTV images today. I had plans for the evening and they didn’t involve being called to Parkhead or Hampden to be flayed. My plans were to have a pleasant night at the Royal Concert Hall in the presence of Echo and the Bunnymen. I’d been invited there by Pat Nevin who as you will recall, came to the conclusion that he was an intellectual because he’d once seen this band at the Queen Margaret Union. He’d also invited Tom Devine.

Devine had been quiet since I found him weeping in my bedroom after the old firm game, a combination of being stalked by ghosts, missing my wife and Celtic being humped like bitches by Rangers had taken its toll on him and he’d had a little breakdown. Since then he’s been relatively quiet although he’s still found time to drink a pint of port and plough into Janette Findlay any time she bends over, which is often.

We wrested him from her in the evening, just in time as Findlay vomited over the pillows before passing out and off we went, the three of us gaily whistling into town to hear the majesty of one of the 80s finest bands.

A few hours later we were out on our arses, having been thrown out by security after Devine over indulged at the bar and broke free, finding his way backstage where he galloped Ian McCulloch’s wife in front of the entire band. I don’t know how McCulloch reacted to this but I do hope it didn’t put him off his performance that night.

As we walked down Buchanan Street, fuming at Devine who didn't seem to think he'd done anything wrong, Nevin suggested we go for a pint in the Horseshoe Bar but I reminded him he wasn't a student anymore although you wouldn't know it from the way he dresses and I stormed off in a huff just as a BBC Scotland car drew over and picked up Devine for another BBC special on sectarianism. 'But he's bloody steaming!' I exclaimed but the BBC didn't care, as long as he could burp out the usual Protestant bating platitudes then it was all one to them.

When I got home I just had time to shoo off Alex Mosson who was rummaging through my drawers; I got him with a broom this time and hoped that would put him off burgling me again for a good while and then I settled down with my laptop to write something arse bitingly awful on Twitter in the hope that I could get a rise from Rangers fans. Job done I sat back with my Martin O'Neil scrapbook and bottle of hand cream and pondered the day I'd just had. It hadn't been too dark for a change, perhaps things are looking up?

Behind Dead Eyes

2011-09-28T02:22:00.000-07:00

Crickets and dead-eyed men. At the beginning of this season I wondered what fresh madness would seek me out and it turned out to be crickets and dead-eyed men. At least I know what I’m dealing with, unlike other seasons. The crickets herald the presence of some mysterious creature of the night the Scottish media refer to in hushed tones as Spring Heeled Jack who has taken to breaking up anti-Rangers conspiracies and punishing most of BBC Scotland while he’s doing it. The dead-eyed men, well Albertz claimed they’re warnings of things to come if this Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill is brought into being.

I was all for it at first, witness my idiot antics at the Justice Committee when the Scottish Executive sought out the expert opinions of, well me and Pat Nevin. Queen Margaret Pat had told his one anecdote about a Rangers Chelsea match and I chuntered on in the usual oafish manner until that bastard Stuart Waiton started flicking my ears and whispering loud enough for just me to hear that I was a dangerous moron.

Then I changed my mind and I was against the Bill. This was after a night with the Green Brigade in the Brazen Head where everyone showed the barman their IDs before settling down to tell me how it was a terrible Bill which might bring parity to the old firm in the eyes of the law. The fact that there was potential to greatly reduce the freedoms of all in Scotland didn’t seem to bother them, just that they’d now be in the spotlight and not just the Rangers fans. So I immediately went home and spunked a congratulatory column for the Times, praising the Green Brigade, that group of religious and political extremists who brought us Poppygate and other outrages based on their current freedom to sing offensive songs in support of murdering Irish terrorist groups. No wonder they didn’t like the sound of this bill, they were getting away with everything up until now while only the Rangers fans were being demonised by a vested interest political media complex.

Then I was faced with a difficult situation: the Rangers fans appeared at Ibrox with banners protesting against the bill and since I’d spoken up for the Green Brigade, it was only natural I should praise the Blue Order too, wasn’t it? This is obviously what a lot of people thought I should do which prompted the phone call from Peter Lawwell reminding me that he had a nice empty dungeon waiting for me in Parkhead if I dared even think about it. Then I got a visit from Jorg Albertz.

I was sitting on my own in the Chip, considering how best to ignore the good intentions of the Rangers fans when I heard a cough from the table to my left. I looked and there was no one there but when I turned back to my appletini Albertz was sitting beside me to my right. He smiled, ‘Hello Spiers. I think you and I need to take a walk.’

We left the Chip and sauntered down to Byres Road where I noticed to my dismay, the dead-eyed men standing staring at the entrance to the Hillhead tube station. ‘Let’s join them,’ said Albertz and we stood by their sides and looked at the door to the underground. ‘What are we looking at?’ I asked but Albertz shooshed me and as he did, the dead-eyed men took our hands and suddenly we were surrounded by an eerie mist which briefly obscured our view then cleared and it was night. There were bagpipes playing in the distance and the sound of celebrating. Someone came out of the station holding up an early edition of the Daily Record, its headline cried out ‘Freedom! Scots vote yes.’

Then we were surrounded by mist again and when it cleared there was a queue of football fans to get into the subway but none of them were wearing colours. There were police keeping an eye on them and then one of the police spotted a Rangers scarf sticking out of a coat pocket. He stode over to the fan and pulled the scarf from him, waving it in his face and screaming. Then the fan was dragged out of the queue and bundled into a van and no one said a word in protest. Then the mist swirled around us again.

It dissipated and there was a mounted policeman in front of us only it looked much different to the type I’m used to seeing; the horse was covered in light armour as was the mounted policeman. I looked around Byres Road and noticed that Curlers the pub was boarded up, a poster nailed to the door saying ‘by order the Scottish Government’. More police came into view but they too were different, wearing full body armour, their faces hidden by the dark visors of their helmets as if they were riot police but no, they seemed to be just normal bobbies on the beat. We heard a scream and turned to see a woman having been knocked over by the police horse. There was a commotion as her partner complained but the mounted policeman snarled, ‘Jay walking is a crime, maybe she’ll stay on the pavement in future?’
‘Your bloody horse was in the way, how could she stay on the pavement?’ shouted someone else but the cop swung his horse’s hind around and knocked him to the ground and the two helmeted bobbies ran over and rained truncheon blows down on the man and woman on the ground. As the mist appeared once more I noticed the road signs and posters stuck to the wall of the underground; the speed limit on Byres Road was 20, the signs said, ‘The Scottish Government: reducing speed for your health and safety.’

Then we were back. The pub was open again and a portly fellow walked past wearing a Celtic top. There was a policemen across the road wearing a normal tunic and a ridiculous hi-vis vest but he was smiling and giving directions. I turned to Albertz and gasped, ‘What in hell’s name was that?’
‘That was the future, Spiers. Well, one of many futures. The future depends, you see? Depends on the choice you and many others like you make very soon. Ask yourself this, what side are you on? The side of oppression or do you believe in freedom of speech? It’s that simple. This new bill can lead to abuse beyond your very limited imagination, that’s why I had to get the twins here to show you.’
I looked around for them but there was only one now. ‘What happened to the other one?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, I was about to tell you this. Taking someone into the future like that has a cost, Mayer paid that cost. He’s gone now. And his brother has a very good reason for hating you even more. I’d step carefully if I were you, Spiers.’
‘But I didn’t ask him to make that sacrifice.’
‘No, but you’re asking the Scottish people to sacrifice something far greater so you can lay the boot into the fans of one football team just because they represent something you and all the other culturally Marxist west end elite resent. Your mission to rid Scotland of the infinitesimal problem of sectarianism has a price. That price is freedom.’

Behind us someone shouted abuse at me, I turned to look down my nose at them and then when I looked around again, Albertz and Janowitz were gone, leaving me in a daze. I felt dizzy and was beginning to wonder if I was having a panic attack then someone told me to ‘step back onto the pavement sir.’ It was the policeman from across the road. I stepped up onto the kerb and sat down, my head in my hands.
‘Are you alright sir?’ asked the cop.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m alright. At least for now.’

It's Odd how they Match Your Own

2011-09-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve been seeing the dead-eyed men everywhere recently. Switch on the television and there they are standing behind Alex Salmond on the six o’clock news. Go into town and they’re staring at Stephen House’s window at Pitt Street. Go home to my west end flat for a quick wank over my Martin O’Neil scrapbook and they’re sitting in my bedroom looking glum. It’s got so bad that even Professor Tom Devine came to me one night to confide in me about them.

He broke into my flat late on the Sunday after the first old firm game of the season and he was sitting in the dark sobbing on my sofa so I just assumed he’d been in the Chip crying into his pint with the rest of the Scottish media and had popped over looking for my wife who had gone missing in the summer. I reminded him that she hasn’t lived here for a while and I’m damned glad after she shot me in the belly in Lawwell’s mountain lair last season but he snorted and looked up and said, ‘I’m haunted, Spiers. Haunted I tell ye. Everywhere I go, I’m followed by two men only they’re not men, they flit in and out of sight like spooks and once I even threw a bottle of sherry at one but it passed straight through him, damn his eyes!’
‘Oh you mean Janowitz and Mayer?’ I asked, surprising him and for once I knew something he didn’t while he was in the dark. Literally. Crying.

I told him what Albertz had told me and he sniffed, said something about a self fulfilling prophecy and shuffled off but by the time he had gone I’d been completely put off having that wank I’d promised myself.

Spiers in Wonderland

2011-09-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

Sunday night alone in my flat, naked except for a pink tutu (I’ll get to that later), I was struggling to write something sufficiently buffoonish for my Monday column in the Times before the janitor got there before me. I considered the following:

It was quite an amazing scene at Celtic Park on Saturday. This loud, boisterous, sometimes spotty and always militant group of the club's support known as the Green Brigade were in full flow. Neil Lennon, the Celtic manager, later referred to this chanting, drum-beating mob as "fantastic”, “brilliant” and “not at all creepy, all those youthful boys being led by rapey looking old men who should know better”. You almost forgot they were there because, for the opening 45 minutes, hardly a cheep came out of this singing section which was a worry for the Pacific Quay CSC boys over at BBC Scotland who in a panic, looked out some stock sound from old Celtic matches to add to their highlights package – can’t have Celtic Park shown in a bad light and all that . Then, a series of banners were unfurled, in a carefully-planned ploy that could hardly have been executed better. As each protesting banner was made visible the whole of Celtic Park rose and asked around if anyone could read and let them know what they said, causing quite a commotion.

Suddenly, at the beginning of the second half, having spent the half time period having their arses felt in the toilets by their leaders, their singing started again, and what an atmosphere it created. Great, booming, tribal chants were flung from one end of the stadium to the other, as otherwise dormant supporters were roused by the occasion. I know I was aroused, an erection rose in my corduroys that would have been embarrassingly noticeable were my penis not the length of a fun size Mars Bar.

It gave the Celtic-Caley Thistle match a theatrical backdrop, prompting Lennon's later comments that if it had gone on any longer he’d have got into his tights and pirouetted into the centre circle.

The Green Brigade were protesting about the proposed new legislation being created for the Offensive Behaviour at Football Bill. Their perception, in many ways correct, is that having feigned offence for years at the slightest cough from Rangers fans they are now worried that their constant bleating will come back and bite them on the arse and curb their rightful freedom of speech. A freedom of speech that only a few weeks ago I publicly proclaimed in front of a justice committee should be set aside to allow government sanctioned laying into the Huns. I would have got away with it too had it not been for Dr Stuart Waiton who ridiculed me mercilessly and has since sent me mocking texts and emails every night. I also suspect he turned up in the Chip on Saturday night and slipped me a roofy as I woke up on Sunday morning with no memory of my night out and wearing a tutu with no knickers. This freedom of speech business is a complicated area, mired as it has become in a trashy Old Firm game of moral ping-pong, but it is still worth exploring especially as I had no qualms about the freedoms of the Rangers fans but now that it seems the Scottish Executive is going to ignore all advice from eminent Roman Catholic historians, lawyers and media consultants to just target the Prods, it raises all sorts of interesting questions like, now that we’ve realised we can’t sing about the IRA killing and maiming women and children how can we turn the process around?

For instance, it is true that the Green Brigade's songs about Ireland and Irish identity, which have been at the core of Celtic's foundation as a football club only in the past decade when vested interest groups realised there was political capital to made out of it, are to be outlawed. One of their banners said: "Police State - Don't Criminalise Us, Just Them (You Know Who We Mean)". Another said: "Our Songs Are Not Sectarian" although you can’t get much more sectarian than an Irish Republican murder gang who were wiping out communities of Protestants in Cork before anyone had even heard of ethnic cleansing. Further points were made about a collection of chants that the Green Brigade enjoy - one of them even being Ireland's national anthem, an odd choice for a bunch of Scots who’ve barely been five miles from Robroyston - but which the Scottish Parliament might be blundering its way towards outlawing if you believe the shrill paranoid rumours spreading from Peter Lawwell’s office. The most contentious of the chants found among the Celtic support – as well as that of Rangers - is about the IRA. This is where it comes right down to the nub, and where, in truth, a zero tolerance policy probably needs to be deployed. I don’t know why I mentioned Rangers in that sentence but there you go, I’m obsessed with ‘em.

It doesn't sound very convincing these days to argue that, when Celtic fans chant about the IRA, they are in fact referring to an Irish liberation movement of nearly 100 years ago, rather than the terror group of recent times. This is a semantic we can do without. Something pointed out to me on Rangers internet message boards – what, you didn’t think I had the intelligence to think of this one myself?

The very same line of argument was tried a few years ago by some Rangers hardliners over their use of the word "Fenian". Anyone steeped in west of Scotland, Byres Road, middle class, dinner party society disingenuously claims to know that the word is a pejorative term for a Catholic and this was the very basis of my obsessive assault on Rangers some eight or so years ago, but some Rangers fans tried to get round this, saying: "No, no ... in fact we are merely referring to the 19th century political movement in Ireland” when they’re really just talking about Scottish Celtic fans who are devoted to an insidious foreign cause which resulted in the deaths of thousands of British citizens.

That argument disintegrated somewhat when thousands of fans at Ibrox would refer to Martin O'Neill, then the Celtic manager, as a "sad Fenian bastard", when plainly O'Neill was alive in the here and now, and not in the 19th century. And when the Celtic fans sang something similar to Walter Smith claiming he was a “sad Orange bastard”? Well that didn’t happen, nothing to see here, move along now.

In fact, on Saturday at Celtic Park, if you ignore all the chants in support of the IRA then there wasn't a single IRA chant to be heard from the Green Brigade..

It is the one refrain in their repertoire they need to junk, however fleeting it might be at Celtic Park especially if, like me, you listen to Celtic fans’ singing with your fingers in your ears and humming loudly. The Green Brigade, like the Blue Order at Ibrox, is to be encouraged. They are loud and brash and they provide Celtic games with a vivid percussion of pubescent noise that gets not only my blood going but that of most of the Scottish footballing media. There is also an argument that, all across the world, many football clubs' supporters express a cultural or political stance that should not be deemed to be illegal (except of course, Rangers). If these were outlawed then, never mind Celtic, the supporters of Real Madrid and Barcelona would be in deep trouble and we don’t want that – no, the only people we really wanted to see in trouble were the Rangers fans but this proposed new law seems to be going in the wrong direction: both ways!

Where most decent people want to draw a line, and be less libertarian, is where it comes to outright prejudice, principally involving race or religion. Where a football crowd starts to hurl bile in either of these spheres, I'm all for supporters being carted off to the Gulags and shot in the head. But over a club's cultural roots - which many Celtic fans feel strongly - I don't see how it can be muzzled as easily as Elaine C Smith. So remember, Celtic fans singing about blowing up children is cultural, Rangers fans even if they were to sing All Things Bright and Beautiful, is prejudiced.

The Scottish Government needs to be very careful as it meanders towards drawing up this Bill (and this might shock you considering it is the polar opposite of what I said on live broadcast from Holyrood where I was advocating introducing Orwellian thought crimes and demanding that the Rangers fans be punished for what they think). The Green Brigade may have a point: Celtic and Rangers fans could face court charges over offences that are laughable and we can’t have that, we only want Rangers fans facing court charges that are laughable. If I were Roseanna Cunningham, and I would dearly love to be – her taste in pretty dresses is rather quaint and what I wouldn’t give to wear a pair of her bloomers under my corduroys one day, the Government's minister for community safety and laying into the Prods, I would tred very warily indeed.

Once complete I read it over in my head, lips moving as I did but it just didn’t seem right so instead I got out the Martin O’Neil scrapbook and had a wank, jizzing onto a piece of A4 paper which I faxed to the Times and remarkably, they printed it! It seems I can come up with any old toss these days and it’ll still make it past shoogly old Magnus Linklater.

Days of Wonder

2011-09-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

In these, the days of wonder, it isn’t unusual to see strange things happening. Monsters and demons roam the streets and alleys of Glasgow, pioneering journalists are trapped inside haunted paintings and now the Daily Record have done what we all thought impossible, they have united Rangers and Celtic fans in condemnation of their latest attempt to stir up tensions before an old firm game.

I had a look at the back page upon my return from Penrith after Devine dropped me off on Byres Road before he and Nevin drove off to Pacific Quay wearing their green and white scarves, Irish tricolours draped around their shoulders, to take up their posts as impartial pundits for BBC Scotland. Nevin had been taught a lesson and would never again speak out about sectarian singing from the Celtic fans after he was forced to endure the sight of Devine riding Gillian Bowditch like Red Rum on speed and so he was welcomed back to the fold. Meanwhile I gawped in amazement at the Record’s most recent outrage and couldn’t believe anyone of any moral responsibility could approve this headline. It seems Celtic had already released a poorly composed and grammatically incorrect statement which had me wondering if John Reid wasn’t still lurking in the dungeons and basements underneath Parkhead while Rangers under Whyte had reverted to Murrayesque type and maintained a dignified silence.

All the while, my nemesis, Dr Stuart Waiton had released another press statement which to my horror spoke more sense in a few paragraphs than I’ve managed to write in my entire career. I really must see if something can be done about Waiton, perhaps if Celtic win today then I’ll take advantage of Lawwell’s good spirits and request a hit and if Celtic lose then no doubt Lawwell will be looking for someone to blame so if I can be around him at the right time then maybe I’ll be able to suggest Waiton? It’s a dangerous approach though, as who knows at whom Lawwell will lash out if Rangers pummel Celtic? Everyone knows that Keevins doesn’t shelter in a bullet proof sound studio for no reason in old firm aftermaths when his team don’t do well.

So, plan in mind, I changed into my match day outfit of green corduroy suit and light loafers, wrapped a pink scarf around my neck and skipped down to Ashton Lane for a few sneaky schnifters with the Pacific Quay CSC before they went into work to be paid to lay into Rangers. I joined them for a while in the studios, marvelling at the myriad ways they subliminally promoted Celtic while denigrating Rangers until something caught my eye, just behind a few of the editing staff who were drinking gin and looking shifty; it was a painting, not the same as the one in Devine’s cottage but of a house nonetheless and I can’t be sure but I think the top floor window was in darkness when I arrived. Not anymore. Then just as BBC Scotland headquarters began to ring to the sound of the sports staff singing Boys of the Old Brigade, Chris McLaughlin screamed as crickets began to crawl out from his backpack.

I took a deep breath and left for Ibrox, wondering what fresh madness today would bring.

The Cabinet of Jorg Albertz

2011-09-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

‘How do you suppose we know much of what goes on within the Celtic institution and its many agencies? We haven’t defeated them for three seasons by chance you know,’ smirked Albertz as he led me up the stairs, not one of which was level, jutting out at all sorts of strange angles which made climbing them a real effort.

We reached the top and Albertz lit some candles with his lighter and outside in that cottage room, unseen by Nevin, Devine or Bowditch, a light went on in the top floor of a painted house.
‘Meet Janowitz and Mayer,’ said Albertz, stepping aside to introduce me to – oh my God! I turned and ran for the door but it slammed shut in front of me and I turned in horror, corduroys squeaking as standing beside Albertz, staring at me, were the two dead eyed men from the Edinburgh express. Albertz laughed, ‘Ha! I see they had quite an impression on you! You should’ve seen your face Spiers, ha ha ha!’ and yet the two grey men stood as impassive as ever, those black eyes burrowing into my very soul.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
‘Not who but rather what are they. Wraiths, Spiers, warnings. Born of Berlin during the fall of Weimar, they appear to warn of impending oppression; they are Die Zwielichthelden. Curious, isn’t it, how they seem very interested in you? You wouldn’t be involved in helping push through aggressive freedom inhibiting legislation designed in secret to repress the human rights of a great section of society, would you? Legislation that could sometime in the future be used to say, oppress people? Legislation towards which the Scottish people sleepwalked while being lulled into a false sense of its urgency by a vested interest media and political complex? No? Then you have nothing to worry about from these twilight men, nothing at all.’

But this worried me, he knew I was lying as I stood there trembling in my corduroys, shaking my head like an imbecile as the dead eyed men regarded me with a chilly concern.
‘How do I get out of here?’ I asked and Albertz laughed.
‘You only have to walk out the front door of course.’ So I looked at his burning blue eyes, his smile which hid a thousand mysteries, and then I glanced at his two friends and shivered, shrugged my shoulders, turned and ran down the stairs across the room, opened the door and I was out onto the path, careering downhill, black branches whipping my face until suddenly I stumbled and I was back in the cottage.

‘Fucking hell,’ shouted Devine when I landed on him as he drove Gillian Bowditch around the carpet horse artillery style. She shrieked as we collapsed in a bundle and then she shouted, ‘Oh good another one. Hop on handsome, your wee pal over there was too shy’ and I turned and noticed Nevin curled up in a ball in the corner, sobbing.
‘That’ll teach the little prick for speaking out about Celtic,’ sneered Devine. ‘This is your punishment, you little arsehole! See Spiers, we always get our man, now get round the front of Gillian and let me take a rest for a bit.’

And that’s how I prepared for the big Rangers Celtic match, all the while aware that in the strange painting above the fireplace, a light glittered, dimmed and then went out.

Fearful Symmetry

2011-09-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

Candles cast monstrous shadows across a room which already seemed bent out of shape; walls leaning in towards me as if making an angry point, a ceiling which seemed to change direction with the flickering of the half light and everything at odd angles. It was an expressionist nightmare and I was sitting in the middle of it, inside a painted house which hung, framed in the cottage of Professor Tom Devine and all I could think of was why Devine was admitting to many of the sinister machinations of his church and football team which before we could only suspect.

The answer was simple of course which is probably why it didn’t come to me immediately. He was obviously feeling secure enough in his company to show a little bit of bravado and not the usual wine fuelled, Protestant conspiracy bravado we usually see when he’s wheeled out by BBC Scotland at any opportunity to bleat about sectarianism being nothing more than anti-Catholic behaviour. He didn’t know or didn’t care that I was trapped inside his hellish painting, looking out and hearing everything he said. Didn’t care is my guess since it’s not as if I’m not consistently on-side with his message and the only times I put a spanner in the works of his, Kearneys and Lawwell’s big plans are either by accident or through the manipulation of my innocent actions by dastards like Souness and Donald Findlay.

But how to get out of here, how to remove myself from this strange place? That is what I wondered now as outside, Nevin stoked the fire while Devine knocked the top off his fourth bottle of the evening and considered phoning Gillian Bowditch and getting her down here to lift her pretty dresses for him to maul the meat underneath while forcing Nevin to watch and learn. Bowditch cackled at the suggestion and said she’d be there in three hours after she’d finished her latest assault on the indigenous people of Scotland for the Sunday Times Scottish edition. It makes me wonder, how a once respected institution such as the Times could fetch up in the gutter, pursuing a tribal agenda and attacking the majority of the people who make up the country and yet still be bought by those very same people and then I remembered the Celtic Syndrome; how all it takes is one Celtic Minded person to achieve power and then it’s farewell to impartiality and hello an organisation full of Celtic fans. This bothered me and not for the obvious illiberal reasons but because I foolishly came out as once being a Rangers fan doing myself no favours as it stops me from gaining a foothold within the BBC which has been my dream since I witnessed the wonderful way they kick around Rangers with impunity.

Bowditch arrived and was topless, straddling Devine before Nevin had even hung up her coat. Time moved differently inside the picture and three hours seemed like minutes to me as I sat in the candle light and endured Nevin’s screams as he was forced to observe how to take a line of coke from the tits of a screeching slattern while removing her underskirts, stockings and boots without spilling your drink. Then I heard footsteps from behind me as if someone was coming down a flight of stairs. Of course, I hadn’t even thought about exploring the rest of the house – lack of imagination, you see? I stood up, startled and backed towards the darkest corner in an attempt to hide myself in the gloom. The footsteps continued down the stairs as I crouched and willed myself invisible from whatever horror walked through the door. A stair creaked under the weight of the mysterious presence coming my way and then the steps halted and a door opened with a groan; slowly as if it hadn’t moved in a hundred years, dust falling from it as a gentle breeze blew down the stairs and into the room sending the candle flames into a dance that threw monstrous black shapes across undulating walls. I was losing my mind, surely I would wake up soon and this would all be a dream – for pity’s sake, who ends up trapped in a painting, worried to death by an encroaching phantom while a Dickensian monster gallops an obscene bigoted harpy in front of a sobbing man/boy from Easterhouse?

But this was no dream and as the door swung open a dark shape entered the room bringing with it, not light or illumination but only more darkness, shadows reaching out from his feet and remaining forever on the floor as if painted there. The figure walked to the window and grunted in amusement at the vile scene outside and then turned to me and said, ‘Hello Spiers, you should’ve come upstairs, we’ve been waiting for you’ and I gazed into the eyes of the tiger, lights burning in its eyes and recognised the only person I know who could be comfortable living in such a hellish place. It was Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter.

In the Picture

2011-09-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

‘Uncle’ Tom Devine had brought firewood, meat and cases of the finest wines known to humanity and knew where to stock them all as after all, it was his cottage. I’d borrowed the key from him for our visit under the impression that he wouldn’t have the brass neck to join us after stealing my wife, sailing her half way around Scotland to escape me and Richard Gough with his Rangers 90s Squad Marines and then returning with her to shoot me in the belly at Lawwell’s secret headquarters under the summit of Schiehallion. It’s all there in my memoirs from last season if you care to look but anyway, our delightful weekend in the country took a turn for the better until the second day of Devine’s visit when I overheard he and Nevin whispering in the kitchen before coming through to tell me that they were going into Penrith to buy Wellingtons. Fine, though I, I could do with the peace to catch up on Twitter and post some new buffoonery that’ll have them laughing in the press rooms. With me, not at me I hope. So off they went, leaving me alone in that strange old cottage with its air of melancholy and fug of woodsmoke.

I sat with my laptop but couldn’t face Twitter since Phil McGillivan was stalking me again. He mentioned something about succulent lamb bhuna which could have been funny had it not been tweeted with such thinly veiled malice so I called him a sad and vulnerable man and logged out before he could come at me with something equally brilliant and witty, as if he could. I pondered the bold Phil, something nagging at me in the back of my mind. Images of a cave on the seashore flitted about my mind’s eye until I could picture him having a wank which slightly turned me on so I looked around the room for something to take my mind off him.

It came to me quite by accident. Some piece of dry log sparked out of the fireplace and fizzed on the antique and threadbare rug, the little puff of smoke rising above the fire surround and gathering blue and hazy in front of an old oil painting. Something didn’t seem quite right with this painting of an old house at the top of a hill, a path leading up to it, bare trees frozen in silhouette against an ominous sky by its side. There was something about it, something odd that I couldn’t take my eyes off it until I could do nothing but sit and stare at it. Outside the sound of rain and wind segued into one huge white noise, seeping through the cracks under the doors and windows into the cottage, surrounding me with a nightmarish hum as the picture dragged me into its world, barren and hellish and hardly welcoming. I sat and gazed at the house in the painting until I noticed a light in the top right window which I hadn’t seen before. Had I missed it? Had it just switched on? Then a voice said, ‘Come in,’ and I found myself walking up the path, sleeves snagging on the reaching branches of the trees, not Autumn bare but scorched and twisted. I kept walking until I came to the door of the house as it opened and I entered.
‘Sit down,’ said the voice and I did, I sat on a beaten old leather armchair and waited, quite unperturbed at where I found myself.

Then I heard a door open from outside the window of my new home and the voice inside the painted house told me to have a look outside so I got up and walked to the window and there were Nevin and Devine, arguing in front of the fireplace above which the strange picture sat on the wall, a solitary and new light glowing from a window that had been dark for a hundred years.

They had been arguing from the look of it and Devine was in the middle of one of his rants while Pat winced and stuttered, failing to get a word in edgeways.
‘He is not alone in referring to it as the North of Ireland,’ droned Devine. ‘It's a phrase both Bishop Joe Devine and Cardinal Keith O'Brien are on record as having used to refer to Northern Ireland. This disingenuous phrase is almost exclusively used by Scottish or Irish Roman Catholics with republican tendencies, that it is becoming more widespread in Scotland I can only put down to the education of Scottish RCs in our denominational schools. So why is the phrase encouraged in our community? Well the answer to that is the same answer to BIG QUESTION #2: there are Roman Catholic schools in England and Wales so why are there no sectarian problems there? And as we all know, Catholic schools in England and Wales don’t obsess about Irish republicanism, usually of the violent kind and they certainly don’t suppress integration. You know it depresses me sometimes. If only our obsession with the old country took in the arts, history other than that of perceived oppression and struggle, anything except the bloody IRA. There’ll be no Lake Isle of Innisfree when there’s Wolf Tone to be taught,’ and he opened a bottle of Margaux and downed it one obscene glug and continued.
‘BIG QUESTION #1 incidentally is about the Act of Succession which is just a huge smokescreen. Separate schooling according to faith affects every man jack of us in Scotland; it encourages division and tribalism, promotes superstition as fact, indoctrinates unsuspecting children from a young and impressionable age and has no place in a forward thinking, modern society. The Act of Succession affects a few titled old Catholic upper class English families with daughters who wouldn't know the Act of Succession if it ran down the street and grabbed them by the tits.’
‘So why do we constantly bring it up then?’ asked Nevin.
‘To put them on the backfoot and create a smokescreen so that they can’t bring up our schools without us whining about not being allowed Catholics on the throne. The argument has become so muddled of late that most Celtic fans now believe that we’re not allowed to have a Catholic Prime Minister. Of course we don’t say anything to discourage them in this belief; anything to deflect from our own failings is always welcome.’
‘Wow, I didn’t know all this,’ phewed wee Pat. ‘Thanks for the lessons Professor, perhaps now I’ll have more to argue during sectarian debates than my one anecdote about a Rangers and Chelsea match,’ and at that they left the room, leaving me more in the picture now than I’ve ever been.

Nevin & I

2011-09-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katia had arrived early and the rain lashed our faces as we scrambled through the mud from the car to the cottage before struggling with the door and eventually getting inside, soaked through to find that there was no electricity. I was fine as I could sit in the corner and heat myself with the smug glow of my own self importance. Pat however had only a seething sense of his own inadequacy and so sat and shivered until I could sort out the fuel and wood situation – luckily I’d brought the unsold copies of my Paul LeGuen opus which allowed us an unending source of fuel for the fire. Now with light and heat we decided a few drinks were in order and so took off for an evening at the Crow.

We sat at the end of the bar, Pat nursing a sense of grievance not unusual in his tribe while I cocked a snook at the various local types who came through the premises – you know, farmers, milkmen, travelling tinkers… Then suddenly the pub door blew open and a hulking great figure stood silhouetted against the storm until it snuffled into the bar, a wriggling eel clasped between its teeth. It was the Traynor.

Missing since our imprisonment in Walter Smith’s underwater lair, Silence, we’d wondered where he’d gone. Some suggested he’d drowned in an escape attempt but I knew better, that he’d just tired of being locked up with such stultifying idiots in Kearney and McBride. Oh, and me. Who was to know though, that he’d fetch up poaching in Penrith?
‘Poaching is a fine way to live, Spiers’ he growled. ‘You should know that, isn’t your piece in this morning’s Times poached from other journalists and various lunatic ramblings on the internet? Christ, you should just credit your pieces these days to Matt McGlone – I could almost smell the Heraghtys drip trays when I read that today. What are you doing here anyway, I thought I was getting peace from you morons until you turned up?’
‘Oh Pat and I had our arses felt in Edinburgh and not in the good way so we’re taking a breather from the city for a while,’ I said as the Traynor leaned over the bar and poured himself an ale.
‘Yeah? Well don’t think you two idiots can come down here and ruin my new life. I’ll be watching you, especially you Spiers, prancing like a tit’ and with that he downed his pint and left, disappearing into the howling black night.
‘Well that was a turn up for the books,’ said Nevin. ‘Have I ever told you my story about when Rangers played Chelsea and…’
‘Yes!’ I shouted and we trudged back to the cottage, heads down against the wind, faces stinging from the rain.

We dried out in front of a roaring fire – we’d rather taken to burning books, it seemed to fit the times in which we are living back home in Scotland. Then we retired to bed, separate rooms which Pat insisted upon having been brought up a Catholic and not being used to integration but I got scared and crept into his bed in the middle of the night and we lay uncomfortably together until we were awoken by an almighty crash from downstairs.
‘It’s the Traynor, it’s got to be,’ I squealed.
‘Oh my god, he’s come to slit our throats, we’re doomed. By the way, have I ever told you that story about Rangers supporters during a friendly against Chelsea?’ whispered Nevin.
‘Yes!’ I rasped. ‘We don’t have time for that now, he’s coming up the stairs, offer yourself to him.’ Nevin stared at me in horror but there was no time for argument now as the bedroom door was being forced. I began to groan in fear, huddled tight against Nevin.
‘We mean no harm,’ I moaned as the door at last opened and we saw the grotesque frame of a drunken and evil monster standing in front of us.
‘Tom Devine, you terrible cunt!’ I cried, almost with relief.

The Celtic Syndrome

2011-09-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

There’s an odd affliction which affects people of a Celtic persuasion and that is that they seem to put their obsession with their club and their equal if not greater obsession with their hatred of Rangers, before anything even careers and by extension the well being of their families. This is at its most telling when otherwise rational people risk their jobs and futures in order to misappropriate and then leak documents not intended for the public eye as long as they pertain to anything bleak about Rangers. So we have Celtic supporters within HMRC illegally firing out emails about the Rangers tax issues and now we have Celtic supporters in legal circles risking everything to pilfer the Martin Bain legal case documents and stick them in the public domain. It’s called the Celtic Syndrome and is the same disease which has seen the almost Gramscian slow march through the institutions of Scottish Catholics who bleat about inequality while refusing to employ or promote anyone who doesn’t attend Parkhead every second Saturday. We can see this in action most prominently at Glasgow City Council where it’s almost a Celtic closed shop and increasingly at BBC Scotland where arse numbing left leaning liberalism has been compounded by an eye bulging obsession with Celtic resulting in the fancy new headquarters on the Clyde being known now as Pacific Quay CSC.

I was telling all of this to Pat Nevin as we drove south for a delightful weekend in the country to recharge our batteries and escape the humiliation of our appearance at the Holyrood Justice Committee where we were mocked by Dr Stuart Waiton who, as a social scientist had a grasp of Scottish society that a couple of wet, anecdote dependent sports pundits could only dream of. What’s worse is that not content with showing us up during the debate, he’s now taken to phoning me in the middle of the night and calling me a prick so I took Pat and his two stories, got in the Jag and took off for the Lake District after procuring keys to a cottage there.

Thought Crime

2011-09-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

So there I was, dressed as a leprechaun, sweating my arse off, frightened half to death after an assassination attempt by the Scottish Government and to top it all off, on my way in I was cornered by Cardinal Keith O’Brien who handed me a tiny device to stick in my ear so he could relay messages to me during the committee meeting then he winked and told me I was doing a fine job and to toddle off and stick it to the Huns. I put the device in my left ear, my right ear already holding the listening device given to me by Souness as he dropped me off at the gates of Holyrood.

On my way in I was accosted by Jeanette Findlay who stank of stale booze and whose petticoats were looking a little too crusty for my liking. She’d lost her wig in an argument with a hefty fellow sitting close to her who was known only as Kingpin and without it she looked suspiciously like any old common or garden dyke. She shrieked at me as I passed and I winced then she tried to grope me while whispering in my ear, ‘You look ridiculous Spiers, what are you doing dressed like that – is this anti-Irish racism at its most base level?’
‘You’re not looking so great yourself, Jeanette,’ says I, acting all nonchalant but inside I was trying to breath through my elbows such was the stink.
‘Keep walking. Ignore her,’ said a voice in my left ear.
‘Anti-Irish racism? Ha! The harlot’s obsessed. Ignore her and keep walking,’ chortled a voice in my right ear which sounded like Donald Findlay. This was obviously going to become confusing.

The next hour passed in a blur. If I didn’t know who Dr Stuart Waiton was before the meeting, I certainly knew who he was by the end of it as he sat there tearing Pat Nevin to ribbons while I shrunk into my seat and hoped he wouldn’t pick on me but there’s no hiding when you’re dressed like a leprechaun and it wasn’t long before I was a ‘west end dinner party’ campaigner and a ‘Guardian reading’ loser. In my right ear I could hear Donald Findlay laughing with every insult and in my left Cardinal O’Brien was roaring for me to say something back but I was like a deer caught in the headlights, frightened, alone, dressed like a dick; I had nothing in my armoury capable of defending my position against Waiton’s onslaught so I sat and fumed inwardly, vowing to do some research next time and not just rely on prejudice against Rangers which to be fair is usually all that is needed during Sectarian Summits, at least it was in the good old days of Jumping Jack McConnell. Christine Grahame did her best to bail me out, handing the table over to some little squirt who waffled and stuttered but time and again it came back to Waiton and every time he opened his mouth, everything he said was measured and calm and seemed to make sense.
‘Don’t let him confuse you’ screamed O’Brien in my left ear but it was too late, in spite of the man ridiculing me in a live debate, I was warming to him and I felt my eyes wander onto his thighs and I was imagining he and I on a bed of pink clouds, eating Turkish Delight and smearing each other in cream and then before I knew what I was doing I had said that I thought some thoughts should be criminalised.

It just came out. I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t even realise I was speaking, so wrapped up in my sordid little chocolate fantasy with Waiton who sat looking astonished at a liberal blowing it so eloquently and in front of so many witnesses. And live on the internet to boot.

I could hardly hear anything to my right as Donald Findlay laughed so hard he could be heard by Graham Walker who sat nonplussed beside me and to my left soppy little Easterhouse Pat Nevin looked at me strangely as he could hear Keith O’Brien lose it in my left ear.

And that was it for me. I can’t remember what happened during the rest of the meeting as all I could do was go over in my head what I’d just said: ‘I think some thoughts should be criminalised.’ How could I be so stupid? To speak my mind and let everyone know I was an idiot and an illiberal one at that. I’d never again be invited to west end dinner parties which is basically what Waiton whispered to me behind Walker’s back when the cameras weren’t on us and Findlay must have heard it too as my right ear exploded in laughter yet again.

I eventually came out of the fog of my dismay towards the end of the meeting when someone mentioned segregated schooling and Grahame paused the meeting and the fellow who’d brought it up disappeared with his seat into the floor, there was a scream and then the seat came back up empty.
‘What happened to the live feed?’ asked both Findlay and O’Brien almost at the same time.
‘Someone mentioned Catholic schools’ I whispered only to get strange looks from everyone and I noticed Christine Grahame’s finger reaching for a button on her desk but upon seeing it was me and that I hadn’t said it loud enough to be captured by the microphones she stopped, told us the meeting was over and for us to pick up our complimentary Celtic scarves and badges on the way out. As she did I felt my chair wobble but it stayed where it was. That was a close one, there was obviously going to be no room for even the mention of segregated schooling at this sectarianism debate.

‘You did well son, gave us all a good laugh. Didn’t Graeme tell you you’d like Stuart Waiton?’ said Donald Findlay in my right ear as I filed out the chamber and then he guffawed and the link went dead.
‘You fucking dolt!’ came O’Brien in my left ear. ‘If you’re the best we have in this debate then we might as well give up on Operation Gramsci right now. Fucking pompous idiot…’ and with that his link disappeared and as I left the scene of my greatest embarrassment yet, dressed as a leprechaun, scared half to death, publicly humiliated and ignored at the end even by a port sodden and black toothed Jeanette Findlay, I thought, well that’s the last time I get invited over to play poker on Jason Allardyce’s arse at Keith O’Brien’s gaff then.

The Road to Holyrood

2011-09-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

As I sat on the Justice Committee, sweat soaking through my pants, face like a beetroot, neck burning with embarrassment at not only having been shown up as an idiot in front of people I once thought my peers but turns out are my intellectual superiors (except Pat Nevin of course who thinks that because he once saw Echo and the Bunnymen at the Queen Margaret Union that this makes him an intellectual), I wondered if I’d have been able to concentrate my argument more effectively and not blurt out nonsense like ‘I think some thoughts should be criminalised’ if I hadn’t been dressed as a leprechaun.

I wouldn’t have been dressed as a leprechaun had a black van not run us off the road on the way to Holyrood. They came at us from a side street as we made our rickety way down the cobbles of the Royal Mile, Souness driving, whistling away happily as if he knew something about the Justice Committee that I didn’t until the van rammed into our side and forced us off the road and through a shop window. Two men dressed in black and wearing crash helmets jumped out the van and ran towards us waving pick-axe handles as I fell from the passenger seat, ripping my corduroys on the jagged end of the broken car door and buried myself under some clothes scattered by our collision with the shop. Souness however stood fast and as the first thug swung his pick-axe, Souness ducked, stuck his palm under the guy’s chin and punched him once in the chest just as the other thug came up behind him, lunging with his weapon only for Souness to spin to the side as the thug’s blow came down on his friend’s helmet while Souness kicked and broke his shin sending him screaming into a pile of fairy dresses until Souness shut him up by kneeling on him, forcing off his helmet and punching his face until he went quiet.
‘Who the devil were they?’ I bleated.
‘Could be anyone Spiers, you wouldn’t believe the amount of people who don’t want you showing your face at this committee.’ I blushed at this, thinking that the power of my great contribution to the sectarian debate might make things difficult for them.
‘Yes,’ said Souness. ‘It could be someone from Celtic or Nil by Mouth but my money’s on the Scottish Government.’
‘Eh?’ I yelped. ‘What do you mean? Not at all, they’ll be glad to have me there, fighting their side. Surely these guys are Rangers supporting, Protestant bigots trying to silence the truth about sectarianism?’
‘Look at me, Spiers. What do you see? A Rangers supporting, Rangers legend. If Rangers wanted you silenced, do you think I’d be ruffling my moustache trying to get you down there? Now behave yourself and for goodness sake, put some clothes on.’
I looked at myself and my corduroys were in tatters from the crash and from my crawling through glass. A crowd was gathering outside now, peering in to see what had happened so we were up against time to get out of there before someone called the police although Souness seemed to think the police were already here, lying silent among the tutus.
‘What will I wear?’ I was almost hysterical now, looking around at all the mannequins sprawled across the shop floor and seeing nothing but fairy outfits – we were in a fancy dress shop! Then just as I was eyeing up the fairy queen in extra large, Souness threw a costume into my arms and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down to Holyrood and that’s how I fetched up looking like a complete moron in front of the world at the Justice Committee and that was without even considering the fact that I was dressed as a leprechaun.

Shadows and Fog, Smoke and Mirrors

2011-09-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

There are invariably problems in consorting with Victorian stereotypes and Dickensian caricatures, the main one is that you will often find yourself running, screaming from some awful scene, usually in the fog. The lesser known is that occasionally you will be laid low with some old and forgotten disease. And so it was that after I was spirited off the Edinburgh Express by agents of Donald Findlay, I was bed ridden for weeks with the ague or scrofula or something. Suffice to say, I lay soaking in bed, babbling and swatting imaginary mice from my sleeves while being waited upon by Findlay’s housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, lent to us by Findlay while he roomed with his brother at his club. Every now and then I’d peer out from behind the curtains of unconsciousness and hear about Peter Lawwell accusing Rangers of lying about a £9million transfer bid or the Scottish media stoking the flames of sectarianism with bare faced lies about a jury trial involving Neil Lennon but so ludicrous were these two claims that I simply put them down to my fevered imaginings.
‘No, it’s true,’ said Graeme Souness as he swung upside down from the ceiling. I had woken in the final stages of my condition the day before and witnessed Souness punching holes in the ceiling and then doing pull-ups from the exposed beam and wondered how he came to be here with me when I was sure I’d seen him dead on the train and now here he was stretching his legs in typical Sounessian style as I finally began my recovery.
‘It’s all true,’ he continued, swinging away. ‘Not one newspaper or television news outlet reported all of the facts on the Lennon case, instead all of them focussed on their own disingenuous outrage and gave an inordinate amount of space and time to your friend McBride to spout paranoid nonsense. I’m glad you’ve been out of it Spiers, else you might have been tempted to weigh in with your own tuppance worth.’
‘Didn’t the janitor at the Times manage to get anything out in my absence then?’ I asked but he shook his head. ‘I don’t read your paper. I’m surprised anyone still does so over-run is it with chattering west end middle-class socialists in thrall to Kearney’s department.’
‘And what about you, I thought you were dead after the BBC Scotland assassins jumped you from behind.’
‘It takes more than a satchel wearing, humous munching, coke snorting, Chip drinking, bigoted Celtic wimp to take out me, Spiers – you should know that by now. No, they caught me by surprise and I spent time recovering here with you while Donald cleared up the mess created by our little stooshy on the train. Did you see him then?’
‘See who?’ I asked with a start.
‘Spring Heeled Jack of course. Findlay reported that more crickets had been found on the body of the Pacific Quay CSC assassin you contrived to defeat while I wasn’t looking.’
‘While you were unconscious, seemingly dead,’ I corrected.
‘Not unconscious, just having a rest,’ he glared at me.
‘Well yes, I did see something or rather, two men with black eyes who followed me and were there when the blood started flowing but they didn’t participate and were gone by the time it was all finished. Had they something to do with Spring Heeled Jack?’
For all we know they were Spring Heeled Jack. He’s a mystery beyond even our organisations' ken. No one’s seen him and lived to tell the tale. We say ‘him’ when it could be more than one person such is his easy movement from dealing with a BBC editor in Govan to attacking a Sun journalist in Queen Street within minutes of each other. I’ll say one thing for him though, he has the Scottish media complex treading more carefully so although we can’t condone his actions, they are reaping dividends for us. But no, I don’t think your dead-eyed men were Jack or else you wouldn’t be here to tell the tale now, would you?’
I thought about this then when I couldn’t for the life of me work out what he meant and those troubling old thoughts that perhaps I’m not as clever as I like to think I am came creeping back, I put it from my mind and wondered aloud where we might be.
‘A safe house, top floor of a townhouse on Lady Stair’s Close. One of Findlay’s friends has given us lodgings here for our recovery. Well, I’m recovered, how about you, young shaver?’ And he swept himself off the beam and landed perfectly on the floor and waved thank you to an imaginary audience.
‘I feel quite normal. A bit smelly not having washed but…’
‘So nothing unusual then? Good, let’s be having you. You have somewhere important to be me old fellow me lad,’ and he winked at me and pulled me from my sick bed.
‘Where are we going then?’ I asked, changing from my corduroy nightshirt and into my corduroy jacket and matching slacks.
‘It’s the Justice Committee today Spiers, I hope you’re on top of your game because you’re sitting on it. We have a special friend waiting for you there, we think you’ll enjoy his company.’
‘It’s not Professor Steve Bruce is it?’ I asked, excited at meeting this elusive figure at last.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Steve wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of anything to do with sectarianism in this country – he deals in facts, not shrill Celtic Minded scaremongering. No, your meeting with him is yet to come. Today you’ll be discussing the most pressing social matter in Scotland with another gentleman, a Dr. Stuart Waiton. You’ll like him, he thinks just like you and is on your side.’
And as we descended the narrow stairs and onto the High Street I’m sure I could hear Souness sniggering.

Murder on the Glasgow/Edinburgh Express

2011-09-03T01:22:00.000-07:00

The shriek of the train’s whistle woke me from a brief slumber and I smiled at how easy it was to snooze in the comfort of a first class carriage. I hadn’t been napping for long and took a look out of the window to work out where we might be but it was night and the fields and hedgerows that passed were but a dark blur. Then in the reflection of the window I noticed someone sitting opposite me, a few seats away; a black eyed gentleman and he was looking intently in my direction. I turned from the window and with a start realised that he was staring right at me. I caught his eye and he turned away but as he did, I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye and another man, much like the first was now staring at me. I turned and looked straight at him but he averted his gaze only for me to notice that as he did, the first man turned and looked back at me. This was as ridiculous as it was unsettling as I looked from one to the other only for them to take it in turns to stare at me with those same dead, black eyes. I reluctantly gave up the comfort of first class and left the carriage to get away from these curious creatures and sat one carriage away and settled back and thought about boys in leather shorts but I must have dozed off again and when I awoke, there sitting in front of me again were the same two men.

I got up immediately this time and moved to the next carriage along but I had barely taken my seat when one of them sat in front of me and as I goggled at him, his friend sat down to my right, both staring expressionless, into my eyes. They were too close for comfort now and mindful of Souness’s warning, I sprang up and trotted down the aisle towards the next carriage. I looked behind me and there they were, following me, still staring, still emotionless. This was becoming serious, these men looked like they hated me and were sure to cause me harm if they were to find me alone but thankfully I was on a busy train although I noticed with growing alarm that the more I fled from carriage to carriage, the less busy they became until with a fright I noticed I was in the buffet carriage and the buffet was closed, the carriage empty. I turned to see if I had time to get out of there but those two monsters were right behind me and just as I felt absolute panic shiver down my spine and turn my legs to jelly, two men in moustaches and dressed in bed sheets jumped out from behind the buffet at me and held me against the window. As one of them held a curved blade to my throat and came in close to me to whisper
‘We’re the Scottish TUC, prepare to die,’ I could smell his breath.
‘Ugh, garlic,’ I gasped.
‘Ugh, mouldering cabbage and dog piss’ he replied but before he could do anything with his dagger a hand appeared from behind his head, grabbed his moustache and pulled him screaming away from me. It was Graeme Souness and he had the other one too, also by the moustache.
‘I don’t like your face furniture boys and surely there are other ways to support Palestinians without assaulting people who disagree with you?’ and he knocked their heads together until they collapsed in a heap in the corridor, Souness watching them fall, waiting till he was sure they wouldn’t get back up and then raising his head and winking at me. I am sure he was about to say ‘see you loser’ but he didn’t get the chance as two young men I recognised as two of the more excitable of the Pacific Quay CSC came up behind him and reigned blows down on his head with small iron bars. Souness’s reaction was instant and fast; he grabbed one of his assailants by the side of the head and pushed it into the wall then brought it back across his front and smashed the man’s face into the window, smearing snot and blood across the glass and sending a hair line crack into the corner. Souness was slowing though as all the while he was doing this, the second BBC bhoy was still bringing his cosh down on the old Ranger’s head until eventually he could hold on no more and collapsed to the floor and lay motionless on top of the other three men.

Souness’s assailant giggled as he looked down at his victim.
‘That was for 2-0 against Celtic in 1986,’ he sneered.
‘But you weren’t even born then’ I shrieked at him, appalled at the violence which yet again compromised everything I believed about the cuddly nature of Celtic fans.
‘No I wasn’t but my dad told me about it, we’re Celtic supporters Spiers, we bear grudges. Forever,’ he said as he dropped the iron bar and pulled a steak knife from his inside pocket and stepped over the bodies towards me. I turned to flee and nearly fainted from fright as there at the other end of the carriage were the two dead eyed men standing in the shadows, still as mist in a graveyard and staring straight at me with their evil black eyes. I sobbed and looked over my shoulder as the BBC bhoy approached, a vicious smile on his face, whispering
‘Nobody gets to listen to Professor Steve Bruce if BBC Scotland has anything to do with it, now come here and accept your fate Stinkerbell.’
In front of me lay pain, disfigurement and possibly death, behind me lay madness. I was stuck, with nothing left to say and nowhere to run. Souness on the floor bleeding from the ear couldn’t save me now. I fell to my knees and began to cry like a girl when suddenly the train entered a tunnel, its whistle blowing as shrill as Paul McBride when things aren’t going his way. The train lights flickered and then I heard a plink and they went out and I gasped as the BBC Scotland assassin stopped right in front of me, his arm raised about to bring his knife down on my head. He stood still, face frozen and there was a popping sound before blood shot from his neck, arterial spray swishing across my face and onto the window. He looked puzzled for a moment then brought his hand up to his neck and pulled something from the hole that had appeared there, his life squirting from him until eventually his legs buckled and he slumped to the ground in a puddle of his own gore. With his last breath he reached out his hand and opened his bloody clenched fist and wriggling in his palm was a blood clotted cricket.

After all that it didn’t dawn on me to look behind me for the dead eyed men but when I eventually realised I’d forgotten about them and looked around in panic, they had gone. The train whistle sounded again and something bright outside caught my attention. I looked out the blood caked window and saw Edinburgh Castle shining bright against the black sky, the neon lights and gory window affected to make it glow an ominous orange colour as I looked around the charnel house in which I stood and wondered how on earth I was going to get back to the west end from here.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

2011-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

There were more zombies than usual hanging around George Square as I approached Queen Street station. I was just beginning to wonder if the tunnel between the City Chambers and Parkhead had been opened and its denizens allowed to flood the city when I realised it was some Hollywood blockbuster being filmed. I wondered if Celtic knew there were stars in town so they could quickly invite them along to watch a game and wrap some scarves around them for the Daily Record photographers although they’d better be careful not to wrap one around one of the walking dead as who’d notice the difference between the PR stunt and one of the usual Gallowgate tramps? I shouldn’t mock them though, they’re the only ones reading any of my work these days, on Twitter because no one reads the Times anymore. God’s truth, I don’t even write for it anymore; no, the jani’ does that for me, giving me more time to crusade against the greatest evil facing Scottish society in centuries: Rangers. Why, did you think I was going to say something else?

I paid the cabbie and got out, turning up the collar of my corduroy coat and looking up at the sky. It was only seven in the evening and it was already dark – what happened to the summer? This was bad news for anyone printing lies about Rangers which after all, is just about everybody, as the mysterious figure attacking us whom we’d named Spring Heeled Jack only attacks in the dark. The few first-hand sightings of Spring Heeled Jack had reported that even when his face came out of the darkness, it still seemed to be shrouded in shadows. I thought about this as I stood in the gloom and I shivered then climbed the steps into the station where I’d last been the night Graeme Souness drove me through it in a Mini Cooper to get away from Lawwell’s Stasi.
‘Hello loser,’ said a voice from behind a ticket machine – it was Souness!
‘You know, I was just thinking about you there,’ I exclaimed.
‘I don’t want to know about your perverted thoughts you dolt… What, was I wearing a basque? No? Never mind. I need a word Spiers, follow me.’
So I followed him to a coffee shop where we sat and hunched over a table conspiratorially as he told me to watch myself.
‘You do realise that the Scottish media will never allow you to speak to Professor Bruce, don’t you?’
I didn’t. He continued,
‘And even if you did get past them, you’ll have Kearney’s organisation doing everything in their power to shut you up.’
‘Who, the Catholic church?’ I goggled.
‘And not only them, Lawwell and all his agents will be on your case too. It’s a dangerous game, Spiers and I don’t think you’re suited to play it. Have you thought about Reich Chancellor Salmond and his SA over at Holyrood? Do you seriously think they won’t be keeping an eye on what you’re up to? The STUC are still active in this country too, they’ll have the Palestinians tailing you. You know what Spiers, just go home and leave this to the big boys; this lot have silenced Bruce for too long now, they won’t allow any of his research and fact based findings on sectarianism in Scotland reach the public domain and ruin their little party. They’re building their own Celtic Minded Utopia and one more body of a talentless journalist among the ruins of Enlightened Scotland won’t matter to them.’

I didn’t take his advice and at half past the hour I was sitting in the first class carriage as the whistles sounded and the Edinburgh express toiled slowly from the platform and as we exited the first tunnel and into the night, I heard a thump on the roof of the train but thought nothing of it.

The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

2011-08-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

The invitation came from a most unlikely source: Donald Findlay. Findlay had been keeping a low profile ever since Lawwell, tired of his interfering in many of his lunatic schemes, had the Green Brigade send him a dangerous package in the post. When I arrived at his residence in Newlands there was no sign of nerves though and he seemed his usual jovial self, sitting in his favourite chair by the fireplace, inspecting the tobacco from the Persian slipper and throwing it absent mindedly into the flames instead of packing the empty pipe he was sucking.
'Trying to give it up,' he said.
'Smoking? That's surprising,' I ventured.
'No no Spiers, playing cat and mouse with Peter Lawwell. Smoking's harmless in comparison.'
'Yes, I heard you received something in the post.'
'A bloody knife! A knife, y'hear?' He seemed angry at the thought of it, then continued.
'The retard Lennon gets bombs and I get a bloody knife? Well, when I say bombs of course I mean bundles of rubbish designed to look like bombs, all this 'viable device' nonsense was just that, spouted by Strathclyde Police to further whatever agenda they were pursuing at the time. I suppose when I think about it, a knife could do me more damage than the detritus Lennon and his fellow comedy Catholics received; they'd have been hurt more had they received a nice paper cut off the envelopes. So I suppose I shouldn't be too upset that they didn't use any imagination or go to any great effort when it came to threatening me. Perhaps Lawwell's losing his touch?'
He relaxed in his chair after those short moments of animation and then sighed and tossed me a package.
'What's this?' I asked and he motioned for me to open it, raising one eyebrow as if to tell me to behave and not be afraid of it being a knife or a bomb. It was a return ticket, first class no less, to Edinburgh.
'And why do I want to go to Edinburgh?' I asked.
'You don't,' he said. 'But you have to. There's a chap there I'd like you to meet and believe me when I say this Spiers, it'll do you a world of good to speak to this fellow. There is evil abroad once again in this country. The voices of reason are being drowned out by the shrill screeching of those whose agenda we thought we understood but now I'm not so sure. You fancy living in a police state, Spiers? Led by a fundamentalist religion with the emphasis on mentalist?'
'Well, I don't know...' I began but he interrupted.
'These are dangerous times laddie, it's time for you to hear the truth. Oh, I know we've pointed you in this direction before and you still prattle on like some useful idiot Baptist with a Celtic scarf but I have a feeling this chap might just convince you that your enemy is not Rangers.'
'What's his name?'
'Professor Bruce,' he replied and said no more, leaning towards the fire to light his pipe as I was ushered out and plonked in a hansom cab which took me to Queen Street.
And so it began.

Magwitch

2011-08-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

Peter Lawwell stalked the corridors of the SFA as if daring anyone to ask him what he was doing there. Behind him lay the horse-whipped bodies of those who had.
‘Where the fuck is Regan?’ he demanded, knocking over busts and throwing pictures from walls.
'All I ask is that teams of tree wrestling farmhands know their place but no, he couldn’t even guarantee me that’ and he booted open a door and glared into the empty office. He turned and saw me trying to hide behind a fire extinguisher.
‘Spiers!’ he roared and my arse dissolved as I realised I’d wandered in here on the wrong night. I should have known better than to be out in the open after Rangers had gone top of the league courtesy of a Celtic home defeat. I was just lucky he wasn’t carrying any heavy armaments.
Minutes later he’d located Regan and had both of us tied to a Hampden goalpost and was thrashing us with a corner flag in such a blind rage I’d never seen before even in this lazy eyed psycho. As the darkness and welcome unconsciousness approached, reality began to merge with dreams and I was cast back to my childhood and a mist shrouded graveyard.

Even as a young lad I found it thrilling to lurk in dark places at night where I might meet handsome strangers for a fumble but a lonely island cemetery amidst the sea hugged marshes was never as busy as Kelvin Way on a Thursday night. So it was with a start that I was taken unawares by a hulking great brute who leaped on me from behind a gravestone. He wrapped a chain around my neck and demanded that I bring him cake which if you think about it isn’t that far off what Stephen Purcell used to ask of me in those halcyon days before his downfall. Later that night I spirited a fairy cake from the family home and took it to this frightening yet vulnerable stranger who gobbled it down with nary a thank you and then felt my arse and as I squeaked he sent me off to bring him back a file for his chains. As I struggled through the marshes again that night I could hear the sound of cannon from the prison ship off shore indicating an escape – could this be my charming rough trade skulking amongst the stones? I didn’t have to wait long for an answer as the Redcoats were ahead of me and had captured him and my longed for night of passion dissipated in front of my youthful eyes.
‘I’ll never forget what you did for me boy’ whispered Magnus Linklater out of earshot of his captors as he was led away and he never did.

I came to on the centre spot and Lawwell was gone, Stewart Regan standing above me. He was naked, bloody and weeping.
‘What have I done, Spiers’ he cried? ‘What have I let into the SFA?’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Regan’ I sneered. ‘You’ve always known what he’s like.’
‘No. No, I thought I knew. I envy you, Spiers. I really do. You were lucky enough to pass out and not hear his new plans for this season. I wish to God I’d never heard’ and he broke down sobbing, gathering up the Hampden turf and rubbing it into his eyes. St. Johnstone have a lot to answer for I thought and wondered how I was going to get back to the west end from here.

City of Light

2011-08-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

One thing the disastrous secret meeting at midnight taught the Scottish football journalists was that when you’re dealing with a creature that moves in the shadows, don’t sit in the darkness and complain when he comes to terrorise you. From that week on all the secret meetings were held in the middle of a park at three in the afternoon and only if it was a sunny day.

After a lot of soul searching everyone decided that it was Lawwell who got us into this mess so he should at least help get us out of it but when a volunteer was asked for to approach him with our request no one was brave enough to step forward. So Ronnie 'Crespo' Cully was forced to do it as it’s been noticed that Lawwell quickly tires of beating the sycophantic little squirt. Cully was dispatched to plead for Lawwell’s help just as news filtered through to us that the BBC had caved and apologised to Rangers for stitching up Ally McCoist, then we heard that Lawwell had thrashed Cully to within an inch of his life after he put four of his finest men on the case only for all of them to go missing one by one, dried cricket husks arriving at Parkhead and addressed to Lawwell every time one of his agents disappeared. Things were not going well for the Scottish football press and we weren’t taking it well. Having got used to the days of wine and roses when we could lay into Rangers without fear, it was difficult for many of us to adjust now that we realised that those days are not long.

Days turned into weeks and everything went quiet. Nobody reported any cricket based activity and the bhoys at the BBC began to think they could get back to normal and were preparing another editing-based outrage to perpetrate against Rangers but then even although McCoist’s team fell to Maribor, Celtic ruined the night by failing to turn up at Parkhead and another early European exit stared them in the face. The screams from Pacific Quay could be heard from the Alea Casino where I was spending an enjoyable few hours with the Osmonds, losing at roulette and drinking appletinis.
‘You’ve been quiet recently, Spiers’ said Donny as I put a fiver on red.
‘Black’ pointed out Jay.
‘Dammit! Well not quite Donny, my stuff is still appearing in the Times but nobody reads it anymore so it doesn’t really matter what I say, I can’t get everyone quite as worked up as I used to. Fiver on black.’
‘But what about Twitter?’ asked little Jimmy although he’s not really all that little anymore, weighing fourteen stone and sporting a beard.
‘Red’ pointed out Jay.
‘Dammit! Listen Jimmy, I’ve hardly got any friends left on that either as I’ve removed so many followers recently it’s not true. Every time someone asks me a challenging question regarding the establishment’s approach to Celtic fans’ sectarian singing I have to bump them as I have no sensible response. All I have left are swivel eyed Celtic fans themselves following me and half of them write in text speak so that I can’t understand a word they’re saying. Fiver on red.’
‘So no one’s reading anything you write these days?’ asked Marie.
‘Black’ pointed out Jay.
‘Dammit! Well, doddery old Magnus still reads it. And someone from Lawwell’s office too I suppose as he monitors everyone lest they stray off message. Fiver on black.’
‘I’ve always meant to ask you about Magnus Linklater, why on earth does he still employ you? You’re poison’ said Wayne with a little too much malice in his voice.
‘Red’ pointed out Jay.
‘Dammit!’ cried I and it was around this time that security asked me to leave for creeping out the other gamblers by speaking to myself which I didn’t understand and neither did the Osmonds who left with me but didn’t intervene as I was escorted out. Still, leaving early gave me the chance to tell my new friends all about why shaky old Magnus suffers me.

It all started a long time ago when I was but a boy…

City of Night

2011-08-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

In the old days during the reign of the coward Murray, a European defeat at Ibrox would have been followed by bacchanalian scenes in republican bars throughout Glasgow as the Scottish media joined their Labour Party chums for a celebratory knees up and the only worries anyone had were who would host Peter Lawwell and his entourage since he liked to end the night with some casual murder of anyone he imagined had slighted him or Celtic in any way over the past few months. These days however, we have to step more carefully. Murray is gone and suddenly Rangers have teeth again. Oh they always had teeth, I know that only too well having been bitten on the arse too many times as a consequence of becoming involved against my will mostly but sometimes with my full cooperation, in most of Lawwell’s lunatic schemes. The difference now is that those teeth are visible to the public where in the past they were hidden as various people and groups plotted and planned on behalf of Rangers without letting Murray find out in case it interfered with his quest for a knighthood.
So now journalists have to look out not only for Lawwell, his Stasi and assorted grotesques all keen to terrorise and maim to keep the good name of Celtic out of the mud, but now also have to keep a keen eye open for Craig Whyte’s dogs of war, let loose at the end of last season and this is why after Rangers lost to Malmo, instead of laughing it up with the Green Brigade, every journalist was attending a secret meeting to discuss the latest worrying events.

I wasn’t invited for some reason. I’d quizzed Marjory Brianbanks as we like to call him down at Bennets, on why this was and he shrugged.
‘No one likes you Spiers. I suppose it could be that. Or just that the meeting will be in an enclosed space and we don’t like to have to breathe through our ears whenever you’re around. That’s the thing about B.O., sometimes your O leaves your B and gets right up our noses. No, when the sports journalists of Scotland get together in a confined room, the only stench we want around is that of stale whisky breath.’

So I had to find out the hard way and flirted with the Mail’s Celtic obsessed queen, Stephen McGowan who whined at me in that nasally ned way as I fumbled in his trousers getting him worked up with one hand while picking his pocket with the other, a trick I learned off Jack McConnell from his time as a pickpocket on the streets of Glasgow before the Labour Party got a hold of him, divested him of any inclination towards his old team Rangers and got him a seat at Parkhead from where he ruled Scotland for a number of years before eventually being binned as his useful idiocy ran out.
Armed with information stolen from McGowan I made my way to the location of the secret meeting, a ruined and abandoned Alexander Greek Thomson building which Glasgow City Council never think to preserve because ‘he wis a Protestant ‘n’ ‘at, know?’ The meeting wouldn’t start until it was dark according to McGowan’s note and I was reminded of Jorg Albertz Demon Hunter telling me there are no ghosts in the daylight, and of Stuart Cosgrove telling me he never went out as Bat-Cosgrove during the day; I thought of these oddballs from my past and it reminded me that Glasgow summers have only a few hours of proper darkness especially during hot spells like this one so when I sneaked into the Thomson ruins it was almost midnight and a full moon too by the looks of things as Jim Delahunt was being chained to the floor because he’d started to sprout hair on his face and grow claws.

It wasn’t easy getting in as Hugh Keevins and Tom English were manning the door so as I approached the candlelit entrance to the secret meeting I was thinking up excuses for being there uninvited I realised there was no need to worry as Keevins and English were having a hard enough time keeping out James Cook of BBC Scotland.
‘Look sonny, it’s because of you that we’re down here in the first place,’ snarled English.
‘Indeed,’ droned Keevins. If it hadn’t for your lot completely forgetting the rules and going after Ally McCoist then we wouldn’t be sneaking around in subterranean chambers at midnight in the first place so there’s no way you’re getting in – there’s no telling what misfortune you might bring with you. Spiers, what are you doing here?’
But before I could even make any excuses or plead to be let in I noticed English and Keevins looking at Cook in horror, I turned and gawped as a lump moved up Cook’s cheek – there was something under his skin! It stopped at his eye and as we all took a step back towards the door, little legs felt their way out of Cook’s eyelids and a cricket crawled out and fluttered off.
‘Jesus, what was that?’ exclaimed Cook, holding his head in his hands and gazing in incomprehension at us as more lumps moved around his face and then he began to choke, collapsing to the ground, retching as more crickets freed themselves from his eyes, flew out his ears and as he vomited, they came spewing out of his mouth too.

That was enough for us and my lack of an invitation didn’t matter anymore as we left Cook outside and fled behind the safety of the old oak door, Keevins slamming it shut and calling for help to hold it while he found a padlock and chain.
‘This is what comes of messing with the new Rangers under Whyte,’ shouted Keith Jackson at the top of the table as his fellow football hacks sat around and sweated. The underground meeting place was cool, a welcome relief from the heat of the sultry summer’s night outside but they were sweating nonetheless, from fear I reckoned as they’d just witnessed one of the more notorious members of the Pacific Quay CSC consumed by insects.
‘It seems we can no longer attack Rangers with impunity which leaves us in a difficult position,’ interrupted John Greechan. ‘On one hand we have Lawwell forcing us to bury Celtic bad news and encouraging us to lay into the Huns with threats of torture if we don’t comply with his every request and that was okay in the old days but times have changed and although we can’t be certain these crickets are the work of Rangers, it does seem odd that they affect anyone working against them.’
‘Well not quite,’ pondered Roddy Forsyth. ‘They’ve not affected Spiers yet and he’s the biggest pain in the arse for Rangers in this room.’
‘Not just for Rangers,’ muttered some wag at the back of the room and everyone laughed but the merriment was short lived as all the candles which were the only illumination in that room save for my beamer, dimmed as one and then went out leaving us in the dark, the only light peeking through the floorboards above us where the plaster had fallen from the ceiling. Everyone cried out and small comforting lights appeared through the room as people lit matches, lighters or pulled out their mobile phones.
‘Listen!’ shushed Keevins and everyone stopped babbling and listened as slow, heavy footsteps made their way across the floor above us. Dust fell from the ceiling as a dark figure passed, blocking out the peeping light and then it paused and what little light there was upstairs faded and then disappeared. Then there was a fluttering noise. First one and then two and then the whole room was full of crickets flying around until the sound of their wings was obliterated by the screams of sports journalists as they scrambled and clawed their way to the door to escape the horror inside.

The Pacific Quay Syndrome

2011-07-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

Not only did I wake up with a tiny penis on Sunday but I also seem to have gone slightly deaf, a condition common to every journalist in Scotland without fail. There we were, all sitting reporting on a Celtic game, the Celtic fans whooping it up and supporting their football team by singing songs about ethnic cleansing and sectarian Irish murder gangs and not one of us heard a thing. I leaned over to Chick Young who's always the first to run bleating to BBC Sportsound if Rangers fans even fart but he said he didn't hear anything. Roddy Forsyth? Was sitting there with his fingers in his ears going 'la la la la la!' So no wonder he didn't hear it. I doubt the match observer heard anything as he was wearing ear muffs and BBC Scotland edited out the singing and replaced it with stock crowd noise.

They're really taking editing to a new level, the Pacific Quay CSC, why on Friday they held a Rangers bashing party in the editing suite and stitched up Ally McCoist good and proper before going to the Brazen Head to watch their work on the televisions there then it was down to the Chip for trebles and a lines of coke all round. Chris McLaughlin wasn't invited of course and wouldn't have gone anyway, having decided to stay at the Quay and write some more about Celtic although how he could find anything else to write about his team on the BBC website I don't know but there he stayed.

The next day as I watched the BBC bhoys party continue into the Saturday - I asked them if they shouldn't all be at work to concentrate on the Rangers opening match of the season and was told that 'BBC Scotland don't do Rangers', I got a call on my mobile from McLaughlin. He was in tears and sounded petrified.
'I've just been roughed up by Chris Woods and Cammy Fraser,' he sobbed, a victim of Souness's Rangers 80s Squad Commandos by the sound of it.
'All I did was throw McCoist's reputation in the gutter while urinating and dancing an Irish jig on it, something we all used to do with impunity and now I've been forcibly removed from Ibrox with Rangers refusing to talk to the BBC - it's all my fault Spiers. Well, me and that fairy, Jimmy Cooke but he wasn't around to be manhandled by Graham Roberts in the press room, the coward!' He whined.
'Listen Chris, where are you and I'll meet you, I have to find out how you got yourself thrown out of Ibrox, I'd love to have that done to me,' and as I daydreamed about becoming a martyr for the Celtic cause and being lauded in republican pubs all over Glasgow I heard him splutter.
'Spiers! Spiers! I'm coughing up crickets!' cried McLaughlin and then the line went dead.

The Tiny Penis Rule

2011-07-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

Tiny shafts of early morning sun dapple the hand woven Iranian rug in my bedroom and light up the dust as it gently settles on my bed. I was stirring after a good night's sleep and couldn't wait to get to the Celtic game to celebrate my diversity with the other Celtic fans in the press box by humming along to those ancient hymns glorifying the Celtic family sung by their supporters in the away end. I paused though, as before I'd opened my eyes fully I could hear Sylvester Stallone talking to Harrison Ford at the end of my bed.

'I mean I've been taking 'roids for forty years and I don't have a penis that size, would you look at it!' mumbled Stallone.

'I'm a pensioner and even I can raise a morning glory five times bigger than that, it's like a vagina only different,' replied Ford.

Then another voice I wasn't quite expecting,

'Can you even call that a penis? I mean after Peter Lawwell's release party last week when he, Paul McBride, Peter Kearney and Tom Devine all got their wangers out to compare size, after seeing those chipolatas I never thought I'd see anything else quite so small but this beats them all - and it's supposed to be erect!'

It was little Jimmy Osmond! I reached for my medication but it wasn't by the bed so I closed my eyes and went back to sleep and when I woke up they were gone.

How to Report Scotland

2011-07-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure today of watching one of Pacific Quay CSC’s geniuses in action as Chris McLaughlin invited me in to watch him put together a report on sectarianism.
‘It’s just to show there’s no hard feelings about that job application, Spiers’ he said, smiling to me as I was let through security by men in gas masks although why they’d need to wear those I don’t know.
‘Yes, we made sure security knew you were coming and to buzz me immediately upon your arrival, come on upstairs’ he rambled.
‘Yes, your first mistake in looking for a job with BBC Scotland was previously claiming you were a Rangers fan. Oh, I know you were only trying to establish your credentials as the only Rangers fan brave enough to hate Rangers because of what they’ve become in the eyes of my people but it was a foolish move destined to deny you ever working for us here in the Quay. Or Glasgow City Chambers for that matter. And increasingly the PF’s office. Or the Herald. The Record. The Sun. Jeez, you know Spiers, I’d never before thought just how far we’ve come since Catholics were the ones not getting the jobs – we’ve come full circle and wouldn’t you just think that having great grandparents who’d experienced such bigotry, we’d be less inclined to be so prejudiced ourselves? Ha! That’ll be the day! Come on in to the editing suite and I’ll show you how we lay into the Huns at Reporting Scotland, this is how we roll.’

And I sat and observed as he instructed the technician to insert a pic of Ibrox here as the main picture during the introduction, then some fuzzy Youtube footage of half a dozen Rangers fans singing the Billy Boys from some random game years ago, some more Rangers fans to be shown every time we mention the word sectarianism and now, a shot of Celtic fans looking all solemn and earnest with a positive banner that shows they could never be guilty of such terrible behaviour. All in all, the piece screamed, Rangers Bad/Celtic Good. Job done.
I watched McLaughlin as he sat back with an air of self satisfaction around him and I wondered aloud why he was never to be seen carousing with the Reporting Scotland Bhoys at the Chip.
‘Not trendy enough for that lot, I don’t wear sandals and three quarter length trousers. Didn’t go to St. Al’s either,’ he confessed.
And because you’re an ugly runt of a cunt too, I’d wager, I thought to myself. No wonder, he spends all his days holed up in here, dreaming up new ways to demonise Rangers and their fans, this zealot makes me look like Simple Simon.
‘You should get out more, Chris,’ was all I said as I left the Quay feeling slightly uneasy and depressed. What was happening to me, was I disturbed that someone else was battering into Protestants to a bigger audience than I could ever dream of and all at their own expense too? That’s the beauty of it, most Scots are paying for hysterics like Chris McLaughlin to tell them over their dinners how bigoted and disgusting they are with nothing but their own prejudices as evidence. If only News International were funded by the public then perhaps I’d feel more at ease and be more secure knowing I can lay into the Orange bastards with impunity and a gold plated pension to boot.
I was thinking all this and more when I eventually arrived at the bottom of Byres Road and gazing up that west end wonder as the sun set behind it, I felt a shiver and decided to not bother with Ashton Lane tonight. I must have been coming down with a cold or something. As I walked home I barely noticed the dry husks of dead crickets in the gutters.

Section 18

2011-07-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve been looking for a new job recently. Not as many might wish, that I am in danger of being sacked from the Times – no, that’s not going to happen, not with shaky old Magnus Linklater still at the helm and I’ll get back to the reasons why the old bluffer puts up with my astonishing lack of original talent, football knowledge and self awareness, never mind the golf outings while missing exclusives, adventuring so much that the janitor and cleaners take it in turns to write my reports on occasions and of course, my personal hygiene. First though, I need to record my encounters during some casual job hunting as the way News International is going, you never know what might happen.
So I was interviewed for a job with the Guardian. Asked if I could handle a weekly gardening column I told them that the closest I’d got to horticulture was lurking in Kelvingrove Park of a night looking for rough trade but how about I use the column as a forum for my thoughts on how vile Rangers fans are? The panel looked at each other in bewilderment and asked if a television review piece would be best suited to my talents and I replied that I don’t own a television but I could report on Rangers fans’ singing during live matches from the television in Tennents bar on Byres Road. That got a collective sigh from the panel who in exasperation asked me if food was my thing and I said yes, I could review restaurants with a fourteen paragraph story dobbing Rangers to UEFA with only the final paragraph mentioning how the succulent lamb tasted at the Chip between lines of coke with the Pacific Quay CSC. That’s when they said the interview as over and that they weren’t even going to thank me for my time, calling for Matt Dickinson to explain himself with his recommendations.

Talking of Pacific Quay CSC otherwise known as BBC Scotland, I was given an application form for a job there but didn’t get very far. I got to section 2 after my name and address and it asked simply, ‘Are you a Roman Catholic? If yes go to section 3, if no go to section 17.
Section 17 asked, ‘Are you at least a Celtic supporter? If yes go to section 3, if no go to section 18.’
I went to section 18 where it told me, ‘Thank you for interest in BBC Scotland but unfortunately we have no vacancies at this time.’
So no luck on the jobs front this week but no matter, there was still time to pursue my current employment and saunter along to Parkhead where I chanced upon Lawwell, back in his glory wearing a pristine Wehrmacht uniform and brandishing a cosh at Pansy Paul for being so stupid as to allow his thoughts on songs sung and words used by the Celtic support to get into the public forum where it could be used by the mainstream media.
‘Do you know how long I’ve spent kicking the arses of every editor in Scotland to make sure your opinions didn’t make it into the papers? How many free VIP days at Parkhead I’ve had to promise to dolts who in the old days I’ve had across the rack instead? Damn this resurgent Rangers under Whyte, it’s not bad enough they have an owner willing to take the fight to us now but you have to go and score an own goal of spectacular proportions – what, were you promised a shot at someone’s arse for that little interview?’
I left him to his ranting and Pansy Paul to his cowering although from where I was standing he seemed to be enjoying the horsewhip when it appeared. So I sloped off and caught a bus back to the west end and considered old doddery Magnus Linklater and how he came to employ me in spite of all my faults.

The Journalist who came in from the Cold

2011-07-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

So here I was back in Glasgow having survived another season of madness and the fall out of yet another Rangers title win. The only reason there wasn´t a great round up of journalists and politicians by Lawwell after Celtic lost again was because he´d been rounded up himself and encarcerated with me, Pansy Paul McBride, Peter Kearney, the Traynor and yours truly in Walter Smith´s underground HQ, Silence. We´d spent a miserable month sniping at each other and wondering what was happening during the close season, Lawwell being particularly concerned at Neil Lennon being left alone with the transfer budget by himself, and pondering when we´d be let out, if ever.
We didn´t have long to wait and a few of us were transported in Richard Gough´s Nautilus to Glasgow where we taken blindfold to an underground car park where we were lined up in front of Graeme Souness and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos who were standing in the shadows holding sten-guns and pick-axe handles. Across the other side of the car park stood the Celtic mob, similarly armed and holding one chap with a hood over his head - it became obvious that we were to be traded like some Cold War spies. I was just beginning to twitch with the excitement of being out of Silence and back in Glasgow, my Glasgow where I have a cosy flat full of pictures of Matt McGlone naked and my Martin O’Neil scrapbook, an Elton John collection to rival no other and a safe little job waiting for me thanks to Magnus Linklater. People often wonder why old Magnus allows me to get away with writing about football while not knowing anything about it, rubbishing Rangers to the point of legal action and obsessing about sectarianism in such a one sided manner it’d make Peter Kearney blush, well I’ll get to that soon enough but first I have to tell you of the exchange.

The headlights of one of the cars at the Celtic end were flashed and met by the flash of the full beam from a Rangers end Land Rover then I felt a push in my back and I was forced forward to walk towards the Celtic end with Lawwell, Kearney and Pansy Paul walking by my side. What four prisoners of Celtic are being exchanged to allow our release I wondered and was disappointed to notice just one man walking towards us. I couldn’t see his face at first, the car park was too dark and he walked in shadows which curiously shrouded him even when he passed a neon light. Then I heard a gasp from Kearney and McBride QC and a growl from Lawwell as they understood who it was who was being traded. I looked up too late and missed his face but I could hear the admiring welcome from Souness and his Commandos behind me. Damn, as ever, my lack of observational skills had seen me undone. This could have been the story of my career that didn’t depend on lies and subterfuge and I missed it because I was too busy fluttering my eyes at one of the Celtic Stasi.

I was bundled into the very car where my mystery prisoner had once been sitting and as I was driven home to begin again another malicious campaign against Rangers, I looked at my feet and on the floor of the car lay a dead cricket.

Weird Tales from the Journals of Graham Spiers

2011-07-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

Four days ago
Popped into the Pacific Quay CSC to see what I´ve missed over the close season. Seems I missed a lot. Celtic fans rioted in Australia and many were arrested after spending more time on the park than their team. Of course there was no mention of any of this in the mainstream Scottish press never mind at the BBC. I mentioned this to Ian Small while we were having a threesome with Jackie Bird in a sound booth and he said of course nothing would be mentioned, it was Celtic fans, not Rangers fans for heaven´s sake! Later as we sat about worrying what would happen to the tape the sound engineer made of our spit roast session (Jackie wasn´t worried, apparently this had happened to her before and nothing had come of it), Small told me he was interviewing candidates for junior BBC Scotland posts that day; seven of the candidates were nominally Protestant, one a Jew and three were RCs, ´Guess which three are getting the jobs?´ he roared and collapsed laughing.

Five weeks ago
The Traynor continues to stalk the corridors and never ending rooms of Silence, sometimes he disappears all day but always returns to our room to sleep. He´s built a nest in the corner.

Two days ago
Visited my GP to discuss my cricket dreams.

Four weeks ago
Lawwell thrashed McBride QC today after Pansy Paul made a clumsy pass at him. The lack of sex must be getting to him for him to be so bold. Still, he seemed to enjoy the horse whipping as did Lawwell who´s missing his daily kicking around of the Scottish media.

One week ago
Chief Constable of Central Police, Kevin Smith put his head further above the parapet than ever before after releasing a press statement laying into Rangers fans for no apparent reason other than because he hates them. I recall a drunken conversation with him one night in the Brazen Head when he was still a Glasgow cop and he told me his superiors had stuck the knife into him when he was younger and had applied for Special Branch. Apparently his support of Celtic and Irish Republican causes had created concerns unlike these days when such a background would see you promoted well beyond your abilities.

Three weeks ago
I had the dream about crickets again last night, it´s beginning to concern me. This morning when I first woke up I gazed over at Peter Kearney and his head looked like a cricket´s head. He chirruped and hopped away, leaving me worried that the strange living conditions here in Silence are beginning to affect me. Wily old Walter Smith ensures the neon lighting down here is on 24 hours a day so we´re becoming a little confused about what is night and day. Maybe this is why the Traynor built a nest?

Two and a half weeks ago
The Traynor didn´t come back last night. He´d been searching Silence yet again, having spent the weeks looking for a way out or a light switch and that was the last we saw of him.

Two weeks ago
Pansy Paul McBride QC to give him his full name, made another clumsy pass, this time at Kearney. Next thing you know they were both rolling around inside the nest the Traynor had vacated. For all his prejudice against gays, it doesn´t seem to stop Kearney from wearing cut off denim shorts and baring his backside to Pansy Paul at the drop of a pink hat. Of course, locked away down here there isn´t a hope in hell of McBride´s parents finding out he´s a friend of Dorothy, his greatest fear.

Six weeks ago
Rangers have won the league again and I´m locked in Walter Smith´s deep sea headquarters with a bunch of lunatics. Everyone´s keeping out of Lawwell´s reach as he smuggled in his horse whip and is laying into anyone who mentions football. Except the Traynor of course as the Traynor, seemingly freed of any societal constraints, would have his hand off if he went near him with the whip.

One week three days ago
Lawwell insulted me this afternoon. He said, ´with all that water surrounding us, you´d think you´d find some of it to take a bath. You stink, Spiers!´ So I´ve been sulking for the past two hours and while doing this, I swear I saw a light in the darkness out one of the portholes.

Two days ago
Well the medication is beginning to work and I´m feeling quite embarrassed that I used to think Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone used to sit on the end of my bed of a morning, dispensing wisdom about how the Masons were responsible for all the world´s ills. I mean, come on, giving up Hollywood to sit in a west end tenement and whisper conspiracy theories about Rangers into the ears of a dashing young journalist? I find it quite funny now as do the Osmonds who joined me at Whitecraigs for eighteen holes, Jay and Little Jimmy found it hysterical and laughed so much they put Donnie off his stroke for his final put and he ended up chasing them down the Ayr Road with a seven iron.
As I relaxed in the bar later I chanced upon a few conversations which previously I´d have assumed were about me but on this medication, I don´t feel quite so paranoid anymore so when I overheard one fellow journalist to another say,
´You know he´s gay of course, don´t you?´
´But he´s married with children.'
'So was Oscar Wilde.'
Wow, to be mentioned in the same breath as Wilde, how kind.
Then another pair who didn´t see me lurking in the corner booth were overheard saying,
'A good journalist deals in news, he wouldn´t know news if it chased him down the street and bit him on the arse, all he deals in is conjecture, lies and ill informed opinion.'
'And he´s gay.'
'Not that there´s anything wrong with that.'
'Try telling that to the Diocese, Christ I wish they´d let us get on with being councillors and stop interfering so much with Labour policy, it´s becoming embarrassing especially when we shout about prejudice on their behalf only for them to pick on the poofters.'

Five days ago
I’m out. Silence is just an unpleasant memory now and I’m let loose once again to insult Rangers fans in the only medium I can which will ever be read since no one reads the Scottish Times anymore: Twitter! I casually mentioned the Ascent of Man which was a mistake because now all the staff at the Times are saying things like, ‘more like the scent of a man, a very unpleasant scent’. I walked into that one.

Yesterday
I woke up full of enthusiasm for the coming season and opened my curtains in a display of gay abandon when the sudden light illuminated dead crickets lying on the floor surrounding my bed. This doesn’t bode well for what lies ahead.

L'Enfer C'est Les Autres

2011-05-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

It's over, thank god. The most bitter and hate filled season in Scottish football has come to an end and did I contribute towards it? Did I half. It was a strange ending in many ways and as ever, finished up with bloodshed and recriminations all round. I was lying in a pool of my own blood if you remember after being shot by my own wife, brainwashed by Tom Devine obviously - Catholics and brain washing, what are they like? Anyway, as I lay there in quite some agony, nobody had noticed Graeme Souness and the Rangers 80s Squad Commandos abseiling in through the hole in the roof of Lawwell's secret headquarters made there earlier by Martin Bain when he revealed himself to have super powers before crashing out of the place to prevent Lawwell's missile hitting Ibrox. He's gone now, poor Martin; shame really as I really quite fancied him. No one noticed the commandos until Graham Roberts appeared behind Devine, put an arm around his neck and whoosh, they were gone, reeled back towards the hole and out of there. The same happened to everyone and Souness left a parting gift - half a dozen phosphorous grenades which lit up the place and left me lying there wondering why no one had bothered to rescue me.

As the flames spread I worried that they'd reach me and my end wouldn't be a pleasant one but the smoke got to me first and I passed out and as I did, I remember my thoughts turning, not to my loved ones or how society would miss such a splendid journalist such as myself but to the janitor at the Times of Scotland who'd probably now get my job full time since he'd been writing my reports and columns for months now. Not that anyone had noticed as no one reads the bloody thing anymore anyway.

Remarkably I came to and the pain had gone. I'd been awoken by the tock tock tock of footsteps on a hard floor in a place where there was no other noise and as the footsteps got closer I could see the hefty figure of the Traynor approaching, but I thought he was dead, shot by Stuart Cosgrove on a roof in St. Vincent Street? Then again, by rights I should be dead so I kept quiet and watched how things were to proceed.

'You're awake then,' he stated rather than asked. 'About time too, typical of you to sleep in and miss everything - sums up your career really, eh?'

'What have I missed then and how come you're still alive? I saw you dead last night,' I squeaked but the Traynor shook his head and gave me a look of pity which was a new one for him.

'That wasn't last night, you've been out for almost two weeks now. Kind of. In reality you've been out for much longer while a replicant of you blundered around Scotland causing bother. There was one of me too, that's who you saw shot. No Spiers, we've been held in stasis in Walter Smith's Silence since that last old firm game when you tried to jump the old fellow. Didn't I tell you there was something not quite right? Haven't there been enough hints that we weren't who we thought we were?'

'Replicants, eh? More importantly, who won the league?' I asked.

'Rangers.'

'DAMMIT! What are we going to do now? You know what the punishment for Rangers winning the league is - Lawwell will have our hides!'

'Oh I wouldn't worry about Lawwell if I were you. Well, not quite - he's in here with us. And Kearney. And McBride. Reid escaped somehow during the great round up but here we are: you, me, Lawwell, Kearney and Paul McBride, all locked up at the bottom of the ocean while up there Rangers go from a position of great weakness to great strength and still win the double while Celtic celebrate coming second in some outbreak of mass lunacy. We hear they won the Scottish Cup and hoisted Neil Lennon on their shoulders as if he knew anything about it, the chap's been drunk, unconscious, possessed, missing a head or just too plain sociopathic to notice anything that's happened this season. Yet you still think he's a nice guy.'

'He is...' I tried to object but the Traynor cut me off.

'This is the end, Spiers; the most spiteful and nasty season in my memory is over and we're down here to answer for our roles in perpetuating it. Every day new guilty parties arrive, delivered by Richard Gough in the Nautilus but we never see where they go - half the sports department of BBC Scotland arrived this morning but in spite of searching every inch of this complex that I can find, I've yet to see them. I'm afraid we're stuck with Lawwell and his pals. Hell is indeed other people and sometimes I think that is precisely where we are - who knows what Rangers are capable of with Jorg Albertz on their side?'

'So that's it? After everything we've been through this season, Celtic win nothing and we fetch up locked away down here?'

'They won the Scottish Cup I told you.'

'Oh that doesn't count. This is so unfair - what have I done to deserve this?' I almost cried and then I thought about my role in cliping Rangers to UEFA and my constant championing of Celtic while vilifying Rangers which when you think about it is only what I've always done but things had changed now, the coward Murray was gone and a new leader has taken over the Rangers, things next season were going to be an awfully lot different and with Lawwell and his goons imprisoned in Silence who is going to carry out Celtic's next campaign of intimidation, mud-slinging and violence against anyone in Scotland who doesn't support Celtic? Well I suppose John Reid escaped so that'll be who. I just wish I could be around to witness it again and be his cheerleader, I did think I suited those short skirts and pom poms.

Oh well, Reid believed in the green half of Glasgow, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us this season, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning -

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The End.

The Final Betrayal

2011-05-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

‘What the fuck happened?’ asked Lawwell, gazing dejectedly at the bank of fuzzy screens while the other bank showed the sun breaking through the clouds at Ibrox Stadium, the grand structure still standing.

‘Seems like we didn’t need Mr Whyte to give away his secret today as Martin had it all under control. You didn’t know he could fly, eh Kearney? I’m sure if you did you would’ve flown out there after him to stop him preventing your outrage. That’s why Master Mason works in secret, you lot are just too vindictive.
‘No, we didn’t need Master Mason, Bain got there in time to erect an Einstein Rosen Bridge – wormhole to you, Lawwell, and that transported your missile to another dimension. An alternative reality if you like, one just like ours but instead of landing in that dimension’s Ibrox, it landed in Celtic Park instead. I guess somewhere out there in the ether, in this strange and wonderful universe of ours there are people wondering how a Celtic-made missile has obliterated their own ground. I guess the alternative Peter Lawwell will be wondering why he’s being put in jail for mass murder when he knows nothing about it. It’s enough to give you a sore head if you think about it too much, eh old sport?’ and he smiled and re-packed his pipe with tobacco.
‘But what about Bain?’ I asked, thinking that he looked quite sexy in the red and blue superman outfit.
‘Bain knew the cost of his loyalty,’ said Findlay. ‘To open the Einstein Rosen Bridge he knew he had to go with it. We don’t know if his super powers will allow him to survive the blast but he’s in that reality and I like to think he’s happy in the knowledge that he saved Rangers. What he thinks of his new reality’s Celtic reduced to ashes we can only wonder.’

‘We’ll get you yet, Findlay,’ growled Lawwell. ‘We might not have taken you out completely today but the world’s news stations are all over us today, disgusted that Celtic are victims in an ongoing campaign of sectarian intimidation. I’ll soon be releasing a statement calling you Scotland’s Shame yet again, my poodles in the press will push the agenda and we’ll squeeze you till your pips squeak, mark my words, we’ll still get you. And Spiers?’ He looked at me and my bowels collapsed.
‘Spiers, we have something for you.’
Electric doors slid open and out of the light walked my wife. I put on a good show of looking delighted to see her but then she lifted a hand and in it was a pistol, she pointed it at me and pulled the trigger.

I didn’t hear the bang but I came to on the floor with a terrible pain in my belly – the bitch had shot me! She’d obviously been brain washed by Devine and now she’d shot me! Donald Findlay didn’t seem to show me any sympathy.
‘Donald! What are we going to do now?’ I pleaded.
Findlay took another puff and said, ‘Now we wait.’
‘Wait for what ?’ I cried in agony.
‘We wait for Sunday, see who wins the league of course,’ he said and winked at me and just as I was passing out from the pain, my head began to swirl and I couldn't make out reality from my dreams and in the distance I could hear a horse galloping and through the mist of consciousness I swear I could see a white unicorn.

Einstein Rosen-Bridge

2011-05-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

Lawwell had barely told us that he’d launched a missile on Ibrox five minutes before when there was a flash of light and a great crunching noise from above. It had been so sudden that we’d all flinched and by the time we’d recovered to look around to see what had caused it, Bain was gone leaving behind his clothes which lay in a smoking pile on the floor and a gaping hole in the ceiling where something with great strength had burrowed out of this place.
‘Where the fuck has he gone?’ wondered Devine, aloud.
Findlay puffed on his pipe and giggled, ‘You don’t know what Martin’s capable of, switch to your flight monitors and watch to see what Rangers have in their armoury.’
Lawwell nodded and half the screens on the great bank of monitors switched to the view ahead of the missile as it careered through the sky towards Glasgow, the other half showed Ibrox sitting peacefully in the rain, outside the main stand entrance played two small boys while a mother pushing a pram smiled indulgently.
‘He’s not going to make it, whispered Cosgrove to Findlay.
‘Make what?’ screamed Lawwell.
‘Just keep watching old sport,’ said Findlay, puffing away.
‘There’s Stirling, not long now boys!’ shouted Kearney, an erection rising in his trousers.
‘Where is he?’ asked Cosgrove.
‘This thing can really travel, eh Peter? Look, there’s Glasgow. Say goodbye to your precious football club you disgusting bigoted Orange bastards,’ slurred Devine without a trace of irony.
The screen showed the city of Glasgow in the distance but coming up fast. I looked to the Ibrox screens and there entering the main doors was Craig Whyte, he paused as if he knew we were watching him, looked to the sky and seemed to listen then the screen took some interference, there was a flash where Whyte once stood and he was gone.
‘What the fuck happened to Whyte?’ asked Lawwell.
Findlay turned to me and winked.
‘Just in case,’ was all he said before going back to puffing furiously at his pipe.
‘Lawwell! What’s that in front of the missile?’ exclaimed Kearney, pointing to the monitors and we all watched in amazement as what looked like the superhero, Master Mason flew towards the missile, raising a fist to punch it. But Master Mason had neglected to put on his mask in his hurry to get up there and the face full of determination to protect Rangers from this final outrage from Celtic was that of Craig Whyte.

Whyte didn’t get the chance to punch the missile though because just as the camera screamed in on him, there was a blur of blue and red and Martin Bain, his red cape billowing behind him appeared in front of Whyte, raised his hands and produced a flash of light and then the screens went blank.

Apocalypse Pending

2011-05-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

‘The tide is turning gentlemen, the national press are onto us – I can control those pathetic insects in the Scottish media but when it gets as big as this and hits London then it’s outwith my purview. Damned Green Brigade, we turned a blind eye to them singing sectarian songs, even excused them by claiming their filth was political and it was to be in exchange for them launching a campaign of intimidation against their own club that would be blamed on Rangers thus turning the whole of Britain against them. The problem is though, they’ve gone too far; didn’t know when to stop. Last night they attacked the police, treated the whole country to their IRA songs and then sent some more packages to Neil Lennon again this morning. That’s the thing about opening a can of worms, if you spill it then you’re going to need a whole bigger can to get them all back in.
‘Gentlemen, I want you to see my big can.’
Lawwell chuckled and two panels in the wall behind us separated to reveal the biggest screen in the room and it showed a missile being fuelled.
‘Lawwell you maniac,’ exclaimed Findlay. ‘Where do you think that’s going?’
‘Oh Donald, I think you know where we’re putting it, just be glad you came sneaking around here instead of sitting in the Blue Room drinking tea with your friends. It wasn’t our first choice of course, we had Dominik Diamond ready to drive a truck laden with explosives through the gates of Ibrox but he shat it at the last minute and told us he’d take care of Rangers in his own personal way and promptly ran off to hide in shame for a few more years. So we had to change plan and this is it…’
‘The Inquisition 5!’ shouted Peter Kearney, appearing from a door behind us.
‘Aimed straight at your field of dreams and about to put paid to this season. Let’s see you win the league now!’ cried Tom Devine, twirling round in a swivel chair, previously unnoticed to our left. He spilled a half pint of port over himself but it was still an impressive move.
‘You’d do anything to stop Rangers win this year, wouldn’t you Lawwell?’ muttered Findlay, taking a pipe from his pocket and stuffing it with tobacco.
‘What if we just gave it to you, eh? What if we just lose to Kilmarnock on Sunday then you don’t need to launch that thing and devastate Ibrox?’
‘Oh Donald,’ tutted Lawwell. ‘ The Inquisition 5 is big enough to devastate your ground but believe me, it is small enough to leave the surrounding area standing – we just want rid of you, not to create any lasting damage to Scottish society as a whole’
‘Well you could’ve fooled us,’ interrupted Cosgrove. ‘All season you’ve been so intent on winning a damned sporting event that you’ve caused immeasurable damage to this country – we’re a laughing stock all over the world thanks to you and your behaviour…’
‘Silence!’ screamed Lawwell, producing his riding crop and whipping it across Cosgrove’s face.
‘But Peter,’ offered Findlay, taking a pull at his pipe. ‘Surely this has gone too far, even by Celtic’s standards? You’re just about to launch a missile at a heavily populated area and don’t expect innocents to suffer? Come on man, it’s time to give it up, time to just start getting on with life in harmony with each other – Rangers have no truck with you and your people, we just want to play football.
‘Honestly Findlay, ‘just about to launch a missile’? I’m not some comic book serial villain, did you honestly expect me to tell you my plans if there was any way you possibly affect the outcome? No, I launched the missile five minutes ago.’

Schiehallion

2011-05-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

I stood atop the barren and snow cursed mountain and wondered how I was going to get back to the west end from here. I’d already considered the desolation and decided that Donald Findlay’s claims of Peter Lawwell having a secret mountain top hideout were just a load of paranoid bunkum, nothing survived up here without layers of fur and goretex which we were all wearing save for Stuart Cosgrove who persisted in dressing up as a bat. Our little mountaineering party consisted of Cosgrove, Findlay, Martin Bain and yours truly, the greatest pioneering journalist in Scotland according to Celtic Quick News and who am I to doubt their wisdom?
Things had been going fine for me since the exorcism of Neil Lennon: I’d somehow slipped away from that one with plaudits from Richard Gough and Jorg Alberz Demon Hunter but had to watch myself save the psychotic Lawwell considered my involvement there as collaboration; my pieces were still appearing in the Times thanks to the janitor and cleaning staff at Queen Street who were writing them – who was going to notice since no one reads the damn thing these days anyway? And I’d got wind that my wife was back in Glasgow which was interesting not because I wanted her back, no I was content to wank over my Martin O’Neil scrapbook but I did have a debt of honour to revenge myself against the drunken old goat, Tom Devine and I should’ve known he was back in town considering he’d been wheeled out by BBC Scotland for the election to sit and burp port sodden platitudes about sectarianism much to the amusement to fellow panellists who wondered why he was talking about a completely different topic from the rest of them during an election. So when Donald Findlay told me to meet him on a rooftop on St. Vincent Street I thought he was going to give me the opportunity to boot Devine a few times in the balls and didn’t think for one moment that Tam Cowan would launch me over the edge. Thanks to Cosgrove though I survived and after the cool headed murder of that beast, the Traynor, we got together with Findlay and Bain and set off in a small convoy to a mountain just north of Aberfeldy. The last time I was up this way was a wedding when Keith Jackson mistook me for a bridesmaid or so he says, and rogered me a good ‘un in the honeymoon suite but that’s another story.

This story though is concerned with Peter Lawwell and how he’d retired with John Reid to a supposed secret base atop Schiehallion to launch the Final Solution, whatever that was but knowing Lawwell’s Nazi tendencies, it wasn’t going to be an apology for employing Neil Lennon and the gift of an olive branch to all of Scottish society who wasn’t Celtic Minded. I was just considering this while watching Cosgrove struggle to take a leak by a rocky outcrop when something moved in the distance and I was just about to bring it to Findlay’s attention when I realised that my companions were standing with their hands in the air looking at me in consternation. I’d been the only one not to notice Lawwell’s arctic stormtroopers rise from their positions in the snow and level their rifles at us.

A lift that appeared out of nowhere was the first thing that amazed us and it took us deep underground into a space age headquarters similar in style to Jack McConnell’s moorland media centre – I suppose, no one saw McConnell build that monstrosity so who was going to notice Lawwell put this thing together?
We were escorted down a tunnel and into the Eye, an enormous room where a dozen men sat around monitors watching CCTV images from all over Scotland – so this was how Lawwell knew everything that was going on. Worryingly though, several of the screens showed images from inside Ibrox Stadium.
‘Did you know?’ I asked Bain.
‘Think we’d have allowed Celtic to get away with this if we did?’ retorted Bain.
‘Why yes, I think I do.’ I replied only to be interrupted by everyone standing to attention as in walked a man resplendent in brown shirt with death’s head insignia cufflinks and jackboots.
‘Welcome to Schiehallion gentlemen,’ said Peter Lawwell.

The Final Problem

2011-05-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

I remember ludicrously, thinking that the moon looked beautiful as I slid down the rain wet rooftop and hurtling over the edge of the Victorian grandeur of some St. Vincent Street building. I was too tired to struggle anymore and had accepted my fate, the ground rushing up to greet me when I felt a hand grab my ankle and my plunge slowed to a halt feet from some mean looking iron railings and then I was heading away from the spikes and back up towards the roof. Stuart Cosgrove dressed head to toe in black leather and latex like some sort of bat-man steadied me and held a finger up to his mouth for me to be quiet and then pushed my head down with me briefly thinking he was looking for a blow job and I was just looking for the zip on that remarkable outfit when I realised he was hiding us from the Traynor who grunted on his way past as we hid in the shadows.

On a season such as this one where the real life events have been as crazy as any that might be alluded to in an imaginary diary should one exist, I should’ve understood that when Donald Findlay sent me a telegram saying that Tom Devine was back in town with my wife that I was being led into a trap. Shorn of the coward Murray, Rangers were on the offensive again and all over the city, enemies of the club were being reined in. As ever, I thought I was untouchable but hanging around a rooftop at midnight on a wet moonlit night only to be pushed off by an unseen hand can really steady the thought process.
‘I can see what you’re thinking Spiers,’ whispered Cosgrove. ‘It wasn’t Findlay or any of his agents – no, Lawwell got wind of this and sent King Bastard here to dispose of you as too many people are at last linking you to secret moves to bring down Rangers once and for all. Traynor’s just passed, the Piddler’s over on another rooftop cleaning the shit out of his trousers and the Joker, Tam Cowan is the one who pushed you off the roof. Lucky I was here to catch you, eh?’
‘So you’re here to take me to see Findlay? He has news of my wife apparently.’
‘Forget your wife, she belongs to Devine now. No, our task is the most important ever undertaken in the name of a sport – Lawwell senses the end game is near and is threatening to destroy Rangers once and for all. We don’t know exactly what he plans but he has three days to do it or they win the league and Lawwell could find himself out of a job.’
‘But where do I come in?’ I asked, a little too loudly because the Traynor stopped in his tracks, sniffed the air and turned towards us and growled.
‘Oh well,’ sighed Cosgrove. ‘I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this,’ and as the Traynor bounded towards us, Cosgrove pulled a gun from his utility belt and shot him in the chest.
The Traynor gasped and fell to his knees.
‘I can’t believe you just did that, what happened to Rangers sitting back and taking it? What happened to Celtic doing what they liked and Rangers maintaining a dignified silence? What, what, what…’

Lightning lit up the rooftops illuminating the Traynor as he sat in the pouring rain, water dripping from his nose as he looked at his fatal wound.
‘Spiers, come here,’ he gasped. I walked over to him and kneeled down, feeling sorry for the beast. He looked at me and beckoned me closer.
‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,’ he began. ‘Lawwell’s attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve seen c-beams glitter off the Gallowgate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.’
And he closed his eyes and as he did, something fell from his hand. I picked it up, it was a paper unicorn with my name written on it. Strange, Walter Smith gave me something similar in Silence when he held me and the Traynor there. I opened up the paper unicorn to find that it had written on it co-ordinates and one other word apart from my name: Schiehallion.

There are no Ghosts in the Morning

2011-05-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

It took just over a day; Albertz ran out of cigarettes two hours before it finished and became a bit grumpy towards the end, Lawwell and Gough sat impassively watching proceedings and I squirmed in my corduroys having soiled them three times - twice in fright and once just because I couldn't hold it in any longer. Eventually though the great Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter had exorcised seventeen demons from Neil Lennon leaving Scottish football and society as a whole a much safer place.

'But why Albertz, why did you help them?' I asked later as Lawwell called for his Stasi who bundled Lennon's exhausted figure into a black van.
'Because Rangers take their social responsibility seriously, Spiers. I thought even you might have noticed by now that there's only one team goes on the offensive in Glasgow and it ain't us. We remain silent in the face of constant Celtic onslaughts because we know that to respond or to act in kind would be not only dragging ourselves down to their level but to allow the lunatics in our support the same carte blanche to act terribly in the same way Celtic's pandering to their own maniacs allows them to justify their own awful behaviour. Consider Paul McBride and his snide attacks and think about a similar QC on the Rangers side who has remained dignified and silent in spite of being hung out to dry for less than Celtic players and ex-managers get away with on a regular basis, indeed Findlay works studiously behind the scenes to keep a lid on this whole thing of ours while McBride spends half his life in the Polo Lounge and the other half attacking Protestants. What about Lawwell? While Martin Bain is constantly not just keeping his powder dry but throwing buckets of water over it, Lawwell practically dances around the gunpowder room smoking cigars and playing with sparklers. The batman? The media and police consider him a criminal when it's really Stuart Cosgrove keeping in place Celtic Minded grotesques such as the Piddler Hugh MacDonald, Chic Young and the Traynor. Kearney? His life's mission it to instigate a new Holy Inquisition in Scotland while our own Master Mason works diligently for charity. And don't get me started on Tom Devine who is wheeled out by BBC Scotland to drunkenly accuse the whole of Scotland of being vicious anti-Catholic bigots while Professor Steve Bruce who is a positive voice of reason is ignored, no vilified for daring to go against the party line and suggest that it's the sectarianism industry that's sprung up in this country and run by people with vested interests and secret agendas that is truly Scotland's Shame. So that's why I exorcised Neil Lennon, Spiers; because we work for the good of all people while Celtic have only their own narrow minded cause to pursue.'
'There must be some other reason though, surely?' I asked, certain that I was missing something.
'Of course,' butted in Gough. 'We need to keep Lennon safe and in a job because with him as manager that lot will never win the league.'

So I left that flat of horror in Hyndland with Gough's words ringing in my ears, vowing to somehow use them against Rangers the next time I was on Twitter - my only way of communicating my messages these days considering no one buys the Times anymore or reads on-line thanks to the paywall. I headed home, pausing only to pour a bucket of water over my stalker Brian McNally who sleeps rough on my doorstep and settled down in bed with my Martin O'Neil scrapbook to knock one off when suddenly I had a thought, an original thought for a change and not one given to me by some swivel-eyed Celtic supporter at the Brazen Head and it got me wondering that Peter Lawwell had something else up his sleeve, that he allowed Albertz and Gough free rein to interfere in Celtic affairs which wasn't like him. Looking back on things now, I wish that original thought had just stayed away because foolishly I pursued it and here I am caught up in the greatest outrage ever perpetrated by Celtic against Scottish football. But yet again I'm getting ahead of myself.

We are Legion

2011-05-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

Lennon sat in the middle of the pentacle and hissed, his tongue darting out like a snake from between his rows of razor sharp teeth, and all the while he looked at us like a lion might regard an antelope and I'll tell you, I didn't feel safe at all even although Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter's magic pentacles drawn on the floor were supposed to contain Lennon and the demons within that were possessing him.

'I suppose I'd better get on with it then,' said Albertz, suddenly sounding quite chirpy.
So while I sat on the floor beside Lawwell and Gough, Albertz stood and faced Lennon and lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew smoke in Lennon's face.
'Why don't you fuck off back to where you came from? You don't belong here,' spat Albertz, talking to the demons but causing Lawwell to shift uneasily, storing this in his memory, considering if he could get Gerry Duffy to run with it in the Sun the day before a big Rangers match as an example of anti-Irish racism.
'I name you, demons!' shouted Albertz, warming to his task. 'I name you Wormwood and Screwtape, now fuck off back to hell and leave us alone.'
Lennon collapsed writhing to the floor as black tar oozed from his mouth, nose and ears, his eyes bulged and his back arched as if in agony. All he had to do next was to kick over some bottles and anyone would've thought it was match day and Celtic were losing.
'Wormwood and Screwtape! I name you, begone!' shouted Albertz, taking another pull at his cigarette and turning to us and winking. Then Lennon roared and red bile fountained from his mouth, hitting the ceiling and dropping back onto him as he rolled around inside the magic circle, then he was still.
'That's the thing about black magic,' said Albertz, smiling. 'Any cunt can do it.'
'Are we finished? Is he exorcised?' asked Gough.
'Yup. You can have Neil Lennon the man back now Lawwell, although I'm sure many won't notice the difference,' sneered Albertz but behind him Lennon was rising to his knees and was grinning at us, his eyes burning bright red, steam rising from his clothes. Then he bellowed like a deer and cackled, 'Oh Demon Hunter, did you really think there was only Wormwood and Screwtape in here? You didn't consider this mound of meat has been carrying other demons all this time? You didn't for one moment observe his behaviour over the years and consider there were already many of us in here? Oh dear, you're losing your touch Albertz and what makes me giggle is that you don't know any of our names so you won't rid this trash of us as you did so easily with those other two amateur denizens of the slums of hell.'

Now this really scared me but at the same time it explained a lot about Lennon and his behaviour but just as I was wondering if we'd survive this latest development Albertz just sighed and said, 'This'll take a while, lucky I brought a few packets of fags, eh?'

Riding with Moloch

2011-05-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

As Richard Gough and Peter Lawwell outdid each other in the keeping cool under pressure stakes, I sat in the back sweating and keeping an eye on Jorg Albertz because I figured that I'd be fine as long as the Demon Hunter showed no sign of panic but when Neil Lennon stirred and his skull seemed to take on a life of its own, moving around under his skin as if something awful was trying to get out, and a drop of sweat ran down the back of Albertz's neck, well that's when I really began to worry.

Tar dribbled from Lennon's mouth and his sharpened teeth ground together and as we left the city centre and at last approached the west end, Albertz nudged me and motioned towards Lennon's hands which to my horror had seemed to grow talons: rough, grey things which sprouted from his fingers like twigs from a branch, with no discernable pattern but looking sharp enough to rip someone's face off. Then his head rolled to the side to face me and I shrieked as one eye opened, looked at me and then closed.
'What happened?' shouted Gough from the driver's seat.
'He looked at me, he opened his eye and looked at me!' I babbled as Albertz turned the head around and studied it as what looked like a knuckle stretched out of Lennon's forehead until the skin could strain no more and then it retreated back into the head leaving a red welt the only evidence it had happened.
'It's not good Captain,' said Albertz to Gough. 'You've got to speed it up or we're never going to get him to the safety of the magic circles in my flat. The demons will be awake in minutes.'
So Gough put the foot down and we raced past Byres Road and up Highburgh Road just as Lennon let out a growl and opened his eyes again for a few seconds before his head drooped once more as I strained to stop myself from soiling my pants.
'Cards on the table here chief,' shouted Albertz. 'Fuck the speed limit and fuck traffic lights, if we don't get out of this car now then we're all dead!'
And as he said it, Lennon opened his mouth in an obscene yawn - his razor sharp teeth bared and black with tar, his breath a yellow mist which caused us all to gag as Gough brought the car to a sudden halt.
'What the fuck?' cried a startled Albertz.
'Mummy!' screamed some coward sitting beside him which I realised was me.
'It's the police,' said Lawwell, looking in the mirror. 'They're behind us and the lights are at red.'
'Fuck the lights, fuck the police, if we don't move we're fucked!' roared Albertz as Lennon opened one burning eye that swivelled around before closing again.
'Sorry Jorg,' said Gough, keeping an eye in the rear view mirror and staying calm. 'If we cut a red then the cops will be onto us and how are we going to explain two ex-Rangers players, the Chief Executive of Celtic dressed as a Nazi and a discredited journalist in a car with an unconscious Neil Lennon? No, we wait. We have time, he's only stirring, not waking up.'
The car was silent save for the grinding of Lennon's teeth and the horrible noise coming from his arms and legs which sounded like bones twisting and breaking, muscle stretching and groaning. The car ticked over and the lights stayed at red. I looked at Albertz and he was really sweating now, his shirt soaked at the neck. I felt my corduroys dampen and hoped it too was sweat otherwise I'd be no better than Hugh MacDonald. Lennon's head turned again and eyes still shut, he lifted one hand and got it caught in the back of Lawwell's seat, one of the talons snagging in the material. I looked up at the lights and they were still at red, I turned and looked out the back and the police were sitting there behind us in their car, not interested in us. Not yet.

Lennon's hand raked the seat in front of him and came down on his own leg, piercing it and sending a jet of his blood squirting onto his face; his tongue flicked out, not a human tongue now but a black pointed tongue that licked up the blood from his chin and cheeks before disappearing back into that hideous maw.
'If you don't get moving Gough then I'm out, I'm sorry,' said Albertz.
I weighed this up - if Albertz was prepared to abandon the car then I sure as hell wasn't going to linger and I was just reaching for the door handle on my side when Lennon coughed and black vomit flew past Lawwell's shoulder and splattered the windscreen. Lawwell screamed at last, almost hysterically trying to get the bile off his pristine Wehrmacht jacket, Lennon's eyes opened and stayed open, I held onto the door handle and was just about to open the car door and throw myself out when the lights changed to amber and we took off, turning onto Clarence Drive with Albertz's flat on the corner of Lauderdale Gardens just ahead of us. We pulled in to the pavement and let the police car pass and then we were all out of the car, Gough and Albertz hauling Lennon behind them, his eyes still open but body thankfully unable to move. We bounded up the stairs, Albertz had the door open in a twinkling and we ran through the hall and into an empty room which had two magic circles painted onto the floorboards. Gough threw Lennon into one and Albertz got to work closing the circle with chalk at the one break in the pentacle and then we got into the other circle and he closed that one too just as Lennon woke up, stood unsteadily on his feet, looked at us, roared and pounced before being knocked on his arse by some unseen force.

'Fucking hell, that was close,' laughed Albertz then he sniffed and said, 'Is Hugh MacDonald in here, I'm sure I can smell shit?'

His Dark Materials

2011-05-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

As Gough drove us slowly through the gridlocked Glasgow streets, Albertz told us what was going to happen once we arrived at his flat in the west end. It involved lots of black magic and humping Neil Lennon up some stairs and I must admit that my heart jumped on hearing that we'd be humping Neil Lennon but it turned out I'd just misheard the Demon Hunter. It's difficult to concentrate on what other people are saying when you're used to hearing only the sound of your own voice; this is why Radio Clyde is my spiritual home - I get to talk over callers to the show so that everyone can marvel at my superior wit and opinions and if any Rangers fans manage by subterfuge to get through to the panel then we simply cut them off and steer the topic of conversation back onto the main agenda which is laying the boot into Rangers.

It was while thinking all of this that I managed to miss most of Albertz's important instructions and only zoned back in when he mentioned that Lennon seemed to be stirring and that Gough had better get a move on.
'Can't do a damn thing about it Jorg, the traffic's awful,' said Gough from the driver's seat.
'You'd better be careful back there,' said Lawwell. 'You think Lennon's teeth are disgusting when you see him on television? They're fake, open his mouth and pull out his teeth and see what's underneath.'
I looked at Albertz who looked back at me and nodded for me to do it but I shook my head in horror so Albertz sighed and reached over and opened Lennon's mouth. Black drool oozed out and dribbled off his chin, Albertz nearly gagged and reached in and pulled out a set of fake, mossy teeth - if these were the good ones then I wasn't looking forward to what was underneath them.
'Well at least this set are clean,' said Albertz as he pulled back Lennon's lips to reveal two rows of razor sharp teeth.
'He filed them down himself, after he was possessed you understand,' explained Lawwell. 'It suited us at the time to employ a rabid maniac with a tendency towards violence - it appealed to our fans when we couldn't afford another big name manager after last year's Mowbray debacle but even our fans aren't that stupid and many of them saw right through our little ploy so we took to the schemes with the Celtic Irish Republican Road Show and reached out to the scum of the east end gutters. A promise here to get in the faces of referees and a commitment there to start a war with the perceived establishment of the SFA and we soon had them eating out of our hands. The only problem was, no one thought to tell Lennon. He took it all seriously and began dragging the good name of Celtic into the sewer. Of course he met John Reid there and under his tutelage the whole of Scottish football was disgraced in front of the world. We've gone too far though, Lennon's a danger not only to himself but to others now and when he starts to put my neck on the line then it's time for something to be done - this, gentlemen is why I'm going with you voluntarily, please don't think you have me a prisoner, no one has power over Peter Lawwell. No one.'
'Aye alright Peter,' sneered Albertz as he held onto Lennon's chin, pulling back an eyelid and checking how long we had to get to Hyndland.
'I hate to say this Captain, but if we don't get this thing to my flat in the next ten minutes then the demon inside him will awake and there'll be a blood bath in this car.'
And almost on cue, Lennon stirred and we heard a sound from his mouth like rusty needles scraping together as more black tar bubbled from his nostrils.

Kidnapped

2011-05-05T02:21:00.000-07:00

It wasn't until we got to the end of the secret tunnel linking Celtic Park to the City Chambers that Jorg Albertz turned to me, pulled deeply on his cigarette, blew smoke in my face and reminded me of the last time we'd run for our lives through the dank and horrible place.

'Whatever happened to Master Mason? Remember he rescued us just as Peter Kearney was about to render us unto the Holy Inquisition?'
'Don't know Jorg, haven't seen him since that business in Kelvingrove Park - makes you wonder, eh?'
Richard Gough butted in, 'Keep it quiet you two, we're passing the Council Chamber now, too much noise and we'll have the Glasgow Labour Celtic Militia down on our heads and the last thing we need right now is a fight with men in cheap suits and emerald green ties.'
I looked over at Peter Lawwell who was with us if you remember, having been taken along with Neil Lennon after Albertz disabled the demon within Lennon to allow us to take him away for an exorcism, and Lawwell just smiled that lazy eyed psycho smile of his which usually indicated that someone was going to be given a thrashing with his horse whip but he wasn't in the company of the cowardly Scottish media now, or politicians wanting to keep their VIP days at Parkhead - no, he was with Richard Gough, ex-Captain of HMS the Walter Smith, now mysterious captain of the freebooting Nautilus; and Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter. Oh, and of course me, Graham Spiers, scourge of Rangers and defiant crusader against sectarianism (just as long as it's not Celtic fans).

We emerged onto George Square, the four of us pusing an unconscious Neil Lennon in a wheelbarrow, and Gough hailed a taxi. The driver looked at Lennon in the barrow and chortled,
'Pissed again? Jeez, does that man never learn? You'd think in the current climate he'd be lying low but no, he's out every night getting rat arsed and growling at people in pubs - I've helped him out my taxi three times already this week!'
'This isn't working,' said Gough. 'We can't leave so obvious a trail - Jorg, be a good fellow and steal us a car.'
Albertz sidled over to a nearby BMW and had it open in a twinkling and next thing you know we're haring across Glasgow, Gough driving with Lawwell beside him and me and Albertz in the back with Lennon sitting between us, out for the count. Sometimes I think about the fankles I get myself into and consider if I'd be better just finding another job but then there aren't many out there for pompous sneaks with divinity degrees.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

2011-04-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

Of course I’d witnessed Gough’s prowess with a cutlass before during our odyssey around the coasts of Scotland in search of the old Satyr Tom Devine who had made off in his boat with my wife while I was basking in the glory of beating him at penalty kicks, but to see Gough now, his movement and thrusting, footwork and parrying, you’d never guess his age. He dismissed anyone blocking our way with a flash of cold steel until at last we’d reached Lawwell’s bunker which was shut off from the rest of Parkhead by an electronic security door, feet thick. Albertz put his hand on the keypad and closed his eyes.

‘Fucking morons make this kind of thing so easy – I shouldn’t have wasted any magic, the password is 1967, same as the alarm at John Reid’s mansion – and he wonders how I get in and out all the time,’ and as he said it, the door opened and we were through.

We passed various doors I recognised from when I’d been here many times before with the Scottish media, being told what to report and how specifically to lay into the Rangers but I’d not seen many of them open but since Lawwell wasn’t expecting us, the rooms were there for all to see and it wasn’t a pretty sight: one was full of Hugh Keevins clones in suspended animation; one had Steven House and Steward Regan chained to the walls; one was empty save for a huge steam powered contraption at the end of which was the biggest dildo you’ve ever seen with a spike on the end of it – that’ll be Kearney’s office then?

Finally we came to Lawwell’s office and without hesitation, Gough kicked down the door and swashbuckled into the room, pistols at the ready. We caught Lawwell off guard, he was standing in front of a large mirror dressed only in his undershorts which had a swastika sewn into one leg and a dazzlingly cut Wehrmacht jacket which he wsa obviously trying on for size – it fitted him perfectly. He jumped a little as we crashed in but then composed himself and made for the horsewhip on his desk but Gough cut him off and pinked him with his cutlass.
‘We’re here for Lennon,’ said Albertz. ‘But since you’re here, perhaps you’ll tell us why you’re sending bombs to anyone connected to Celtic?’
‘Oh cut out the melodrama Albertz,’ sneered Lawwell. ‘It’s hardly me sending these packages to any comedy Catholic I can think of – no, I have the Green Brigade for that and you can mop them up if you like, they’ve done their job for me, I don’t need them anymore.’
‘Oh we will,’ snarled Gough. ‘But first, where’s Lennon?’
And Lawwell started laughing, an insane laugh I hope never to hear again because as he did, he looked upwards and as we followed his gaze, there clinging to the ceiling like an obscene spider, was Lennon. He dropped on Gough and catching him by surprise, held his head in his hands and was about to rip out the Captain’s throat when Albertz spun round and threw something in Lennon’s face, Lennon screamed like a monkey with his balls in a trap and collapsed in a steaming pile. Of course such is Neil Lennon’s behaviour these days, who was to know that Albertz had opened a vial of God’s breath and sprayed him with it?
‘God’s breath?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Cost me a fortune, lucky I can afford it, eh?’ smiled Albertz. ‘Now come on, the demons inside Lennon won’t be out for long, there wasn’t much in the phial, I’m not that rich – we need to get Lennon to my apartment and the safety of a magic circle before we can exorcise him. And Lawwell?’
Lawwell looked at Albertz who said,
‘We’re taking you too.’

The Man in the High Castle

2011-04-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

The Man in the High Castle

The Nautilus had taken us as far as it could up the Clyde and dropped us off, then we were picked up by a dark windowed black Land Rover and taken to Parkhead where we got out and stood looking across the car park with the slow moving almost zombie-like figures of Celtic fans keeping watch over their own dark tower. I’d never felt fear like it, we were entering the heart of darkness which although it was a favourite haunt of mine, I’d never walked in with Richard Gough and Jorg Albertz before.
‘You’re lunatics,’ I’d whimpered when I heard what they planned to do and Gough just replied, ‘Who’s going to mess with us?’
Fair enough then.

The Celtic fans stepped aside unquestioningly as we strode towards the entrance, they formed a corridor of smelly green and grey hooped football shirts and only seemed to come to life once we’d passed them so that in front of us was easy passage yet behind a rabble of sudden hard men who knew that their immediate danger had passed. They hurled all sorts of foul and bigoted threats at us while a couple of policemen stood and let them – they were probably looking at Gough and Albertz and wondering how they could stitch them up for being dirty Orange bastards.

We reached the main door and a fat security guard blocked our way, for a few seconds at least before realising who he faced and disappearing into a cupboard. Albertz sniffed, ‘Unmistakeable. I can smell sulphur, we’re not far now – he’s here.’
He meant of course Neil Lennon whose head had been tacked onto a Frankenstein’s monster of a body after a training ground accident and to make sure it survived the process, John Reid had the demons Wormwood and Screwtape add their own demon blood. Albertz had reported earlier that it was his opinion that the demon blood was taking over and that Lennon posed a clear and present danger not only to himself but to others around him and since Rangers were playing Celtic on Saturday it was the duty of he and Gough to kidnap Lennnon and exorcise him. First though we had to get into Parkhead, past the slow zombies, past security, past Lawwell’s Stasi and grab a man who would have demonic strength and powers. It wouldn’t be that difficult said Richard Gough, ‘After all, who’s going to mess with us?’