celticman's blog

This is a stage play, a successful stage play, so successful that my mate Sharpy went to see it and he doesn’t usually go to plays, but it’s about the Old Firm and bigotry, so that’s alright then, but reading a play and seeing a play are a bit like looking out the window at midnight and wondering how cold it is outside. I read the whole book in about an hour, which includes the review of Dillon’s other books (some of which I’ve read) and the...

I didn’t know Janice, nor her son Gary junior, nor her daughter Linzi, or grandson Jack, so it can seem a bit silly that I attended her funeral. But I do know her husband Gary. I shook his hand in O’Donnell’s pub afterwards and offered the usual platitude, ‘that at least there’d been a lot of folk there’. The kind of no consolation, but a consolation prize of a gazoo. I was there because I like Gary and always have. I got to know him quite well...

A reminder—if we need one— how Dangerous boxing can be is the Sunday Mail front-page headline: ‘My baby has lost his daddy, I’ll never let him fight,’ with a prominent picture of Chloe, holding her infant Rocco, with an insert photo of her partner, and the baby’s father, twenty-five-year old Mike Towell, crouching in a standard boxing stance and fighting Dale Evans on Thursday evening at St Andrew’s Sporting Club. Towell lost more than the bout...

Watching Celtic is like going to chapel, but you want to be there and you’re a believer- even though, secretly, after getting humped 7-0 by Barcelona and facing another squad worth a quarter billion pounds, that’s won ten on the bounce, you don’t really expect miracles. Yet, you do, otherwise you’d be ffafing about watching Coronation Street. Belief isn’t optional, it’s part of the tapestry of football, against all the odds (or even 10/1) your...

http://www.channel5.com/show/secrets-of-the-sas-in-their-own-words As Eric, my mate, often parrots, when pissed, ‘I can’t tell you if I’ve been in the SAS or I’ll need to kill you afterwards.’ Usually by that time he can’t zip up his fly and Liz is dragging him up the road. I could probably reconstruct the whole thing, with an idling taxi and two actors and an actress, playing Liz, in a dramatic reconstruction, with the sound of gunfire zipping...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07w532p/the-doctor-who-gave-up-drugs-episode-1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07wwd9d/the-doctor-who-gave-up-drugs-episode-2 I’ve invested almost two hours of my life in these two programmes presented by Dr Chris van Tullaken, with a side-line in epidemiology. He’s evangelical in his belief that too many people are being prescribed drugs they don’t need that don’t work and the side-effects are harmful...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/national-treasure/on-demand/61953-001 ‘They think I’m fucking Jimmy Saville,’ says Paul Finchley (Robbie Coltrane) when he’s arrested for rape. A writer could have a lot of fun with this four-part series, as I’m sure Jack Thorne does. The litmus test for National Treasure is whether the named and shamed celebrity such as Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris or indeed our very own Cliff (although the tabloids are playing...

Maslow’s hammer – if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail . I don’t believe in a market for healthcare. I don’t believe in a market for schools. And I don’t believe in trickledown economics, the belief that giving money to the rich helps the poor. When I see the innocence of children I can believe in God. As Dr Benjamin Spock wrote for post- Second World War baby-boomers: ‘Each child is retracing the whole history of mankind,...

Where's the ba? In the net... I must admit I’d a fiver on Celtic to win at 33/1. You know it’s not going to happen, but think it might. And at those odds, you can’t really lose, although you did. We all know how it works. Barcelona need to have an off day as they did on Saturday against a newly promoted team. The Celtic goalkeeper has got to have the game of his life, as David Marshal once did, or even Frazer Foster. Here De Vries came in to...

‘Dear Brother, here where the doors are closed I have learned to walk through brick walls A copper-pot spider was my good friend and many lizards fed my heart Now every dream I see assumes the shape of a skeleton key. Once I heard Grandfather’s voice calling me back through the trees but I can’t go home that way I will remain by an older path over the plains on the river My offerings as I travel through the city of temples will be bones and...