celticman's blog

Scottish Cup Final 1980. I was part of the 70 000 crowd. Pitch invasion. Brought up in a deprived home where you always wanted the Indians to beat the cowboys, and Celtic to beat Rangers, no matter the odds and how many referees and masonic linesman they had in their pockets, I wanted one of those horses the police had. Cup-final win by a George McCluskey goal. My good mate Dav Prentice (R.I.P) was just the kind of arsehole that would say things...

The blurb on the cover by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reads: ‘A masterpiece. Beautiful, harrowing and deeply human’. You may remember that Rebecca Skloot immersed herself in the story of how a poor black woman, daughter of tobacco farmer, contracted a virulent cancer that killed her, but her cells were taken without her or her family’s knowledge and literally spawned a billion-dollar industry while those left...

Last Saturday, when I was in Dalmuir Library, Gregor Fisher was doing a gig at 7pm. It was sold out. Tickets only. But let’s put this into perspective. Dalmuir Library is not the Albert Hall. Sold out means about thirty hard plastic chairs filled by wee woman with blue rinse and bookish leanings. A stocky wee guy with a bit of the blue rinse about him was setting up the microphone, practicing saying one-two, one-two. I didn’t want to tell him...

I was at Gordon Abraham’s funeral yesterday. He was born in 1948. I’ll let you do the maths. Gordon was an old guy, but despite having seven kids he never really grew up. He still liked a drink and a carry on. It was good to see so many people there. All age groups. And so many familiar faces. Dalmuir faces. None of us getting any younger. I’m sure Gordon would have got a kick out of the reason I never got allowed into his funeral. The funeral...

I was vaguely aware of Karl Ove Knausgaard, having read some reviews of his work. So I knew that the life that he lived was the material he used to build the narrative of his life and tell a story of how he became who he is. Some of my favourite reading material comes from Harpie. Thanks for the Vodka 2004, for example, tells the reader through a diary format what happens to her day to day. Her life is a shipwreck and as she goes under she tells...

I can only sympathise with Lily Allen. We too had somebody invade our house on Friday night. Bit of a kerfuffle and the front door banging open and shut. I thought it was Alan, (not Lily Allen) Mary’s son, playing funny buggers. He does that sometimes and thinks he’s funny. He’s got a beard now, so it’s perhaps not the best time to tell him it isnae. And he’s off work, probably suffering from low self-esteem, which makes a wee change from...

Paul Mason is an optimist. I’m a pessimist. He outlines the problems mankind faces in the future and suggests as a utopian solution of free money and us all working together in a non-working world. I tend more towards the four horseman of the apocalypse scenario. Mason suggests there are a number of negative feedback loops that will work together to make the world a much poorer place for 99% of humanity, but if we reverse engineer this process...

I heard on the radio this afternoon that by a majority verdict of seven to two the jury at the inquest of the Hillsborough disaster, where 92 people died, many of them teenage boys, found that they were unlawfully killed. I don’t really know what that means, but hearing those at the inquest singing the Liverpool anthem ‘Walk On’ made me feel tearful. A vindication for those families that campaigned and sought justice and truth. Let us not forget...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07952b1/louis-theroux-drinking-to-oblivion Yesterday started much the same as always. I read the papers, Sunday Mail and The Observe r. It was a bit of a surprise that The Observer had plagiarised two of my blogs. One was the Kevin Mc Kenna article about why Celtic are so shite but we love them anyway; the other about inequality, CEO salaries and executive pay. I don’t blame The Observer, after all I...

We all know how this works. BP is on the slide. Share price dropping like a cascade of dominos. It’s not a good time to be in fossil fuels. China no longer buying; America fracking and the Middle Eastern countries pumping out more oil than you can shake a Sheik at. Even Saudi Arabia is feeling the pinch and trying to sell shares in its monopoly. The best thing a company that BP can do is sack worker [tick] and lower existing workers’ pay [tick]...