So good we had to print it…

It's not usual for us to reprint the words of a rangers supporter bemoaning the lack of 'celeb-cred' for his beloved team, but the below article which is a genuine piece written by a reasonably well-educated hun was just so good that we had to share it with TAL's readers. Read it and weep with laughter…

A hun moans…

Yup, for years now I've been constantly irked by the litany of arty-farty types and rock-and-pop stars who support or claim to support "Selltik". Ye know, those tubes who seek some sort of rebellious authenticity by clinging to their reverse-snobbery romantic ideals of their working class roots. Sharleen Spiteri of Texas, the Scottish composer James MacMillan, Billy Connolly, that wee nyaff fae Belle and Sebastian and Rod bloomin' Stewart. Somehow, when they all want to show how "down to earth" they are they have to go on about their love of the hooped horrors.

What do Rangers get? Andy Cameron and Wet, Wet fekin Wet! (Sean Connery's a turncoat - he disnae count)

What makes it so bad is that I would take the works of all the aforementioned Sellik-loving artists before that of the two Rangers-loving ones mentioned. Same with Stuart Adamson fae Big Country and Jim BLOOMIN Kerr! I used to love Simple Minds in the early eighties and I was a huge fan of Adamson's work in The Skids, even before I was dancing like an electrocuted giraffe to BC's singles at School discos. But then I read some NME interview with Stuarty boy - "Oh aye, when I used to travel down fae Dunfermline to stand on the terraces at Parkhead...bla, bla, hoop-de-bla" and a decade later Simple Minds appear on Top Of The Pops with a huge flamin' Celtic crest on the front of their drum kit!

Belle and Sebastian? They won that Brit award and I was flippin' DELIGHTED - a real boon for real music, I thought to meself. I loved their stuff, as first heard on Mark and Lard's late show on Radio 1 some five years ago...but then I watch a documentary on the Glesgie indie pop-Meisters and one of the wee twats, in an effort to play down how little a Brit Award means to someone as at one with the underground scene as himself, announces to the world that, the day after receiving the award in front of millions of TV viewers he "went to watch Celtic...as usual"!

WHY? WHY? WHY did he have to do that - why did ANY of them have to do it? I knew there was a fair chance a group from Glasgow would have some Sellik supporters in their ranks but I don't want to hear them SAY it, for Godsakes! Nothing should distract from the music and that sorry fact so obviously will. God, I was once at a concert when Charlie Burchill of Simple Minds appeared on stage for a wee cameo guitar piece - I almost wet myself with excitement because he was a huge MUSICAL hero of mine, but after that Top Of The Pops horror I couldn't help seeing a big CFC crest every time I heard the name Simple Minds...okay, their lead singer eventually hammered the point home somewhat by trying to buy the flippin' club but, well, I'm trying to show how these things first hit you...

I love Rod Stewart's old stuff - anything AHL (After "Hot Legs") is rank but "Mandolin Wind", "Handbags and Gladrags", and all the other tunes he did on the early-mid seventies are pure gold...EXCEPT for that piece of garbage where he says "You're Celtic, United but baby I've decided you're the best team I've ever seen"! WHY, Rod? WHY? Why do you have to go and make your footballing weakness so embarrassingly public?

Why did Billy Connolly - quite simply the funniest man I have ever seen - have to drop the mutually agreeable pretence that the was a Partick Thistle fan? It's funny that he feels the need to declare his Sellik-supportingness, now he's in the brain-frazzling world of the US West Coast...where he can romanticise his days on the Jungle and tell himself it's okay to admit it because, hey, who doesn't love Celtic? What the Daily Record tried to do to the guy was flipping disgusting, but this declaration of his love for my sworn enemy now gets in the way of my TOTAL enjoyment of Connolly the person.

THEN, of course, there was James MacMillan...Mister Scottish Opera. Now, he made all his speeches about Catholics still being second-class citizens in Scotland. Fair enough. I've no idea whether he's right or wrong - that's his opinion and the guy's entitled to air it. In fact, if he believes that to be the case then he's almost duty bound to say so...but that's a discussion which I really have no interest in and don't know enough about to comment on. ALL I KNOW is that the guy is/was the great white hope of Scottish opera in general and Scottish Opera, the company. I've experienced his "Innes de castro" and it was keech but - hey - Scottish Opera also made Verdi, Wagner and Mozart sound keech so it might just have been the production more than the work itself. He was Scottish, he was trying, he was worth backing in the face of adversity and then, a good year or so before his public pronouncements on contemporary socio-religious issues, HE GOES AND APPEARS ON TELEVISION WEARING A FEKIN CELTIC BASEBALL CAP! ENOUGH ALREADY!

When will someone arty say: "I love Rangers"?

It's almost worth starting a group just so I can appear on Top Of The Pops wearing a '72 Cup Winners' Cup jersey. It's almost worth dedicating my life to Opera criticism just so I can write: "The soprano's Tosca was the most heart rendering emotional performance since Maria Callas at La Fenice in 1964 or Ally McCoist's celebrations after his dive-headed opener in the 1998 Scottish Cup semi at Parkhead"...God Damn it, I might yet spend the rest of my days studying to be a top actor just so I can tell an interviewer: "I was nervous on opening night at The Barbican, yes - in fact I haven't been so nervous since my sister had her 18th birthday meal at Ibrox and John Greig came over to our table to talk to us."

But it's not really the fact that Rangers never get a mention which bothers me. It's the fact that so many times it's SELLIK! As we were saying in last week's article on Tony Cascarino's book, that guy in Turin who told Chick Young: "I think there's a little bit of Celtic in everyone" wasn't actually referring to a little bit in everyone's BOWELS. He was referring to this "wha's like us - quite a few and the rest are all nasty, evil bigots" attitude which promotes Sellik as the "real" team to follow in Scotland, the "fun" team, the team which everyone with an open mind must just LOVE. If you want to keep up your reputation as an "artist", declaring your love for Sellik is shorthand for all your left of centre, liberal, free thinking beliefs. As if anyone who supports any other Scottish team is just an old fuddy-duddy, a part of the repressive system which Celtic rebel against so gloriously...apparently.

Dramas on TV: that one on Channel 4 a couple of years ago, about a psychiatric ward - one of the lead characters, a Scottish doctor, was wearing a Sellik top to show he was a bit "off the wall" and totally "genuine"...perhaps even a bit of a victim. Cracker - the one with Robert Carlyle playing the psychotic Liverpool fan - Robbie Coltraine has to drown out his rantings with another football song so he chants "Sell-tik, sell-tik!" Of course he does - who else would a big, cuddly intellectual libertine support? EH?