Footie inside info
Forgot this one - I used to write almost the entire contents of the programme each fortnight for a Scottish Premier football team (albeit we weren't in the top level then; we were languishing in the lower leagues at the time). While doing this I was having a hot and very vigorous extramarital affair with another supporter of the club who was somewhat younger than me and I thought very cute.

One of the things I had to do for the programme was to write the manager's thoughts on the past week. His forte was not the skill of writing (in fact his forte turned out not to be football either given he was more than a bit lazy and liked to let players away early so he too could have the afternoon off) so he left the task to me.

He always only ever said to me 'Just don't make me seem stupid son' and let me have free rein over his thoughts for the week but he was too thick to realise I was taking the piss most times as I tried to make the column ever more cliched - even one week sneaking in an "over the moon" and a "sick as a parrot" without him thinking it was a little over the top. It just got more and more bizarre as I tested out quite what I could get away with.

So one week I sent a message to my lover on the terraces via his column - the first letters of each sentence in his matchday message if read in order said something like (memory fails me for the exact words) "Hi Margaret. Meet me after the match for a hot fuck you gorgeous thing." No one could ever notice it but I was amused by my self indulgent joke. The small things that one does to keep the boredom away.

Which team? Well we got beat again this Saturday past by a bunch of highlanders - it wouldn't take you long to figure it out. Programme collectors go look for it!

PS One other dirty secret I found out about - there are more - about the same time another (then) 1st division Scottish Club were taken over by a bunch of West Coast criminally minded people. The rumour was that they used the cash rich game of football to launder drug money back INTO the game by pretending more people came to the matches than actually did - the past habits of Scottish corrupt directors in football being the opposite taking money out rather than putting it in. Football is one of the last places in business where money is still handed over as notes in great quantities - clever of the scummy drug dealers really to make their money white again and the club was always losing money so they didn;t even pay tax on it. There's a good novel in the last story for someone by the way (send me a free copy).
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Sun 30 Sep 2007, 22:13, Reply)