Blog Off!

As I write this Partick Thistle are on the cusp of securing their Premiership status for another season. Before going further I feel that I should provide a disclaimer at this point. Being 10 points clear with just 4 games remaining is a good position to be in but not one that allows this writer to totally relax either; I’ve been following Thistle for far too long for that.

You would think, however, that even allowing for some red and yellow tinged pessimism and anxiety, that most Jags fans would be fairly content with the Club’s current position.

Well Scott McFarlane, writing in www.scotzine.com, certainly isn’t as this blog article is testament to;

http://www.scotzine.com/2015/04/partick-thistle-blog-its-time-that-we-start-taking-risks/

Scott doesn’t begin well when he proclaims that he believes that he speaks “for most Thistle fans”. The overwhelming reaction to his article, which basically claims that Thistle have underperformed in a variety of areas over the season; would suggest that that belief is somewhat misplaced.

Scott’s first concern is that the Club didn’t push for a European place this season despite having the “foundations and fan base” that give Thistle a better chance of doing that than others.

That claim is worth exploring a little further. Thistle’s average home league attendance this season stands at just 3,386 and with only Hamilton’s at 2,533 lower Thistle come in at a whopping 11^th place in that league table.  Furthermore that represents a drop from last season, when Thistle were able to enjoy large travelling supports to Firhill on a number of occasions, of 32.3%. That particular statistic should cause Thistle fans at the very least a slight shudder of concern.

That’s the fan base claim covered but what are these foundations that Scott talks about? It shouldn’t be forgotten that this season is just Thistle’s second back in the top flight. A step up in divisions doesn’t automatically come with the infrastructure of a top flight club. That takes time to build and develop and Thistle haven’t had the benefit of the consistent top flight status that the likes of Kilmarnock and Motherwell, for now, have enjoyed.  Scott even seems to concede this point when he says that Thistle aren’t, yet, a “high flying club”.

So where precisely do his concerns lie?

It would seem fairly and squarely at the door of the manager Alan Archibald. Scott claims that Archibald isn’t a “good football manager” without actually expanding on that point other than to say he doesn’t like him standing with his arms folded. Especially when it is cold.

Seeing as Scott hasn’t bothered to explore Archibald’s record as Thistle manager I will instead. He became Partick Thistle manager when Jackie McNamara left to become Dundee United manager. That Archibald inherited a good squad of players is hardly in doubt but he took over at a time of some turmoil with the loss of a talented manager. An inexperienced squad was trailing Morton in the First Division title race, albeit with games in hand, and many observers believed Thistle’s title push was at an end.

Fast forward 16 unbeaten league games and Partick Thistle are First Division Champions winning the league by a margin off 11 points.

The following season Thistle had avoided automatic relegation prior to the late season split (Hearts’ point deduction helping in that regard) and a play-off position was avoided with victory in the penultimate fixture of the season.

This season automatic relegation was again avoided prior to the split (no Hearts safety net this season) and Thistle are on course to avoid a play-off spot comfortably before the season’s conclusion (please see my previous disclaimer).

Every job that Alan Archibald has been asked to do as Thistle manager he has done or is on course to do. Since league reconstruction in 1975 only two managers, Bertie Auld and John Lambie, have kept Thistle in the top flight for three or more successive seasons. If, as most people expect, Alan Archibald does that then he will become just the third Thistle manager to do so in 40 years. I’ll leave it to those better at counting than me to tell you how many haven’t managed that feat. Some of them even waved their arms in the air.

Criticism too has been directed, by Scott, towards the Club’s youth structure or more accurately the failure to play more youngsters in the first team. The theme of aspects of the Club’s structure needing time to develop and grow is becoming a recurring one. Massive strides have been taken in terms of Youth Development with the investment of the Weirs seeing things taken to a new level. Laying aside the fact that Stuart Bannigan came through the later age groups in the Thistle youth system, and that Declan McDaid, Liam Lindsay and David Wilson have all featured in the first team this season, the most talented crop of youngsters in the Weir Academy haven’t reached the stage in their development where they can play first team football at the level that Thistle are currently playing at. A number though are continuing their footballing educations while at on loan. All seems very positive on the youth development front.

There is one thing upon which myself and Scott agree on and that is the fact that the manager will face a challenging summer.  There is a difference, however, in how the two of us interpret that challenge. For Scott the fact that we struggle to sign, and hold onto, players that can acquire larger wages elsewhere is a failing of the Club; a lack of ambition. In contrast I tend to take the view that the lower the crowd the lower the income and the harder it becomes to attract the kind of player that will see the Club make continued progress.

It seems to me that there is, particularly within the younger generation of Thistle fans, a frustration at the rate of progress that Partick Thistle as a club is making. Is everything perfect at Firhill? No, it isn’t but there needs to be a realisation that the further you climb up the ladder of Scottish Football the harder it becomes to improve year on year and how small the margin of that progress can be. Partick Thistle Football Club is in a much healthier position than it was when Alan Archibald became manager. Hopefully the full-time whistle tomorrow will signal the successful completion of another job and further progress for The Jags. 

John Donnelly

How my article about John Donnelly in the Sick in the Basin Fanzine should have looked. A big chunk of it simply disappeared. Probably the fault of the printers; it usually is in my experience. :-)

I was still a relatively impressionable youngster when I arrived at Firhill to purchase my season ticket sometime in the mid 1980s. So much so that the offer of a wee tour round Firhill was accepted without a moment’s hesitation. I can remember remarking on how neat and tidy Firhill was looking. “Yes”, my tour guide quipped before going further;

“We’ve painted just about everything that doesn’t move. I’m surprised that we haven’t painted that bugger John Donnelly yet”.

That description summed up the, ahem, languid Mr Donnelly pretty well. To use a rather colourful description applied to an equally work averse Scottish footballer; if he pished himself it would stroll down his leg rather than run.

Donnelly began his career as a youngster with Notts County before returning to Scotland to sign for Motherwell in 1979. After a season at Fir Park he was on the move again; this time signing for Dumbarton.

His career seemed to take off while at Boghead and in March 1983 a reported £15,000 transfer fee, a pretty reasonable fee at the time, took him back to England and Leeds United when he became Eddie Gray’s first signing as Leeds manager.

In total Donnelly made 44 first team appearances for Leeds and scored 4 goals but scanning, the admittedly brief, information available online about his time at Leeds it seems his most noteworthy contribution while at Elland Road was to puke at the side of the pitch in a match against Shrewsbury Town.

At any rate Donnelly washed up at the Firhill shores, hopefully well and truly vomit free, initially for a month’s loan, in November 1984. To say that he was joining a poor Partick Thistle side would be a major understatement. This was the era of Benny Rooney and painfully poor players. Just how poor can be seen in the team he made his Thistle debut in, a 0-0 draw at Kilmarnock. Included in that side were players of the calibre of David Walker and Tommy O’Hara. Anyone with even a modicum of talent was going to stand out in this team. Now, okay the only way that Donnelly was going to come off the pitch with his shirt wringing wet was if he fell in a puddle but talent he had.

Donnelly’s first Thistle goals came in the final match, a home game with St Johnstone, of that short loan spell. The first of a Donnelly double arrived after Gordon Dalziel had completing miskicked the ball and gave Thistle a 10^th minute lead.

This was a game, however, in which defences were definitely not on top. Just five minutes after taking the lead Thistle found themselves trailing 2-1. Joe Carson, yes it really was some Thistle team in 1984, headed home Donnelly’s free kick before Donnelly himself gave Thistle a 3-2 half-time lead. His second goal gets further and further out with every year that passes but ‘The Evening Times’ describes Donnelly second goal as “brilliantly back-heeled from 15 yards into Drummond’s left hand corner”.

A goal ahead at the interval did Thistle hang on to win? Not quite. We were gubbed 7-3.

Donnelly returned to Leeds after that game but was back at Firhill the following March this time as a fully fledged Jag. He marked his debut second time around with a goal in a crucial 3-2 win at Ayr United, scored with two fabulous free kicks in a 3-1 midweek win at Brechin and sunk the penalty that secured a 1-1 draw with Forfar on the penultimate Saturday of the season; the point securing Thistle’s position in the middle league for another season. Across the two spells the left winger, scruffy and often strolling through games, had scored 7 goals from just 10 games. The Jags fans loved him.

The following season he finished as the Club’s leading goalscorer with 11 goals but Thistle, who binned Benny Rooney with 7 games remaining and replaced him with Bertie Auld, again avoided relegation in the last but one game of the season.

Donnelly was hardly wee Bertie’s type of players and there were rumours of a bust up between manager and player. The more lurid rumours having the two coming to blows and with Donnelly’s name missing from the team for the final two games of the season there may have been a hint of truth to the rumours of a fall out.

Bertie though would soon be away as new majority shareholder Ken Bates decided that Derek Johnstone was the man to lead Thistle to glory.

Before too long Donnelly too would be on his way. His last Thistle appearance came in a match with Dunfermline at East End Park in September 1986. Typically Donnelly marked the occasion with a goal. Sadly it was an own goal. Thistle were trailing 1-0 with 12 minutes remaining but were very much in the game when Donnelly passed the ball back to keeper John Brough only Brough wasn’t in his goal at the time and the ball trundled over the line.

Donnelly did make up for that lapse though it took him five months to do.

The own goal didn’t put Dunfermline off signing him and they paid £5,000 to take him to East End Park. In February 1987 Thistle were again in action away to The Pars. Half-time was approaching and Thistle were a goal down when Donnelly generously headed the ball into his own net to make it 1-1 at the break. There was no happy ending, however, as Dunfermline; who would clinch promotion to the Premier League at the end of the season, won 2-1.

Several months on from that game, on an especially cold and wintry afternoon, reports came through from East End Park that one of the home players had been substituted suffering from hypothermia. It came as little surprise down Firhill way to learn that the frost bitten Par was none other than John Donnelly. One suspects that had the physio had come on with a Nip for (or of) JD all would have been well.

Donnelly, not exactly renowned for his discipline and respect for authority, fell out with Dunfermline and was subsequently sacked. His next port of call was Stranraer and from there he wound up at Junior side Vale of Clyde. The last confirmed sighting, in a football connection at any rate, of Donnelly was of him coaching kids in the Dalmarnock area of the east end of Glasgow. Wonder what kind of work rate he demanded from them.

From the Nest of Vipers

Thought I'd blow a bit of dust off this blog (you can read my Them Beatles blog here http://tomevans1.blogspot.co.uk/) by reproducing the article I wrote for the 'Sick in the Basin' fanzine which takes a look at my soon to finish time as Thistle programme editor. 

FROM THE NEST OF VIPERS

Over the course of the last few weeks a number of people have asked why, after 20+ years, I have decided to hang up my laptop and retire as Thistle’s programme editor. The answer is quite simple; the return of the Sick in the Basin fanzine. We simply can’t cope with the competition. SitB vendors can even be spotted next to programme sellers. Programme sellers are now busy filing their nails or picking their noses while surrounded by piles of unsold programmes while copies of SitB disappear quicker than a Scottish club’s presence in European competition. .

I jest of course. Sales of the programme have actually increased of late. Read into that what you may. The truth is that it has been a season of some personal turmoil. Keeping things short, my mother was killed in a car accident almost on the very eve of the current season. Perhaps that event has changed my perspective on life in general. I no longer want to be stuck in front of a laptop all the time; I want to reclaim more time for myself. To read more books, listen to more music and guide Aston Villa to the Premiership title in Football Manager.  When editing the programme ceases to be a labour of love and becomes a chore then it is time to pass it onto someone else. It doesn’t, however, signal my involvement with the Club. I hope.

Regular readers may have noticed the very, cough, occasional typo appear within the pages of the programme. Some of my personal highlights include a fantastic ticket offer in the late 90s where you could purchase 2 tickets for the price of 3, a player lying ‘prostate’ on the ground rather than ‘prostrate’ and referring to a fellow, then, First Division team as Airdire United. I blame the printers for the last one, largely because it was their fault. It also prompted a call from Airdire, sorry Airdrie, Chairman Jim Ballantyne claiming that it couldn’t possibly have been a mistake – Airdrie were dire to be fair – and that he would be phoning the SFA with a complaint on the Monday morning. It was a wind up instigated by Allan Cowan but it had me going for longer than it should have.

Not joking was the Thistle fan who threatened to take me to the Press Complaints Commission. Stand up and take a bow Tim Luckhurst. I quoted, and criticised, an article he had written (something about Kafka reading Thistle fans if I recall correctly) and he phoned the club that very evening demanding an apology or face dire consequences as I had no right to reproduce any of the article. Given that it would have been Thistle and not me in bother one, somewhat less than grovelling, apology followed. Ouch. On a more positive note I did rather upset Chick Young.

I could have done without the Thistle fan interrupting me while having a quiet pint, to have a rather aggressive pop at me over the Real Scottish Football programme. More amusing though was the response to a fairly in depth survey the club conducted at the end of one season. One of the questions was ‘how would you improve the programme?’ ‘Sack Hosie’ was one response.  I’m not 100% certain who that was but I have my strong suspicions and I know where I would be pointing the camera lens of suspicion at for that one.

I’ve been fortunate to have received the help and assistance of a large number of people none more than our two excellent photographers Donald Wilson and Tommy Whatshisname (who has been involved with the programme longer than even I have) but this isn’t really the place for a long list of thanks; I’ll save that for the final programme of the season. I’ve had though the pleasure to have worked, if you can use that word, with some excellent people at the club over the years. One of the difficulties in becoming involved with a football club is reading about people you know on forums and, yes, in fanzines and seeing them unfairly vilified. I’ve read many attacks on the characters of directors and managers that I know to be so far removed from the truth as it is possible to be. I’m delighted that I have friendships with people long beyond their direct involvement with Partick Thistle. Goodness, I still occasionally text Jackie McNamara! Meantime the last time I saw Gerry Collins I hid behind a freezer cabinet in Farmfoods in Parkhead.

Favourite managers over the years? Leaving aside their ability as a manager and judging them simply as people then I would have to include Dick Campbell on that list; few people have made me feel part of the club as he did. I’ve huge respect for Ian McCall, the aforementioned Jackie McNamara and Gerry Britton is one the of the funniest people have had the pleasure of spending time with. Get the red wine poured on a club overnight stay and he has a mountain of stories to tell. I wish I could share some here. Pour me some beer in the Star and I might just do that.

Alan Archibald though remains my hero having seen him come through the youth ranks, make his debut under Murdo MacLeod (he definitely isn’t included among my favourites), make over 400 first team appearances, serve on his testimonial committee and see him become Jags boss. The fact that Alan, among others from the club, attended my mother’s funeral service shows the mark of the man and how close knit a family Partick Thistle can be at times.

If I can be permitted to massage my own ego for just a second or two, there have been a few awards for the Thistle programme over the years. All very gratifying but nothing compared to praise, there has been some occasionally, received from fellow Thistle fans. One even raced after me after I left the pub to tell me how much they enjoyed the programme, a gesture that I was extremely touched by. Trying to please at least some of the people at least some of the time can be quite challenging. Size of crowd and corresponding print runs means that it is unlikely, though not impossible, that the Thistle programme will ever be the very best in the country but if Jags fans have enjoyed my efforts over the years then I’m well chuffed. The magazine Programme Monthly, in a short review of this season’s programme, commented that the programme was obviously compiled by someone who cared about the content. I can think of no better epitaph to a 20 year plus labour of love than that. If whoever picks up the reigns has the same approach then the programme will be in safe hands. I look forward to reading their efforts next season.

C’mon The Jags

Tom Hosie

Soon to be ex-programme editor

Imagine This - Growing up with my brother John Lennon

My bookshelves are already groaning under the weight of many a Beatles book. Some excellent, some good, some indifferent and some; or at least one, downright bizarre.

The sheer volume of titles that I already own doesn’t prevent me from eagerly adding to the collection whenever an opportunity arises; especially when it costs me the princely sum of 49p.

An after work browse round HMV one day took me to the book section where the troubled store were clearly getting rid of unwanted stock.

I pride myself on being able to spot a Beatles related item no matter the clutter and sure enough a copy of Julia Baird’s ‘Imagine This – Growing up with my brother John Lennon’, caught my eye and whispered gently to me “buy me, Tom.”

It didn’t really but, hey, 49p wasn’t exactly going to break the bank so off I popped, with a few other items I have to confess, to the check-out.

Julia Baird for those that don’t know, and I suspect if you’ve managed to get this far then you probably do; and the book title does rather tend to give the game away, is the half-sister of a certain John Lennon.

I had read a few reviews of it and none were exactly overflowing with their enthusiasm for it and as a result it sat on the ever growing ‘to read’ pile for a little time.

It was eventually plucked from the pile and I found it a surprisingly fascinating, touching and often moving story.

It wasn’t packed with countless anecdotes of John’s childhood but it did shed some extra light onto John’s troubled upbringing.

John, for the uninitiated, spent much of his childhood being brought up by his Aunt Mimi. His mother, also named Julia, is in most accounts of John’s formative years portrayed as a somewhat feckless, irresponsible woman.

She married John’s father, Alf, almost on a whim. It was a marriage that her family did not approve of.

There was certainly something of the wanderlust about Alf, a merchant seaman and he was rarely in John’s life, although he did return from a prolonged absence with the aim of whisking John off for a new life in New Zealand.

By the time Alf returned to England with the aim of taking John to New Zealand with him Julia, although still married to Ald, had had an affair with another man with whom she had had a child who was subsequently given up for adoption. She was now living with another man, Bobby Dykins. Julia and Bobby would live together and common law husband and wife and would have two children together, Jackie and, the author of this book, Julia.

For a while John lived with his mother and Bobby but this was an arrangement not to the liking of Julia’s sister Mimi who it is suggested called social services declaring that John was being brought up in improper circumstances.

Cutting the story short, for fear of completely boring anyone who has struggled this far, John was sent to live with his Aunt Mimi.

Many accounts suggest that John for many years had virtually no contact with his mother but his half-sister’s book paints a different story. Her account has John paying his mother many a clandestine visit once he discovered, through his cousin Stanley, that she lived only a short distance away.

Julia’s book also addresses her mother’s reputation as being a feckless, unfit mother. Instead she creates the image of a zestful, attentive and loving mother; although one haunted by the child she was forced to give up for adoption, her at least partial estrangement from her son, and a possible later miscarriage.   

What isn’t in doubt is that John had re-established a relationship with his mother, and his two half siblings, when she was run over and killed by an off duty policeman.

That loss had a profound effect on John. It did too on his two half-sisters. Upon their mother’s death they were shunted off to Scotland without any explanation  and it was only several months after their mother’s death, and a return to Liverpool to live with an Aunt and her husband, that they found out that their mother had in fact died. Although young they were, in an act that seems impossibly cruel, denied the opportunity to attend their own mother’s funeral.

The longer the book goes on the less John features in it. His life and that of his sisters went off in totally different directions.

For many years there was no contact at all but according to Julia’s book, John got back in touch with his Liverpool family in the mid 1970s when he was living, where he would until his death, in New York.

Julia describes the difficulty she had though in speaking directly with her brother. Yoko, she tells us, would answer all her calls and only rarely would she be able to speak to John. Yoko it would seem was practically running John’s life for him and was ‘protecting’ him from his family.

Sadly Julia never got the chance to see her brother face to face again before his death and after his death her relationship with him was diminished even further with Yoko claiming that John barely knew or met his sisters.

They are certainly airbrushed out of many accounts of John’s life.

Did they have a close relationship with John or did they, as Yoko claimed, barely know each other?

Perhaps the first volume of Mark Lewisohn’s three part Beatles biography, due for release in October, might provide some of the answers.  

In the meantime this book is well worth a read. 

The Power of Twitter

It’s been a little time since I last posted an entry on my blog and this one won’t be a long one. I really just wanted to share something with anyone who happens to stumble across the blog.

Those of you that know me will be aware that a disproportionately large chunk of my life is devoted to Partick Thistle Football Club.

Programme, website and social media editor is my job title that sounds grander than it actually is. That role, as the title suggests, means that I spend a fair amount time on Twitter; that social media outlet where people share the minutiae of their lives in 140 characters or less.

It’s easy to be disparaging about twitter but Saturday demonstrated to me the power that it has and how, even with the most tenuous of links, it can connect and bring people together.

Those familiar with Twitter will be aware of the concept of hashtags. With Thistle having installed Alan Archibald, or Archie as he is affectionately known, as interim manager we have been using the hashtag #ArchiesArmy on the Club’s twitter feed.

On Saturday morning as I was checking twitter, as I routinely do on a Saturday morning, I came across the following tweet that used our Archie hashtag:

@Archietime1 Hey Archie, did you know there’s an #ArchieArmy hashtag? It’s for Partick Thistle (their manager’s nickname is Archie!)

I naturally had to investigate further and it revealed that the Archie in question was an 11 year old boy from Cheltenham who suffers from a rare condition called Propionic Aciduria.

Unfamiliar with that condition? Well so was I.

An internet search revealed that the condition prevents individuals from being able to break down parts of protein and some types of fat due to either a missing or a non-functioning enzyme called PCC. This inability causes a build-up of harmful substances which can cause damage to the person’s heart, liver, brain, and bones.  The result can be seizures, delays to normal development like walking and talking, and other health problems break down parts of protein and some types of fat due to either a missing or a non-functioning enzyme called PCC. This inability causes a build-up of harmful substances which can cause damage to the person’s heart, liver, brain, and bones.  The result can be seizures, delays to normal development like walking and talking, and other health problems.

There is no hard fast life expectancy for someone with this condition and while it is possible to survive into adulthood my, admittedly limited, research seems to suggest that on average life expectancy is somewhere between 12 and 14 years.

To return to my story a few tweets were exchanged with Archie, in reality the young boy’s mother.

It turned out that Partick Thistle were the first Club to Follow Archie on twitter and we were promised a cheer on Saturday from doing so.

A few other Thistle fans picked up on this and Archie now has a fair number of Thistle fans following him. One was even prompted to send him a birthday present; Archie celebrating his 12^th birthday today.

I’m proud of the fact that through nothing more than a shared name Partick Thistle are now known in a Cheltenham household. More importantly, through a simple twitter exchange I now know about a rare condition that I previously didn’t know existed.

Twitter isn’t just about sharing what we all had for breakfast. It can connect and touch people in so many different ways.

You can follow Archie via the link below:

https://twitter.com/Archietime1

And you can read more about Propionic Aciduria here:

http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/Propionic-Acidaemia.htm#ref-12

The Ginge, The Geordie and The Geek - Coming to a TV near You

On a purely personal level one of the highlights of my involvement with Partick Thistle came when someone made a point of speaking to me, as I left the pub one evening, to tell me that they enjoyed reading the programme each home game. That gesture was as unnecessary as it was kind and something that I haven’t ever forgotten.

It’s in part because of that that I try and make the point, any time I’ve seen a comedian/band/play that I’ve enjoyed, to try and pass on my own thanks and let them know that their efforts are appreciated. Twitter and Facebook make doing just that pretty easy.

The above is just a bit of a preamble to the topic of the latest of my increasingly infrequent blog entries; ‘The Ginge, The Geordie and The Geek’.

Unfamiliar with that name?

Hopefully after viewing BBC2 in April of next year then that will have changed and you’ll have derived as much enjoyment from these three talented guys as I, and my long suffering partner in crime; Alison, have in recent years.

It would probably be a good idea to provide a bit of background information at this point.

‘The Ginge, The Geordie and The Geek’ (aka as Graeme Rooney, Paul Charlton and Kevin O’Loughlin) are a comedy sketch group that we first saw during the, I think, 2009 Glasgow Comedy Festival.

It was really something of an afterthought to go and see them. The Festival was drawing to a close and, to be honest, by the final Friday we were pretty much comedyed (is that a word?) out. The high profile acts that we saw that year were by and large disappointing, and the notion of finishing the Festival with a sketch show as opposed to yet another stand-up appealed greatly.

Universal in Sauchiehall Street Lane was the venue and the boys blew the place away. Just as impressive as the actual comedy was the unrelenting pace at which it was delivered. The ease in which they slipped from one hilarious scenario to another was incredible.

We vowed as we left the venue that night that it wouldn’t be the last time we would see them.

It wasn’t. The following year’s Glasgow Comedy Festival saw them move from Universal to a sell out night at The Tron Theatre. They produced another fantastic performance.

Just as they have each time we’ve seen them perform at the Edinburgh Fringe. One of the disappointments of last summer’s festival, for us, was the fact that we left it way too late to get tickets for one of their sell out shows and didn’t get to see them. We made sure that we didn’t repeat that error this summer.

From the very first time we saw them we were convinced that they merited a television series. We were delighted to read, therefore, a couple of months ago that that BBC had, finally, given them that richly deserved commission.

That television series is currently being filmed, much of it in front of a live TV audience, and we’ve been fortunate to catch a couple of those recordings at the BBC studios at Pacific Quay. It will hit your screens in April next year. Please make sure that you watch it.

Lest you think this gushing praise hides some kind of family connection; the very occasional twitter/facebook interaction aside I don’t know these lads at all. There is a real warmth to their performances, however, that makes you feel as if you do know them; as ridiculous as that notion may appear.

We can’t claim to have seen them from the very start but all the same there is real pleasure in seeing them progress over the last few years. We’ve seen many acts over the years that we’ve felt deserved to get that so called big break yet continue toil away without the recognition they deserve while other, in our view, less talented individuals are performing to big crowds at the SECC when not appearing on our television screens. What I call the Kevin Bridges Syndrome.

To return then to the theme of the opening paragraphs; Ginge, Geordie and Geek, thanks. We enjoy your performances immensely and we look forward to seeing you on BBC2 next year and hopefully at the Edinburgh Fringe in the summer, if not before.

For more information on ‘The Ginge, The Geordie and The Geek’ check out:

http://www.gingegeordiegeek.com/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/37496449776/?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/GingeGeordiGeek

Beatles Books, DVDs and Ephemera

This isn’t so much a blog entry as a list. I was thinking the other day of just what Beatles related ephemera I had, excluding CDs, so decided in true obsessive fashion to make a list of it all. It, of course, remains a list in progress which in itself is a scary thought.

Books

A Life in Pictures – The Beatles. Beatlemania 1963-1964

An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney: Howard Sounes

Backbeat: Alan Clayton and Pauline Sutcliffe

Can’t Buy Me Love  - The Beatles, Britain and America: Jonathon Gould

George Harrison Living in the Material World

Images of the Beatles – photography from The Daily Mail

John: Cynthia Lennon

John Lennon: Philip Norman

Magical Mystery Tours – My Life with The Beatles: Tony Bramwell

Paul McCartney A Life: Peter James Carlin

Revolution in the Head: Ian MacDonald

Shout! The True Story of The Beatles: Philip Norman

The Beatles

The Beatles – Hunter Davis

The Beatles: A Day in the Life

The Beatles Anthology

The Beatles in Scotland: Ken McNab

The Beatles on Television: Jeff Bench and Ray Tedman

The Beatles: The Story of the UK Tours 1963-1964: Martin Creasy

The Longest Cocktail Party: Richard Di Lello

The Mammoth Book of The Beatles: Sean Egan

Ticket to Ride – Inside the Beatles 1964 and 1965 tours that changed the world: Larry Kane.

Who Killed John Lennon : Fenton Bresller

With The Beatles:  Alistair Taylor

You Never Gave us Your Money: Peter Dogget

Magazines/Newspapers

Life: Remembering George Harrison

Liverpool Echo: Arise Sir Paul McCartney – March 10^th 1997

Mojo: The Magical Mystery Tour and Beyond

Rolling Stone – The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs

Uncut: 148 page John Lennon Special

Beatles Films

A Hard Days Night

Yellow Submarine

Films

Backbeat

Nowhere Boy

Concerts

Apple Rooftop

Paul McCartney – In Red Square

The Beatles at the Budakon Tokyo

General DVDS

John Lennon – The Death of a Beatle

John Lennon Through the Looking Glass

Rock Milestones – The Red Album 1962-1966

Rock Milestone – The Blue Album 1967-1970

The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour Memories

The Rutles

Tribute Bands

Bootleg Beatles Concert Tour 2011-2012

Them Beatles 2011 Tour Programme

It Says Here

A free press is something that should be celebrated. Despite the proliferation of news that is available online the sales of newspapers in the UK remain relatively healthy.  

The best-selling of them remains ‘The Sun’, a tabloid that is sadly synonymous with the worst excesses of the more sensationalist end of the market.

A story that the British press, tabloid and broadsheets alike, have been covering recently has been the worrying allegations surrounding Jimmy Savile; the former DJ dying at the age of 84 last October.

The allegations themselves are extremely disturbing. Equally disturbing is the idea that Savile’s predilections for young girls, if indeed he had them, were well known and there was a failure to act upon that knowledge.

The fact that Savile is no longer here to answer these allegations adds a different dimension to the story, but its’ right and proper that the allegations are reported.  

Should the allegations be subsequently proved then Savile can only be posthumously punished through the blackening of his name and reputation. Those organisations though that may have turned a blind eye to them could, and should, be called to account.

It’s a sensitive issue and one that should be covered with balance and be free from hypocrisy.

The latter is a charge that can very easily be levelled against The Sun newspaper.

Their online edition makes reference to Savile’s “sick lust”, “predatory” actions and “depravity”. Emotive terms certainly, but ones that you couldn’t possibly argue weren’t accurate if it found that there is substance to these allegations against him.

What then of my charge of hypocrisy against The Sun?

I apologise for reproducing the image below but it central to my argument.

The cutting shows an image of the singer Charlotte Church, then aged just 15, and makes salacious reference to the breast size of a girl still in her early teens; the paper even refers to her as a child.

Jimmy Savile may well have been guilty of an appalling abuse of trust. It could then be argued that his employers, including the BBC, were complicit in that abuse of trust if they chose to turn a blind eye to it.

Could it not also be argued that The Sun was guilty of an abuse of the free press in publishing that picture of Charlotte Church?

Is it not harder to take their indignation over Savile’s alleged crimes seriously when they themselves thought nothing of drawing attention to the breast size of an adolescent girl much the same age of those allegedly abused by Savile? 

The Culture of Shame

The publication yesterday of the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel revealed the full shocking cover up and manipulation of evidence perpetrated by the South Yorkshire Police.

Their motivation was a simple one, though breath taking in its' mendacity. It was an attempt to shift blame for the appalling disaster from their own failings to the Liverpool fans themselves.

The media were briefed by senior police officers and a local MP that the Liverpool fans, boozed up, had forced open a gate thus causing the fatal crushing. They further claimed that the bodies of the dead were pick pocketed and that the dead and dying, and those attending to them, were urinated on.

Aided and abetted by a complicit right wing media these myths and lies very quickly became the accepted truth in the eyes of public perception. If you tell a lie often enough then almost by default it becomes a perverse version of the 'truth'.

That so many people bought into and accepted this lie without question is indicative of the society that we lived in during the 1980s.

The Prime Minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, famously declared that "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families".

The 1980s was certainly the decade where any notion of collective responsibility was superseded by a "me first, what do I get" attitude.

It was a divisive, bitter decade that viewed the population of huge swathes of Britain as a dangerous underclass.

It was a decade of riots in the streets of Liverpool, London and Bristol.

It was a decade of a bitter industrial dispute that spilled into violence.

It was a decade where being part of large, predominately working class and male, group was synonymous with a perceived criminality.

It was the culture of the decade that sowed the seeds of the Hillsborough Disaster.

If you were attending a football match in the 1980s you were at the very least seen as some kind of threat to public order. That meant being herded into, and then penned within, crumbling football grounds.

When those crumbling football grounds were then found to be also dangerous and quite literally death traps then the logic of the time decreed that it was the fans that were responsible.

Well, they were going to a football match they must have been up to no good. Some might even had a drink beforehand; that just confirms that they had to be to blame.

When you adopt that position, and you have the weight of public opinion behind you, it’s no great leap to then alter statements to not so much blur the lines between fact and fiction but distort them totally.  

That the disaster was allowed to happen in the first place was shameful enough – an institutional failure. The subsequent attempt to deflect blame, hell let’s call it for what it was; a cover up was something that Britain should forever be ashamed of.

While the publication of yesterday’s report was a welcome vindication the apologies from senior politicians and police officers are hollow and largely meaningless. The only small step that can be made to make amends is by making sure that those that really were responsible are brought to justice. 

Shame, Truth and Justice

I think I was about 6 or 7 when I was taken to my first live football match. It was a late summer's evening and the venue was Newlandsfield Park, home of Pollok Juniors.

I can only speculate at the number of games I've seen since then, but it will run well into four figures.

Among those games there have been some great ones, some awful ones and others that have long since vanished from my memory.

One recurring theme from them all is the fact that I went home safe and well afterwards.

Ninety six Liverpool fans who attended their fixture with Nottingham Forrest on April 15^th 1989 didn’t.

Life is fragile and the unfortunate by product of that is tragedy. You shouldn’t, however, end up dead through doing nothing more sinister than attending a football match. You just shouldn’t.

I can, thankfully, only imagine what the events of April 15^th 1989 must have been like for the families of those that died at Hillsborough.

Concern when news of events at Hillsborough first started to filter through. Fear when it became clear just serious it was. And then grief, mind numbing grief, when they learned that their husband, son or daughter was one of those that wasn’t coming home from this football match.

And anger too.

There’s anger with any sudden death. There’s an overwhelming sense of it being, for want of a better phrase,  just not fair. Why my loved one.

There’s a desire too to find someone to blame. Someone must be to blame, mustn’t they? These things don’t just happen.

Imagine then, if you can, when still numbed with grief you are told that those to blame were the 96 dead themselves and their fellow Liverpool supporters.

Within days of the disaster the myths started to grow.  Fuelled by a government who viewed football  fans as an underclass. Who viewed them as merely a public order issue.  Herd them along, pen them in like cattle, with things like comfort and safety very much a minor consideration; assuming they were considered at all.

You attend a football match? Then you must be a drunken thug who deserves to die.

Okay, The Sun newspaper didn’t quite the print the above but their words weren’t that far removed from it.

Their front page banner headline declared ‘The Truth’. A ‘truth’ that had Liverpool fans urinating on the police, pick pocketing the dead and pinned the blame for the disaster firmly and squarely on the shoulders of the Liverpool fans.

Their ‘truth’ was nothing more than a vicious smear that served only to convict the Liverpool fans in the eyes of popular opinion.

Even though the Taylor Report, published in August 1989, sited a failure of police control as the primary cause of the disaster public perception has remained that the Liverpool fans had to be in some way responsible for the disaster.

It is to be hoped that the report compiled by the Hillsborough Independent Panel, published today, will 23 years on finally redress that perception. Hopefully now the extent of the police’s failings and blatant cover up will be known and there for all to see.

The findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel will not have come as surprise to the families of the dead. Nor to anyone whose knowledge of events prior, during and subsequent to the disaster has been gleaned from a source other than this nation’s disgraceful tabloid press.

Today then wasn’t the culmination of the search for the truth, but rather an official confirmation of it. Twenty three years is a long time to wait for that confirmation. Hopefully the wait for the justice that should inevitably follow will not be as long in coming. 

The Black Cloud

It’s been awhile since I posted a blog entry. Previous entries have almost invariably been Beatle or Partick Thistle related. It’s with more than a little trepidation then that I turn to an altogether more serious subject matter. Yes, there are some things more important than Partick Thistle Football Club.

There aren’t many people who have stumbled across my blog so it is tempting to ask why bother blogging in the first place? The simple truth is that although I don’t necessarily have any great flare or talent for it, I find writing relaxing. Typing out a few random thoughts here and there can prove to be quite a cathartic exercise.

And that is something that I’m badly in the need of.

Now I know that I’m a grumpy sod. That’s unlikely to ever change, besides as I’m fond of telling Alison; I’m laughing on the inside.

Having freely confessed to the above I need to admit something else.

For more years than I care to remember I’ve been battling against depression, anxiety and stress related illnesses.

It’s not something that I suffer from all the time; far from it but when I do, as I am right now, it becomes incredibly debilitating.

It’s more than just feeling a bit ‘down in the dumps’ – we all suffer from that from time to time.

It’s as if a huge black cloud descends over you. That black cloud removes any kind of self esteem or self worth that you might have. Criticism is like a knife through the heart, especially when you are deliberately target.

It makes even the simplest of tasks almost unbearably hard. Social interaction becomes extremely difficult.

It’s all too easy to allow that black cloud to envelope you entirely and once you’ve let that happen then you are in real trouble.

I’m fortunate, what I suffer is very mild compared to that of others. I’ve a sympathetic and helpful GP. Medication helps, although it can often leave me feeling drained and devoid of energy, themselves symptoms of the illness in the first place.

Keeping my mind active helps too. Which is why since heading home from work early today suffering the shakes from a particularly bad panic attack, I’ve been busy working away on next Saturday’s Thistle programme.

See, this self obsessed blog entry was really about Partick Thistle all along. 

Victor Spinetti

Just the day after Paul McCartney celebrated his 70th birthday, a landmark that served only to emphasise the passage of time, a link to The Beatles' past and perhaps more significantly, to John Lennon was sadly lost with the news of the death of Victor Spinetti at the age of 82.

Spinetti’s name isn’t as synonymous with The Beatles as say George Martin but his name is written large across Beatles history all the same. He appeared in the first three Beatles films; ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Help!’ and ‘Magical Mystery Tour’.

Spinetti and John Lennon

The story goes that we have George Harrison’s mum to thank for Spinetti being cast in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, with Harrison being attributed to have said; “You’ve got to be in all our films. If you’re not me mum won’t come and see them because she fancies you.” Harrison would also say; ”You’ve got a lovely Karma, Vic”, while Paul McCartney described Spinetti as being “the man who makes clouds disappear”.

Spinetti’s lust for life was such that it prompted John Lennon to declare, when someone offered Victor a joint, “Don’t waste it on Vic, he’s permanently stoned on fucking life.”

Victor Spinetti’s relationship with The Beatles though wasn’t just limited to staring in three of their movies. In particular he had a close relationship with John Lennon. While John occupied a bed next to a pregnant Yoko Ono in Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in November 1962, it was Spinetti that smuggled in cigarettes, Craven A rather a more exotic weed, for John.

It was Victor that collaborated with John on a stage adaptation of Lennon’s ‘John Lennon: In His Own Write’, which was initially ear marked to be performed at Glasgow’s Citizen Theatre but was in fact staged at the National Theatre in London. On the morning of the premiere a gift of a large rubber elephant appeared at Spinetti’s flat, where he and Lennon had spent much time working on the stage adaptation, complete with a note saying ‘I’ll never forget Victor Spinetti says John Lennon.”

It would be wrong, of course, to simply focus on his relationship with The Beatles when recounting Victor Spinetti’s long and successful career. He starred in over 30 films, has a string of TV credits to his name and in the theatre directed productions of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and ‘Hair’.  

A popular man, his death today prompted many tributes including one from Rob Bryden who described Spinetti as “The funniest story teller I've ever met and a lovely warm man."

Victor talking about John Lennon, Hard Day's Night etc at London Beatles Day in March 2010