Scottish Comedy FC has acquired the rights to an upcoming best-seller – “The Secret Assistant Manager” – which will tell you what really happens inside Scottish football.
The author has asked us to keep his identity a secret but in coming months he’ll tell it straight from the main man’s mouth, or, technically, straight from the assistant to the main man’s mouth to our correspondent Andy Todd, all about the next chapter of a remarkable 143-year-old story that has spanned the ages.
Hiya Pals,
Some pals say football’s more important than life or death. That’s just silly billy talk. If it was more important than life or death then your gravestone would list how many appearances you made for your club and how many goals you scored. They don’t. Instead they list pointless things like the day you were born. Why do they do that? It’s not like anyone needs to know your birthday when you’re dead?!?
Other pals say football’s a simple game made complicated by managers and their assistants. All I’ll say, pals, is that those pals must be butchers because they’re talking mince. A football team would fall apart without an assistant manager. Who’d tell the players what number to wear? Who’d remind them to tie their shoelaces before they run onto the pitch? Assistant managers are the most important part of football!
There’s one thing however that people say which is true, pals – teams that drinks together DO win together! Which is why I was dead happy when the Boss said we were going to the SECC last Friday: it was pay day so a trip to the SECC could only mean an all day drinking session to help us get back to winning ways!
So, I checked to see what band was playing the SECC that week and, you’ll never guess what, pals, it was none other than The Prodigy – my second favourite band in the whole wide world, after Hootie & The Blowfish, of course. I’ve even got a Hootie tattoo, but I’m not telling you where, pals, that’s between me and my proctologist!
Anyways, on Friday morning (a strange time for a gig, but, The Prodigy are crazy, so it probably makes perfect sense to them) I got my glowsticks, I got my facepaint, and I got ready to smack my [naughty word] up. I was going to Harry Kane it when I had a wee problem.
You see, pals, I had one too many beers on the way to the SECC. Yes, pals, I had a whole two beers. I was well drunk. I didn’t know what I was saying. When the taxi dropped me off at the venue I tried to say to the driver: “Thank you. Keep the change!” but instead I blurted out: “Bring me the head of Jurgen Klopp, he’s a whippet and a fridge magnet, the truth and the light, my first, my last, my everything. But, don’t mention the war!”
What was I saying? I tried again: “I’ve got an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini!”.
One last time: “The Goalie will play for England!”
Bloody hell, what madness was this?!? I was talking nonsense. I didn’t know what was happening, I must have OD’d on those Kestral lagers. I knew that there was no way I could go and see The Prodigy in this condition. So, pals, I decided to hide in the Armadillo until I sobered up. But, you know what, pals, it turned out that all my pals were there too! How funny is that? The Chairman, the Vice-Chairman and the Boss were standing on a stage addressing a crowd of people dressed in blue. I didn’t know what was going on so I hid at the back.
The Chairman was the first to talk. He said: “In January, I kin promiss you this: we will buy playas to hep us win in Europe!”
I drunkenly shouted: “We won’t be buying any from Celtic then!” Sadly, no one, heard me, even though that was a good one, pals, wasn’t it? Yer pal can be funny when he wants to be!
The Chairman said “I kin promiss you, we are the richest club in the world!”
But, then someone asked him why the WiFi in the stadium didn’t work and the Chairman muttered something about it working fine it just needed to be switched off then on again. Someone else then asked why the club wasn’t in the latest version of FIFA and I couldn’t stop my drunken mouth and shouted “Why aren’t we in Super Mario either?” Luckily, no one noticed me.
Finally, the Chairman said he was going to give money to the Fat Shopkeeper down the road. I thought that was nice of him. It’s Christmas and you should always give money to those less fortunate than yourself – and there’s no one less fortunate than the Fat Shopkeeper. I heard he doesn’t even pay his staff because he’s so poor!
The Boss then stood up and said something but I’d fallen asleep. When I woke up, everyone was gone. Even The Prodigy. I’d missed the whole show! Oh well, on the way home, I put ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ by Hootie on repeat and all was right in the world again because the next day we won! I told you, pals, the team that drinks together, wins together. I just wish I could have been there to join them. Oh well, maybe next time!
Yer pal,
The Secret Assistant Manager
As told to Andy Todd.
He’s a part-time comedian and in 2014, he supported Eddie Izzard in ‘Please Don’t Go’, Izzard’s show about Scottish independence and worked with BBC Radio Scotland as a weekly guest on Referendum Tonight.
