Archie Macpherson

I admit that ChatGPT could possibly make a better fist of assessing the Scottish Cup final than this writer who is burdened by historical prejudices and conventional wisdom which indicate that Inverness Caley Thistle are travelling to Glasgow merely to be sacrificial lambs in the middle of a colourful green and white pageant.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento won three World Cups and scored a remarkable 643 goals in 659 games.

Archie Macpherson runs the rule over climate change, corruption and the lurid legacy of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Ten years after Celtic had lifted the European Cup in Lisbon in 1967, I watched Liverpool win the trophy for the first time in Rome.

LISBON is imperishable. The memories of that unique day will simply be amplified by the sad passing of Billy McNeill, and the echoes of triumph will still resound.

Alex McLeish and Theresa May may now suffer a sense of solitude in this coming week, that could bear comparison with Alexander Selkirk’s enforced marooning on that desert island. Of course there will be more people buzzing around a Scotland manager and a prime minister, than there ever was on that dot in the ocean, but I believe their kind of loneliness will be more difficult to endure than that of a man listening solely to the screeching of seagulls. As the brilliantly funny, but nevertheless chronic depressive Robin Williams once said: "The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone."

READING the warring dispatches between Ibrox and Pacific Quay simply brings to my ear the sound of distant gunfire.

At a time such as this you feel that any words you can compose about Hughie will fall way short of what he deserves by the very standard of writing that he himself created.

The Wembley bus, packed with supporters, always left from opposite the window of the room I was born in. In the 40s and 50s it was a biennial ritual to hang out of the window and wave a saltire as it wound its way down Shettleston Road like a troop-carrier sending our loved ones to the front. It seemed we were about to test our national virility. I could never separate this from the politics that surrounded me then.

As someone who suffered convulsion-like symptoms as a kid when I heard that Belfast Celtic had beaten Scotland 2-0 in New York in 1949, my pain threshold watching any Scottish defeat became lower than that of someone watching Bambi’s mother die.