Not Such A Wee Sweary

Long, long ago in another galaxy, as some of you may know, I wrote television reviews. These days I'd be hopeless at doing it as my entire television viewing of the past seven days has consisted of the following: Valladolid v Barcelona (La Liga), Scunthorpe v Man City (FA Cup), Paul Merton in Europe, Milan v Inter (Serie A), St.Mirren v Rangers (SPL), Inter v Juventus (Coppa Italia), Algeria v Egypt (African Cup of Nations), Mock The Week, Rab C Nesbitt and Hamburg v Wolfsburg (Bundesliga), plus the highlights of Australia beating Pakistan in a couple of one day cricket internationals. A distinct lack of variety I think.

Of course I could turn into one of those BBC loathing, give-me-my-licence-fee-back types, but I've listened to the radio on the way home from work each night and that usually means P.M on Radio Four.

The highlight for me of that viewing schedule wasn't any of the on-field action nor any of the comedy shows, it was the St.Mirren fans during the televised clash (as they say on TV) with the current SPL Champions. As most people know Rangers are the most disliked club in Scotland, their supporters behaviour when away from Scotland has led to international dislike and their constant parading of their allegiance to Queen and country gets up the noses of every football supporter who doesn't have an liking for the Govan club. Well, whoever was responsible for the sighting of one of the crowd microphones on Wednesday night must have been either having a big laugh or hanging his head in shame/embarrassment. Viewers were treated, if treated is the corrective adjective, to ninety minutes of the finest swearing ever heard on British television.

St.Mirren fans must have set a new world record for the number of times they could say the word 'wanker' during a fifteen minute spell at the start of the second half, their use of the words, 'you fuck', 'you're fucked' or 'fucking' brought to mind the car rental scene in the Steve Martin/John Candy film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. They managed to use those five words as verbs, nouns, adjectives, transitional verbs, pronouns and found some uses for them that can't be found in my dictionary of current English usage. Each syllable, word and phrase brought loud and clear into the living rooms of a nation, or at least the few thousand football fans who weren't watching the Rooney show or Everton beat Sunderland.

Watching the coverage of the SPL on Sky does have one major advantage over the coverage of the Premiership, Aly Douglas. Aly used to work on Rangers TV which for some reason precludes her appearing on screen whenever Celtic are playing. The dynamics of the studio set-up whenever she is on screen are interesting as well, from a purely nerdy point of view you understand. Aly is invariably shown at the start of the show sitting on a stool wearing a dress and heels, although she does occasionally wear trewsers (as they are called in local parlance) whilst her co-host for Rangers matches, Neil McCann, is only ever shown from the waist up. Some might say this is sexist, but I have a feeling it is the result of a health and safety directive in case Neil has been googling Aly's photographs before appearing in front of camera. Here she is preparing for another two hours surrounded by sweaty men.

Would you believe it, Aly is wearing St.Mirren colours!