We don’t have too many claims to fame here at NTV Mansions, but this was the day we made the back page of a national tabloid. OK, it was only the Daily Mail, but we were there nonetheless.
On the morning of the 1995 Scottish Cup final when Celtic were due to play Airdrie you can imagine how upset we all were when we realised our pen pictures of the Airdrie team had offended then Diamonds manager Alex MacDonald. So incensed was the former Ibrox hit man that he brought along a copy of the fanzine to let his players read it before the game to “fan the flames of passion” (exclusive this was, by Gordon Simpson).
We could only picture the bemused look on Kenny Black’s face at being called upon to read anything more complicated than a yellow card or the Beano. “If the players can’t take anything out of it they must be dead from the toes up,” fumed MacDonald.
“If it was left to people like him,” ranted NTV, “football would consist of several hundred young men trying to boot a severed head from one village to the next.”
Obviously hurt and demoralised by their slagging in print, the Airdrie players – those that could read – were pronounced dead from the toes up at about 4.45 that afternoon.
ntvcelticfanzine.com 