I ONCE shared a mic with Alistair Findlay, who's recently published a memoir on his four decades as a social worker.

I envied him. He played for Hibs as a young man and he could speak football to a Scottish audience. You could make the case that any Scottish poet, if they are to speak to a working-class public, needs to speak fitba’.

Findlay was describing how it feels when the “committee men,” who favour “showy bastards,”  select the team. Like a shanked clearance lofted up from the pitch one of his phrases, about when the wrong guys are in charge and you feel your “fate in numpty hands,” stuck in my mind and attached itself to life at large.