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Stuart Cosgrove is head of programmes at Channel 4's Nations and Regions department, a columnist with the Daily Record, an author, a former media editor of NME, and even an Honorary Professor at the University Of Stirling - but most of us know him best as the dyed-in-the-wool Saints fan who presents BBC Radio Scotland's true-fan phone-in show Off The Ball.
At the tail end of last season, with Saints in freefall out of the SPL and a crucial relegation battle against Hibs on the cards, blueheaven headed through to Edinburgh for a chinwag with the man himself...
Which would you prefer - Saints for the Champions League or Scotland for the World Cup?
Oh god - that's a difficult one but definitely I'd go with Saints for the Champions League out of the two. I'm an absolutely diehard Scotland fan and I've been to a lot more big Scotland games abroad than I have with Saints, but what was really special about Monaco was that you saw what it meant to a whole lot of Saints fans from all over the world, and the different generations.
Even if Saints got to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, it would mean that Saints had won the Scottish championship for the first time ever, and Saints would be in the greatest club tournament in the world so I'd have to put that first. If Scotland got to the World Cup final, all it would mean is that they'd qualified via a group and not actually won anything yet. Champions League would definitely be my dream scenario. But we are dreaming here.
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Stuart celebrates Saints' return to the top flight in 1997
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Is it true that you were lifted at Tannadice for being drunk, but had the fine reduced because Saints had been relegated?
That was the most bizarre thing ever, and it wasn't even a Saints game. What happened was that I was up from London at the time - it was New Year and there were always bottles around so we'd had a good drink. It was one of those days where you got halfway to the game and it was called off, and we were heading for Raith Rovers.
So the Saints game was off but we still kept on drinking and detoured to Dundee. There was a Perth guy who owned the Tay Bridge Bar in Dundee so we went into his bar and it was New Year so we were drinking and drinking.
By the time we got to Tannadice it was ten past three and we got out of this mini-van taxi thing, all reeking of drink, and the polis just said "right - you, you, you - here" and we all got nicked. One of my mates got off because he was a diabetic and had a diabetic tag on him so they kept the rest of us in. The most curious thing in the world is that they all ended up in the PA and I got away!
We were in the cells for the weekend in Dundee and the duty solicitor came down and they started to do us in alphabetical order so I was first. Come the next day, it's still officially a holiday so the press weren't back or anything - so they got me up first and the Judge said "you were apprehended against the Scotland football act (or whatever it's called) entering Tannadice Stadium whilst drunk. How do you plead?" "Guilty," I said.
He then said "you were also singing songs about St Johnstone Football Club who were not even playing on the day - can you explain this?" I just said "Och, I was a wee bit drunk and our game was off." "How did your team do this season," he said. "Well they were actually relegated," I replied. "You've suffered enough, ten pound fine!".
A big roar went up in the court, but the next guy thought "I'll try this trick" and the other three guys went through it but they got fined £30 so I got a wee bonus. By this time the journo from the Evening Telegraph was back and ran the headline, "Saints Fan Has Suffered Enough". Best thing that's ever happened to me in Dundee!
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Tam Cowan... Harder than Aggie?
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Who would win a fight between Tam Cowan and Aggie Moffat?
Who would win a fight? Aggie, easily. Tam's a fanny, he would run away. In fact I've seen them square up to each other when we're up at McDiarmid Park.
The sad thing is that he's actually got a soft spot for Saints, even though he does the banter and the 'farmer' jokes - but the thing about it is, when we go to the game today, we'll be going with another guy called Tam. They've both performed exponentially well against Scottish goalkeepers - at Roddy Grant's testimonial our Tam scored a hat-trick against Kevin Cuthbert and Tommy Ower scored in the schools cup final - a hat-trick against Jimmy Blyth, the goalie who ended up at Coventry City.
The fact that he's scored a hat-trick against a St Johnstone keeper is something I'll never hear the end of.
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When you were working in London, how on earth did you manage to get up to Ayr United for a midweek game?
It's only right that I visit Ayr to speak to young Producers there. If that happens on a Wednesday night then so be it.
The curious thing about it is that at the upper end of Channel Four there's actually a bit of a competition now - Rob Woodward, who is head of 4 Ventures, who are in charge of E4, FilmFour and our other ventures, had come to us from the investment bank Warburg, and the first day we were in there, it was one of these slightly tense board meetings. Because it's the board and the Chief Exec and Chairman is there, even though I'm a senior manager, you kind of wait until you're spoken to until you do your bit. This guy says, in a really posh voice, "so what do you think of Eddie Annand?".
He's a big Ayr United fan. I went to the Hibs cup game with him and he comes up almost every second Saturday to see Ayr as well. So we go into wee huddles on board away days talking about why James Grady cannae hack it!
What do you think of SPL TV then?
I think it's a really difficult one because in a way, their hand has been forced because Sky won't give them any more money. Sky's not as cash rich as it was four or five years ago - and Sky has already got the cup with the BBC so they can still advertise themselves as the 'home of Scottish football' and all that. So I think that what's happened is that Roger Mitchell has had to go away and think up a different scenario - they always had a Plan A and Plan B to try and force Sky's hand, but now running their own channel seems to be the likely one.
They had a fight on Tuesday - and it's a funny story - but they're down to choosing which companies will run the channel, how the subscription will work and all that, so they're taking it very seriously, they are down to two companies now.
Apparently one of the companies who were knocked out was STV, or SMG as they are now, and by all accounts they were seething that they hadn't got through to the final, so they'd done all the pitch to this company and they'd said "any questions?". Chris Robinson, the Pieman, got up and started asking the most technical questions like "do you propose to film this on DigiBeta or DigiBeta Digital Plus," and clearly SMG had said to him, "ask these questions" so he'd read through them like it was a school report!
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at some of these meetings because of some of the characters around the room. I hope it goes ahead for a whole lot of reasons but I've got to declare an interest because it helps my work if it goes ahead. The job I do is about commissioning and sustaining small independent companies in Scotland to make television, so if one of them gets this huge contract for Scotland then I've got a work-connected reason for wanting it to go ahead.
As a fan there's a kind of dubious-ness about it, and if I'm a fan then I'll get right into it...
We've often thought that there should be no Scottish football on TV at all, because if there was no money, all the foreigners would disappear, the Old Firm would disappear and people would start going back to games...
Oh I'd love to see them disappear tomorrow. It's a pity that it never materialised and probably never will but it would have been great. Imagine starting the SPL with 12 or 14 clubs where 8 of the clubs had a reasonable chance of winning the thing? Look at it, we've had a crap, crap season but we beat Livingston 3-0, a Livingston team with a few players who played for Saints - and you turn round and say on a good season, when Sturrock was there, you'd have probably felt "we can win this league" if Celtic and Rangers weren't there, or at least have a good season.
continued...
In Part 2 of our interview, Stuart talks table-tennis, Little & Large, Mickey Weir, Perth panto, Mark Hateley's dress sense, Mabel Townsley's lucky white heather, and Keiran McAnespie's socks.
Interview: David Low
Stuart Cosgrove is the author of "Hampden Babylon: Sex and Scandal in Scottish Football", which is available to buy on-line here.
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