The latest football book from the ever expanding CQN publishing stable is a long awaited blast from one of the many world class players who were part of the Lisbon Lions of 1967. Celtic’s best ever left back has collaborated with Alex Gordon, a vastly experienced sports writer, to produce a rollicking tale from a football life that was full of adventure, just like Tommy’s own playing style and that of the team that made him famous.
Entitled “All The Best”, the title reflects the fact that Tommy offers these wishes to all his readers, that he is giving of his best in the writing of the book just as he did on the field, with candid comment and surprising views, but, mostly, because Tommy has taken the stable diet of the football memoir- “Who were the best players that you played with and against?”, and taken this to another level
He has listed nine “Best Of” teams in the course of the book: the Lions (of course), Tommy’s best Scotland teammates, the best Celtic players apart from the Lions, a World Football 11 Tommy’s played against, his best teammates from both Nottingham Forest and Dundee, as well as two generations of great Celtic players Tommy has watched as a spectator. There’s even a nod to his time as Albion Rovers’ manager.
Now, those of you used to the lazy format of a football book where not much thought, insight or honesty goes into the exercise, will be very surprised at the level of honesty, brutal in some cases, that goes into the pen pictures of those selected and some who just missed out. Tommy turns an honest spotlight on himself, you find yourself nodding your head in agreement, once you’ve recovered your breath, that is.
For this is a breathless read of a football life lived to the full. The forthright opinions on managers, even those he admired, are very revealing about the amount of dishonesty involved in football. You will be astounded at how these world class football players conducted themselves. If you are expecting to find tales of clean living, utmost professionalism on and off the field, and modern collegiate management, you will be very disappointed in this book. However, if you are looking for searing honesty, interspersed with several hilarious tales, then this is the book for you
It is not the polite memoir of a senior citizen glossing over the bad behaviour of his younger days, it is the “warts and all” tales of a more innocent time, when despite the absence of modern techniques, Scotland managed to rule the world and produce a Golden generation, for a brief period of time. Some of the opinions expressed are candid to the point of scurrilous-ness but the humour that is present in every chapter and every pen picture takes the edge of some of the more boorish behaviour which is recounted. There is no hiding place in sport. Everyone has an opinion and is keen to share it. Add booze to the picture and bad behaviour will inevitably follow,
It is fair to say that, even though I thought I was well acquainted with the details of Tommy’s life and career, there were many incidents that I was hearing about for the first time. Tommy’s description of one of his early team mates at Celtic who made life difficult for him will, first of all, shock you and then have you biting the carpet with laughter. His tale of transfer negotiations with the legendary Jim McLean and with a Ranger’s Director will also have you smiling broadly as Tommy does not miss and hit the wall.
From the Foreword by fellow Lisbon Lion, Bertie Auld, through to the final section, where Tommy fields some cheeky questions from the posters on the Celtic Quick News site, genuine laugh out loud humour is not far from the surface. This is a very funny book and captures the banter that still flows between these football legends.
It is a difficult task to combine such humour with frank honesty and then to maintain readability. In the 12 chapters of the book, you will find details which surprise, shock and amuse you. If you are a Celtic fan of a certain age, you will smile in reminiscence as long forgotten events are re-lived from an insider’s perspective. If you are a football fan at all, you will get an insight into the world of football from the 50s to the 80s from a practitioner and into modern football of the past 3 decades from an informed observer. If you just like to read a good book, this one will make you laugh out loud at many points.
Tommy Gemmell gave all his best for Celtic and Scotland while he played there. He continues to give us all his best in this publication. This is the best football memoir I’ve read in a long time. I am still remembering pieces and chuckling as I type this.
For a short period only you can add to the bundle Tommy is dedicating and signing (below) from the button at the bottom of the page.
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BRTH you had mail Hail Hail Hebcelt
If someone threw asparagus at my mothers habits I’d set in about them annaw.
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull got into terrible trouble with Robert Plant once when (not knowing that Plant was the main/sole lyric writer ) said that Zeppelin’s tunes and his (Anderson’s) lyrics would be a great combination
Little did he know that he meant that Spirit’s tunes and his lyrics would make a great combination.
SFTB
I heard an interview with Ian Anderson, talking about both bands sharing a recording studio around the time of Aqualung. Apparently, Percy wouldn’t have anything to do with Tull, as Anderson had made some throwaway remark in an interview, saying how much he admired Zeppelin, and that they’d be some band if he were writing the lyrics!
Haw Cadizzy!
That’s creepy!
Winning captains
Stunning photographs.
Beatbhoy plagerises caddizys post.
Aye Mothers v Girlfriends/Wives
If you die your Mother will be at your graveside every day making sure you have fresh flowers.
Your girlfriend/wife will be at the dancing! por cierto
Led Zep, Till, Spirit, Randy California all this talk of mediocre bands when the greatest band ever released their new album today.
Here’s an accurate review
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Two years in the making, alternative rock band Coldplay’s new album, essentially a concept piece about Chris Martin’s break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow, has certainly garnered a number of extremely favourable reviews. In today’s harsh critical climate when major groups can expect to be torn to pieces by a fearless music press regardless of the consequences, that’s remarkable indeed. It’s all the more remarkable given that all things considered, Ghost Stories is from its arse to its f***ing elbow, one, long stagnant f***ing pool of premium grade f***ing cockwash! I would rather chew off my f***ing scrotum than ever listen again to this boneless f***ing melange of morose f***ing piss-shit! I would rather eat an entire f***ing yurt, washed down with f***ing beige paint recently shat out of an incontinent yak’s anus! Put it this way; so remorselessly insubstantial is this album that if it were submitted to the f***ing British Homeopathic Association as a f***ing potential remedy, they’d f***ing knock it back, saying: “No good, mate. You’ve over-diluted it, you silly twat!”
Never in human f***ing history, since fish first slithered onto the f***ing land and sprouted limbs has there been a more nondescript f***ing decade than the f***ing Noughties and never has there been a more nondescript f***ing group than those gelatinous c***lords Coldplay! They made Dido sound like Bessie f***ing Smith! They filled the giant f***ing void in pop culture in the early 21st century because they are a giant f***ing void! Somehow, Martin’s knack for trudging up and down a keyboard like a middle aged man in f***ing chinos strolling to the f***ing corner shop to buy the f***ing Daily Express while singing like he’d just been kneed in the f***ing bollocks caught the zeitgeist of the dullest, do-nothing, think-wishfully generation of all f***ing time! In the rock & roll hall of fame they sit near the f***ing exit like a f***ing birch veneer occasional f***ing table! Getting excited about f***ing Coldplay is like getting excited about the f***ing Liberal Democrat Spring conference!
Anyway, Martin got married to f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow, that ghastly, gulping, giraffe-necked, sick-making long drink of carb-averse goop, they created their own f***ing hole in the f***ing ozone layer flying around the world with Martin warbling about how concerned they were about the f***ing environment, spawned a couple of sprogs and saddled them with life-ruining names, promoted every f***ing vapid strain of spiritual, anti-materialist New Age nonsense while raking in the f***ing ackers like whorehounds and then finally “consciously uncoupled”, though it’s a f***ing wonder either of them could stay f***ing conscious in each other’s company at all, given that they’re the two most testicle-achingly f***ing tedious people on earth! And now Chris is sad. He feels like shit. And he’s perfectly conveyed that unremittingly f***ing excremental condition on f***ing Ghost Stories!
So, track one ‘Always In My Head’ sets the f***ing dolorous tone. “I think of you/I haven’t slept.”, whines Martin, while f***ing George, Ringo and Ringo or whoever the f*** the other three are try not to fall asleep at their f***ing instruments. Next up, ‘Magic’. No, sorry, it’s not about actual magic. Tommy f***ing Cooper retrieving the f***ing ace of spades from a pack using a f***ing blindfolded wooden duck, not that. Nothing remotely entertaining. No, as f***ing ever, Chris Martin’s here to suck all the f***ing joy out of the room like a giant f***ing Happiness Hoover! A wan swirl of keyboards, like that pink water you get at the f***ing dentist’s swilling down a f***ing metal hole, and Chris is all about how he f***ing “can’t get over” you know who.
At which point you have to say: For f***’s sake, why, man? Gwyneth Paltrow no longer being in your life is like having a 14 inch long celery stick that’s been stuck up your arse for years surgically removed! You should be f***ing delirious! This album should be a series of f***ing honky-tonk piano-driven upbeat bangers with titles like ‘Wahoo!’ and ‘Thank F*** Almighty, Free At Last!’ and ‘I Don’t Have To Knit My Breakfast No More!’, all accompanied to the sound of six-shooters fired into the f***ing ceiling with both hands! All your f***ing friends hated her, were you not aware of that? But no, Chris is sad, so on we f***ing crawl through the cesspools of f***ing self-pity. “All I know is I love you/so much it hurts.” (yep, that stench coming from Stratford-Upon-Avon isn’t the drains, it’s f***ing Shakespeare shitting himself in his grave). I’d suggest you drown your f***ing sorrows, Chris, but it’d probably be best all round if you f***ing drowned yourself!
Next up; ‘True Love’, to a tune akin to watered down elephant smegma slowly dripping into a f***ing plastic bucket. “I wish you could have let me know/What’s really going on below.” No, kids, he doesn’t mean genitalia. Martin and Paltrow are like 1930s Disney nymphs, they don’t f***ing have genitalia. He means f***ing feelings, the c***. Cue also the worst, truncated f***ing guitar solo in f***ing history – like a dying kitten mewing for help, then remembering that this is a world with f***ing Coldplay in it and deciding not to f***ing bother. Now “Midnight” – and guess what? Chris is alone, alone. I’m not f***ing surprised. Any evening out with him’s gonna be a f***ing brief one, with mates making their excuses and back home in time for f***ing Channel 4 News!
‘Another’s Arms’ begins with an androgynous, anaemic yelp that is quite possibly the whitest moment in all of popular f***ing culture. Shirley f***ing Temple serenading the f***ing Ku Klux Klan with ‘White Christmas’ during a f***ing snowstorm could scarcely be any f***ing whiter. Next ‘Oceans’. Seriously, just f*** off, you insufferable f***ing streak of twatrot! ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’ breaks into a disco house groove but it’s funkless like a f***ing HSBC staff party – “wave your arms in the air, finish your f***ing mineral water and be back at your desks at 7.15 sharp tomorrow morning!” And so the album wends on – imagine Christ, instead of having to carry the f***ing cross to f***ing Calvary having to carry a giant, ten foot long flaccid penis instead – that’s how listening to this f***ing album feels by this stage!
Finally, the f***ing title track itself. Chris wonders if he himself is “just a ghost”. Tell you what, Martin, you woeful f***ing waste of a snail’s time, here’s one way of f***ing finding out – why not run into that f***ing brick wall head first? Twenty times, just to be f***ing sure?
There was another track but the f***ing CD physically f***ing evaporated before I could play it. Coldplay?C***grey, more like! There’s only one f***ing substance on this earth more colourless and full of f***ing nothing than Ghost Stories and that’s f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow’s urine!
HH
Till=Tull
Geordie munro
You’ll be saying I stole it next!
Beatbhoy
indeed it is…but, be fair, it’s not going to keep you awake at night
Hebcelt
Got the mail and the phone message.
I will get back to you — honest!
Geordie Munro
16:41 on 20 May, 2014
“Beatbhoy plagerises caddizys post.”
I intend to sue
Greenpinta
Draw your own conclusions.
If the postman always rings twice then he is looking to get his stamps licked.
Obviously beatbhoy and ole cadizzy have undergone some kind of Vulcan mind meld when they were at Uni the gither.
Hope you don’t mind if I post the following link.
http://www.ncca-uk.org/journey_type/our_journey
We have to beat this monster.
My friends in Celtic,
Slightly off topic, but I mention it because we had a lengthy debate about it a few months ago.
A petition was put forward by a former university lecturer to offer political asylum to Edward Snowden the rector of Glasgow University in an independent Scotland.
A decision has been deferred until after September.
I make no comment on the feasibility or worthiness of this, but the inevitable consequences would be self explanatory in regards to jobs, business and security.
HH, always in Celtic.
Beatbhoy,
Ye did ;)
Similar happened with dbia and Bsr. Too many spending too much time together.
Next your cycles will be aligning :-o
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8pGx_nAwUfU&feature=youtu.be
Game of Thrones Wishaw
Made by my big cousins son
HH
DBBIA
Is ‘Vulcan’ a typo?
Awe naw.
Now thats an album review.
Doesnt sound too bad . Might get it
Geordie Munro
Not at our age they won’t!
Feckin’ roastin’ in here!
clink\o/
16:52 on20 May, 2014
LOL
Thats exactly what I thought
HH
Graffiti on the wall
Zepplin – best cover band ever
Geordie Munro……and now it’s suddenly gone very cold
Clink\o/
16:52 on 20 May, 2014
“Awe naw.
Now thats an album review.
Doesnt sound too bad . Might get it”
Sounds better than they deserve.
….roastin’ again noo
Geordie Munro. . . .and now it’s suddenly gone very cold
Haw Cadizzy!
Stoap that!
sftb
My girlfriend was fed up with the rubbish i was eating and so she put me on that stable diet as well.
I actually loved it and would often say can i hay some mare hen.
John Hughes book ‘Yogi Bare’ now reviewed on The Shamrock blog: http://theshamrockglasgow.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/celtic-book-review-yogi-bare-by-john-hughes/
I’d gladly offer wee Lisa Snowden political asylum in ole Shangri La.
Thunder Road
Your just trying to stir it up ;-)
HH
Cadizzy sues beatbhoy for a decillion Greenock dollars
Awe_Naw surely a link would have sufficed? Hail Hail Hebcelt
One typo leads to a rein of lame horsey punditry.
Hebcelt
Your probably right.
Paul67,
Please remove
HH