SOMEWHERE in Glasgow – or perhaps further afield? – there's an 18-year-old whose name includes all the names of the Rangers team. Not just any Rangers team, either. This was the Rangers of 1999, the domestic treble winners, of Lorenzo Amoruso, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Rod Wallace.

Thus the lad has this mouthful to live with: Lionel Sergio Lorenzo Colin Giovanni Barry Ian Jorge Gabriel Stephane Rod. His father strangely omitted to tell the boy’s mother at the time. Six weeks after the deed she was still trying to come to terms with it.

This was one of the news items that kept Scots intrigued or amused in the first weeks of the year, prior to the launch in early February of the Sunday Herald.

Scotland was looking forward to its first Parliament in three centuries. A leader in our sister paper, The Herald, said: “Welcome to 1999. It will be a truly historic year for Scotland”, noting that elections would be taking place in less than five months’ time. Little did we know what path those elections would begin to pave for this nation.

Political commentators were already musing about the electoral fortunes of the SNP – or the ‘one-man band’, as some had it. The Herald’s Scottish political editor, Murray Ritchie, said the SNP would be put under greater pressure than at any time in their history. “Unlike Labour, which can muster the overwhelming firepower of the British state … not to mention vast spending from the trade unions, the SNP must face the enemy in classic Scottish fashion – being nimble and clever, using the thrust of the Nationalist rapier to dodge the slashing Labour broadsword.”

Cabinet papers released in early 1999 under the 30-year rule revealed that Scotland could have had its own Parliament almost three decades earlier “with the apparent approval of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, had it not been for the dogmatic stance taken by Scottish Secretary, Willie Ross.”

Scotland – and the UK – looked on askance as the Euro was launched. Mike Tyson was sent to prison for assault, King Hussein of Jordan died, Bill Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial, Eminem released the Slim Shady LP and Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan is charged with treason in Ankara, Turkey.

Back on the football beat, Dick Advocaat’s team took on Celtic in a rousing New Year derby. Alan Stubbs put Dr Jozef Venglos’s Celtic in front. Gabriel Amato and Rod Wallace replied for Rangers, but Henrik Larsson made it 2-2. Rangers finished the game on 44 points, with Celtic 10 points behind in third. (Rangers, a month later, would be revealed as 14th in the table of the world’s 20th wealthiest clubs, with a turnover of £31.6 million). How times change.

The start of the year saw gales scouring Britain; an elderly man was killed in Cramond, Edinburgh. Glasgow was preparing to usher in its year as UK City of Architecture and Design, the launch marked by city buildings being lit up in what was described as a “dialogue of light”.

There was controversy over the feared clean-up costs of the former BAE Royal Ordnance site at Bishopton. The Herald reported that it might cost between £100 million and £300 million to make the 2,600-acre safe for redevelopment and that the process might take three generations to complete.

Scotland’s health minister, Sam Galbraith, accused Scots doctors of “scaremongering” over the pressures on hospitals caused by emergency admissions.

Up north, RAF Lossiemouth welcomed the return of Tornado crews who had spearheaded Britain’s bombing raids against Iraq. The declared aim of the Cruise missile and bombing sorties was to “degrade” Saddam Hussein’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction. Those were the fantasy WMD that never existed but helped Tony Blair take the nation into an illegal bloody war.

A campaign was launched to highlight Ian Stewart, from Pittenweem, “a forgotten Scot who founded the Rolling Stones”. Stewart, who wasn't hip enough to be allowed to continue in the band, had died in 1995.

There was a probe into alleged sleaze in South Lanarkshire and there were allegations of malpractice surrounding Labour in the Glasgow Govan seat in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections. Margaret Cook, former wife of Labour’s Foreign Secretary, Robin, published a book in which she claimed that he was a heavy drinker and serial adulterer. Senior Labour politicians were reported to be closing ranks around their beleaguered colleague.

It was announced that 450 jobs were to be axed at the Wrangler jeans factory in Camelon, Falkirk, at the same time as it was disclosed that 200 would go at Mitsubishi Electric in Silicon Glen.

Scottish miners paid tribute to the former Scottish NUM president Mick McGahey, who died aged 74, at the end of January.

Scottish football fans probably raised an ironic cheer or two when Glenn Hoddle, the head coach of the England team, was sacked after he made remarks about disabled people in an interview revealing that he believed that the “disabled, and others, are being punished for sins in a former life.”

A couple of other news items from those weeks still seem familiar today, 18 years after they were written.

A poll revealed that only six per cent of Scotland’s leading firms thought that independence would be good for business, while 75 per cent took the view that it would create problems. And mobile phones, it was reported, were becoming the new pest in school classrooms.