ANDY Murray would be the first person to say he thinks my knowledge of football is really poor. But I actually love following it. With the time I spend travelling on the tour, or doing my day job at the LTA in London Monday to Friday, I am not back in Edinburgh that much. But the need to ensure sufficient family time not withstanding, how good is it just to turn on Soccer Saturday and watch Charlie Nicholas chewing the fat with the rest of the panel? And maybe put a little accumulator on and see what comes in?

The tennis side is a real family affair for me. My wife Laura was a good national level player in Scotland, my sisters-in-law have played Wimbledon, they got to around 300 in the WTA rankings, my father in law is a full time tennis coach, as are my two brothers Toby and Gary. One thing we don’t have in common, though, is that I ended up a Celtic fan while my two brothers favour Rangers. How did that happen? Good question.

My dad Ronnie was born, raised and brought up in Parkhead. He was the lead guitarist of a band that were pretty popular in the 1960s in Scotland, the Beatstalkers. They did some tours with stars like David Bowie and played Glasgow Green to tens of thousands of people.

Incidentally, the musical gene bypassed me. It is now with the eldest of my three children Daniel - I’ve also got a 7-year-old called Olivia and a four-year-old called Benjamin - who has got himself really into playing the bagpipes. He is darn good at it I have to say. We’re going to trying to save money at the LTA so the next time we have got a home tie at the Emirates Arena so to save the piping budget he can come out and do it!

Anyway, my dad went to all the Celtic matches as a boy and played a little bit with Celtic Boys’ Club, while my mother was born and raised in Castlemilk. Religion didn’t come into it but both kind of came from different sides of the fence and for whatever reason I started preferring the Celtic route. Perhaps it was because I saw it in my dad, and I would be the one more than the other boys spending a bit more time watching football with him.

Who were my idols? I really enjoyed watching Paul McStay playing, both for Celtic and Scotland, because I used to go and watch Scotland matches with my dad too. Henrik Larsson obviously stands out - his work ethic was amazing - and Lubo wasn’t too bad to watch either.

I spoke to Martin O’Neill when the Davis Cup team won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards in 2015 in Belfast, and he said his door was open any time I wanted a talk. I haven’t done it yet but at some point I will call in these favours. One of my neighbours in Edinburgh is Michael O’Neill, who is a proper nice guy doing a damn good job with his national team so I get to see him a little bit and chat to him too.

If I can get to a Celtic game these days then I can, I am fortunate to get a few invites. A friend of mine who I knew from way back, Michael Nicholson, is now the company secretary there, and we only reacquainted ourselves when we went to Celtic Park with the Davis Cup team to do a crossbar challenge.

Stuart Armstong, Gary Mackay Steven and Ronny Deila were all involved in that crossbar challenge and we reciprocated with Gary and Stuart, who are really nice guys. We invited them in to the Emirates Arena to one of our practice sessions but they picked the wrong one because they came in when Dom ‘the Bomb’ Inglot was practising his serve.

Gary gave it a go trying to return a body serve from Dom Inglot at around 140mph which very nearly ended up ruling him out for several months! But they were fair game, so I take my hat off to them, for putting their bodies on the line.

Tennis is huge now, Andy has transformed the whole landscape, where people tune in on Sky Sports to watch the likes of him playing semi-finals from places like Indian Wells. We were lucky because we had Tim Henman and Greg Rusesdski who propelled us up the way, then Andy really picked up the baton and went even further with it.

As much as people are fascinated with tennis in this era, I am fortunate to meet some other very interesting people from a variety of sports. For instance I got to know Justin Rose a little bit while I was at the Olympics in Rio and I went to dinner with England Rugby Union coach Eddie Jones during Wimbledon. They were both great guys - Jones was very open, straight talking, and you can see he is right at the cutting edge of innovative thinking. We all get a bit caught up in our own sporting world but he referenced a number of sports which have helped him increase his knowledge.

You are privileged to get some great seats during this job, for instance me and Kyle Edmund were virtually pitch side at the Camp Nou this year for a 7-1 win for Barcelona against Osasuna. I have been to a few matches with Andy too, at Easter Road, maybe when he was around 14 or 15. I went with the whole clan to the CiS Cup final in 2004 when they lost to Livingston. That was a sore one.