M Y brief encounters with Tam Cowan have always been pleasant.
The first time we met he told me how hard he worked to keep his joke larder stocked; rising early and trawling the newspapers for topical material. Away from the public gaze he is an intelligent, perhaps even sensitive, man.
A fortnight ago I was in Spain when my mobile phone started to vibrate vigorously. Just 36 hours earlier I'd been at Motherwell's Fir Park, reporting on Scotland's women beating Bosnia-Herzegovina 7-0. That night the players and coaching staff were, understandably, elated.
If Bosnia and the Faroe Islands aren't the toughest opponents they will have to face, the side is developing a fast moving, quick passing game which is both pleasing on the eye and effective. Fourteen goals scored and top of the group after two World Cup qualifying games tells its own story.
When the texts enquired if I had read Cowan's "disgusting" column I felt sure they must be exaggerated. A quick check online and I couldn't have been more wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer rankness of the piece.
The reference to "snatches" was just the crudest of a torrent of low blows. The players were blokes. The visiting goalkeeper "put the baws into Bosnia". On any number of levels the column was grossly hurtful to the players and offensive to women in general.
Cowan regarded the match as a "turgid spectacle" - he's entitled to that view, but it was totally at odds with the paying spectators who gave the Scottish players a standing ovation at the end. For reasons which may be complex, Cowan patently loathes women's football.
What the Motherwell funnyman also appears to loathe is one of his paymasters covering the sport. He tore into BBC Alba for having the temerity to broadcast the game, and also Radio Scotland for affording it live commentary. Cowan found this "incredible". I think we can presume this wasn't one of his gags.
His diatribe must have horribly embarrassed the Motherwell chief executive Leeann Dempster. She was delighted when Fir Park was chosen to host the World Cup qualifiers and is transforming Motherwell into a genuinely inclusive, community club.
The celebrity supporter wrote about "torching" and "cleansing" the stadium because it had hosted a women's match. That's half the population eliminated then.
And all this before we come to the "blokes" and their families. One of these is John Beattie, the father of Scotland central defender Jenny. One can only imagine what the Radio Scotland presenter and former rugby international felt about having his daughter and her talented team-mates traduced in this manner.
What is it about some men that they queue up to pillory women's football? There was nothing new about Cowan's attack other than the jaw-dropping unpleasantness of it.
Had he watched the programme on BBC Alba immediately after the Bosnia game, an excellent documentary on the history of women's football in Scotland, Cowan would have heard Richard McBrearty, the curator of the Hampden museum, explain how Scottish newspapers have been denigrating women kicking a ball for well over a hundred years. It seems to threaten a certain type of man in a way which women playing tennis or running a marathon doesn't.
To cover their prejudices, these men go on the attack and claim that giving space to women's football is pandering to political correctness. If that applied across all sports we might never have heard of Liz McColgan, Yvonne Murray or Rhona Martin. The Scotland women's team is the 20th best in the world and rising; that should be celebrated, not suffocated.
Hostility has been a constant companion of women's football. The game was actively suppressed by the Scottish FA from the early 1920s to the early 1970s. Matches were banned at the grounds of member clubs and it took serious pressure from Uefa and the European Union for that act of spite to be reluctantly rescinded.
The SFA kept women's football at arm's length for a further 25 years, and it was only when Stewart Regan and Campbell Ogilvie took over the reins that the Association finally treated the sport in a remotely acceptable manner. Those associated with women's football have every reason to be resentful, yet somehow rise above every insult.
Had this 80-year blockage of the sport's evolution not occurred, who knows how popular women's football might now be. Yet ill-informed commentators use small crowds and utterly irrelevant comparisons with men's football as further sticks with which to beat a soft target.
Cowan sneered at the size of the attendance at Fir Park - 1060. Despite their illustrious history, Motherwell's own attendances, bolstered by visiting fans, only average around 5000. The Bosnia game was held on a Thursday night at a new venue, making it almost impossible for families outwith the area to attend. It was also live on television.
In Germany, 46,000 people turned up in June to watch a friendly between the hosts and Japan. Unlike Scotland there is huge media interest in women's football - even the dimmest might see the correlation between that and healthy crowds. It is to BBC Scotland's credit that they covered the Bosnia-Herzogovina game so comprehensively. It was the first time they have done so, and it indicates a welcome change of attitude towards women's sport.
For one of their high-profile presenters, whose fees are partly met by female television licence payers, to be so publicly hostile to that coverage simply beggars belief. For that reason alone, he deserved to be suspended. Yet despite all of the above, and his blatant sexism, I hope Cowan will learn from the experience.
It was a nasty and lazy piece of writing - but I don't believe Cowan the person is either. He has been widely condemned, is fortunate to have retained his BBC job and it's time to move on.
If some people don't like women's football then fine, but spare us the bile. For the rest of us a successful Scotland football side is something that can be cheerfully celebrated.
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