Much has been made recently by the Old Firm about their swelling ranks of ''celebrity'' supporters. I must say, though, I have found the Rangers camp's approach to this more than a mite dubious.

It has been claimed by more than one Rangers faction, for example, that such men as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, two legends of golf, are Rangers fans.

May I just refine and maybe clarify this claim a little? It is utter tosh.

I have had the pleasure of meeting both Mr Palmer and Mr Player over a number of years at an annual golf tournament staged at Augusta National, and neither of them, I can vouch upon Scripture, is a Rangers fan. I do know, however, how this baloney has blown up.

Palmer, that scion of sport, has placed his trust for a number of years in the Florida-based former Glaswegian accountant, Alastair Johnston, the top beak at IMG who took over Arnie's affairs from the late Mark McCormack.

Johnston, lately made a Rangers director in an altogether separate wheeze, surely is a Rangers fan, but Arnie's allegiance, I have to say, is a little threadbare.

A number of years ago, Johnston, for a bit of a laugh, placed some of his Rangers shares in Palmer's name, thus making the old codger a kosher Ibrox shareholder. But Arnie, I don't believe, has even heard of John Greig, let alone Jim Denny or Colin ''Bomber'' Jackson.

Arnie a Gers fan, M'lud? I think not.

As for Gary Player, this ''Rangers supporter'' scam is much the same. A good pal of Player, and a man who sometimes caddied for him on tour, is Dave King . . . the same bloke whom David Murray got to invest in Rangers four years ago, and who has spent the last 18 months being chased for fraud by the South African authorities. King has also blithely spoken about his pal, Player, being a Rangers fan, but the wheeze is total hogwash. When I asked Player at Augusta two years ago about his Rangers allegiance, he began to chirrup like a high-pitched South African parrot, though I didn't believe he actually knew what he was talking about.

''Ah yes, the Rangers, the mighty Rangers.'' declared Player,

suspiciously reminding me of a

circus chimp. I thought . . . not for the first time, Gary, you are talking

nonsense.

I hope this helps clarify at least a couple of these dodgy ''celebrity Old Firm fans'' claims . . .

Another fine mess on the way Corky?

Increasingly these days I am finding it impossible not to get worked-up and ever more worried about my good friend and occasional badminton partner, Ian ''Corky'' McCall.

Corky is a splendid chap, but in the name of football, what a lather he gets himself into. At Parkhead last Saturday, he was like a cat on a hot tin roof beside his dugout as Celtic gradually speared and then swept past his Dundee United team.

And then - dear oh dear, as if we've not had enough of them - came another Corky blast at a Scottish referee. ''I suppose if you've got 60,000 shouting for a penalty, you've got to give it,'' the United manager declared, clearly impugning the Parkhead ref-eree, Ian Fyfe, who had awarded Celtic a late penalty. That very morning I had just read of Corky stumping up a (pounds) 250 SFA fine for an earlier outburst, and here, surely, was another cheque about to be written.

Then, begads, came Corky's polemic on Tuesday about foreign referees being the answer for SPL matches at Ibrox and Parkhead, in which he traduced our Scottish refs yet again. ''I don't believe these two clubs need any help to get results against the rest of us . . . referees from abroad are the answer,'' quoth Corky sounding like a latter-day Ludovic Kennedy. Why . . . this will surely mean another (pounds) 250 fine.

As I've told Corky, my great regret at all this intemperance is that, at this rate of pay, he could be sponsoring entire African villages instead of lining the SFA's pockets.

I do wish he would becalm himself.

Why Rangers are

the business

On the increasingly excellent Lunchtime Sportscene programme last Saturday,

I was both thrilled and intrigued by the interview Auntie conducted with her own business editor, Jeff Randal, who was at Pittodrie for the Aberdeen-Rangers game as a guest of the Dons.

Randal was once the sports

editor of the Sunday Times, so he knows what is going on in football. Add to this the fact that he is now the Beeb's man for applying a

marvellous Cockney grasp to

economic affairs, and Randal is just the man to talk about football's

current plight.

But it wasn't this that most intrigued me about Randal's interview with Rob McLean. Instead, it was that great taboo of Scottish sports journalism which he

flagrantly flouted, blithely telling McLean and the nation that he was, in fact, a Rangers fan.

I've written before about this sorry subject, and I wasn't half chuckling when Randal revealed his allegiance. Proclaiming such love in the media up here for either Rangers or Celtic is apparently a bit like owning up to being a member of the British National Party.

A confirming corollary of this is also true: in Scotland you can hardly get sports hacks who support Airdrie, Falkirk, Montrose, or some other largely doomed club to shut up about their fanship.

No-one doubts their allegiance, but it is the subtext, of not being either a Rangers or Celtic fan, which is far more important to them.

It is their way of yelling: ''I'm clean. I'm clean.''

I can't imagine anyone from my own patch, as Randal did last Saturday, happily blurting out that he was a Rangers fan while discussing Scottish football. On the other hand, if it is Airdrie or Dumbarton someone happens to support . . . Lord, can they ever be quiet about it?

''Clean. Clean.''

Spinning a line in

back-page tosh

No wonder a wiser public laughs increasingly at some of the nonsense on the back pages. My favourite tabloid this week referred to that incident when a bloke threw a notepad at Mark Hateley as ''mayhem at Pittodrie.'' Words like ''moron,'' ''cretin,'' and ''evil thug'' were then used in the context of this incredible, unbelievable incident. Er . . . right.

Then we had Celtic's Alan Thompson being ''targetted'' by Berti Vogts, a piece of fiction from the FIFA fall-out which left even the perennially perplexed Wee Berti scratching his head.

Every time I rammy with someone over such guff the same old gag is always wheeled out: ''Yeh, but it's a line, a flier . . . so what?'' When genuine football stories, tabloid or broadsheet, are then run, they find themselves tarnished by all this tosh.

Pity, that.