He'd served his two-match ban, and it was time to return: Tam Cowan was back on Scotland's national airwaves today with a typical show of chutzpah...and a hint of contrition.
Cowan re-appeared in the hot seat at Off the Ball on BBC Radio Scotland following his ban from presenting the show two weeks ago after the publication of his controversial column about women's football in the Daily Record.
Today, one of the programme's three main talking points was: Regrets, I've had a few, allowing Cowan to say sorry on air, adding: "There's nothing to be gained by offending people...that's fruitless.
"I've made my peace with the Scottish Women's Football Association."
However, he also cracked a number of trademark jokes around the ban and paid a backhanded compliment to the Sunday Herald, which broke the story about his BBC ban two weeks ago, saying: "That kept it away from the large majority of the Scottish public. It's could've gone to a big paper and that would have been terrible, so thank you for the support."
The outdated bile of Tam Cowan
He revealed he had turned down requests to appear on several programmes to discuss the ban, including Newsnight Scotland, Scotland Tonight, and ITV's Loose Women, which he suggested - apparently in jest - was sexist.
Cowan paid tribute to Off the Ball, saying: "The listeners...have been brilliant. It's been a weird and wacky couple of weeks but it's good to be back."
Earlier this week, the BBC lifted his suspension, saying: "We've had several discussions with Tam following his newspaper column and he has made it clear to us that he made a serious error of judgement, for which he has apologised. He has also been reminded of his responsibilities as a broadcaster for BBC Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article