PIPE Major Vera Marshall, of Braemar Girls’ Pipe Band, Coatbridge, was all smiles as she met a boxing legend in September 1963.
Charles “Sonny” Liston, the world heavyweight champion, had flown into Renfrew Airport to take part in a three-round exhibition bout at Paisley, staged by Peter Keenan. He gave Vera a “long and lingering embrace” before taking over the baton and conducting his way through Scotland the Brave. He entered into the spirit of things by gingerly grasping a set of bagpipes and blowing into them, while somebody placed a tammy on his head. Try as he might, he could not produce a note, much to the crowd’s delight. “This is harder than fighting,” he said, before finally coaxing the pipes into a long and discordant wail.
“It had taken him,” observed the man from the Evening Times, “twice as long as it took to knock out Floyd Paterson in their recent world title fight.”
The exhibition bout saw Liston “amiably cuffing” sparring partner, Foneda Cox, though the evening’s real business was the Empire flyweight clash between champion Walter McGowan and Jamaican Kid Solomon, which McGowan won.
The Scots boxer died earlier this year, aged 73.
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 here