LINDSAY HAMILTON has the answer to the existential question of our time. No, not the one about Covid-19 portending the apocalypse, it's another apocalypse we're talking about here.
Since last March, Hamilton has been running her own football trips. The Glasgow Football Tour leaves George Street every Saturday at 12.30 bound for Celtic Park, Hampden, Cathkin Park, Ibrox and Firhill. For almost a year, there has been one question that recurs.
“'You're a historian, is Rangers a new club?'” laughs Hamilton. “I get that all the time. I'll say I'm not getting involved, it doesn't matter what I say someone is going to believe what they believe. Every club in Glasgow had their financial issues. Clyde has had problems, Queen's Park, Partick Thistle had the Save The Jags campaign, Celtic got saved in 94. And they all survived – that's the story, not tit for tat. and I'll say 'wait a minute, I could talk about every club in Glasgow having had financial issues at some point in their history, so let's not even get into it.”
She's got a pretty good handle on all of the rest of Scottish football, too: such as why Queen's Park are known as the Spiders (it might not be the reason you think, either), how Ibrox almost got its own underground train station and why people feel ashamed of what became of Third Lanark.
With an easygoing outlook, Hamilton brings life to every day topics. She's bubbly, funny and never stops talking – a prized asset for someone who spends her weekdays as a museum guide and weekends as a bus-tour operator.
The idea for the tour came to the 25-year-old when she started working at the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden, as part of her placement while she took a sports studies degree at Stirling University where a passion for history and sociology was also awakened. Football, a sport she had been immersed in since her dad first threw a ball down in front of her, was a natural marriage partner.
“I got to talk about Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and the Basque country, Irish gaelic games, stuff across the board and it was brilliant,” she adds. “I ended up writing my dissertation about Bill Struth, the former Rangers manager, and how he encompassed Rangers supporters' identity and traditions. I am a Celtic fan, I'll disclose that, but it did interest me to dig into Protestantism and unionism. I did my research at the Scottish Football Museum and just absolutely fell in love with the place.
“That's when I discovered 'oh, I can get a job where I can talk about football, all day, every day. I just love telling folks' stories about football, about Glasgow, about football in Glasgow.
“Hampden is brilliant, it's one of my favourite stadiums but it is only one. Glasgow is a football city and it has five grounds that you can go and see. We've also got the women's team Glasgow City, we stop off outside the ground where the play [Petershill Park] – they don't have their own home but we still talk about them. There's just such a wealth of history, Hampden covers a great deal of that history but it's not the full picture and I think folk should get a chance to see it all. The thing was I couldn't get a full-time job at the museum so I thought to myself 'I can do this on my own, I can do it a little bit differently.”
And what of the tour itself? Some of the stories you will have heard before and others you will not. Hamilton prides herself on nailing down her research the week before a trip, the result is a warm, informative and humorous journey across the soul of a city characterised by it's football and those who made it what it is today. Hamilton addresses each stadium in sequential order.
“Celtic Park is all about the Lisbon Lions,” she says giving us a whistle-stop version of the tour. “The beauty of the stadium is that you do have a couple of statues and murals outside so you can stop at. A lot of the Celtic stuff is about the foundation, the charitable beginnings. When you head to Hampden it is about world record attendances, now European records (they were once world records), we talk about big European games, the 1960 European Cup final, we talk about Queen's Park. My big secret story is why Queen's Park are called the Spiders, not a lot of folk know the real reason why because we only discovered it in the museum last year.
“We talk about triumph and tragedy and the tragedy comes when you get to Cathkin Park. That's everybody's favourite spot because, even if you are a football fan coming on my tour and you know about Third Lanark and you know about Cathkin Park, it still shocks people to see the state that it's in. For the people that are maybe not the biggest football fans or they don't know who Third Lanark is, their jaws drop. It's almost like a bit of shame for people, especially Glaswegians who are like 'how the hell did we let this happen?' We talk about Bill Hiddleston, who basically ran the football club into the ground. Glasgow is always seen as one of these places where you stick up for one another, we don't let folk come in and tear things apart, we're quite protective of one another.”
“Even if I do go over the old stuff, people still love talking about it. It's a reminiscence for them and the best bit about it is that they always have their own little anecdotes, if I mention a game or I mention a player or a stadium.
“At Rangers, I've got an anecdote about the 1950s when there were plans to have a train line running straight from Central Station underneath Ibrox so fans could buy a match ticket and a train ticket at Central Station, get the train to underneath the stadium, filter out and up into the stand.
“And when we get to Firhill we talk about the mural – that's a massive favourite with folk and it's a beautiful bit of work by a guy called Bobby McNamara – aka Rogue One – from Darnley. It's one of everybody's favourites.”
The secret to the success of her tours, she says, is good, old-fashioned Glesga patter.
“Of course, that's the best way to do it. There is time to take the mickey out of each other. Folk usually pick up that I'm a Celtic fan, people ask and I don't hide it. I'm unbiased anyway, plus the big giveaway is when I mention 'Sellick' and folk know right away. I never really hide it, though, there's no point.”
More crucially, Hamilton, once a player at Celtic as a teenager, knows all too well that you can't bluff Glaswegians when it comes to their football.
“It's a challenge to find stuff because if you are a football fan in Glasgow you know your stuff and it's my job to find the stuff that folk don't know about. I usually do a big read the week before just to see if I can pick up any additional little things, any other stories and they usually get thrown in if I can remember – that's the thing I usually just end up gabbing away.”
The perfect antidote for anyone who might be stuck for something to do on a Saturday morning for the foreseeable future.
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