WE start with a disclaimer: I hate tennis. Can’t stand it. It stems from being on holiday as a bairn, and really wanting to be back home with my pals playing football. When I returned, the wee swine were all playing tennis. It was disgraceful.

I could have wept. Indeed, at that age, I probably did. I still do: every time Wimbledon comes around. My mates know not to mention it to me. In many ways, you could say that the tragic childhood experience outlined above made me the misanthropist I am today. Though 3,086 other reasons may be adduced.

Let’s be frank. Tennis: it’s prissy English gambolling. It even has a Royal Box where the nation’s celebs and other leading prats swank aboot in their seats. As for the players: in their effete whites, none looks proletarian. Not like footballers. But they don’t look upper class either. They look under-manager or assistant something.

They sweat, grunt and throw tantrums. Self-evidently, they are poor role models for the nation’s bairns, who’d be better emulating dipsomaniac hacks free from an unhealthy competitive spirit and the morally coruscating urge to win.

Children, pay attention: being called a loser is a compliment which will build your character and prepare you for life’s disappointments, which are legion.

With these considered comments out of the way, we now address our subject’s life. And I mean life. I’m not researching the tennis. If you enjoy the alleged sport, you know about Sir Andy Murray’s achievements. If you don’t, you don’t care. Welcome, my brothers.

Suffice to say, Mr Murray appears to have been quite good at tennis. And I don’t mean that as praise.

However, while he has brought shame upon Scotland with his racket, he has led an interesting and valid life otherwise. He supports Hibs, which gets him into Heaven, and has made a pretty decent fist of helping others.

He was helped into this life by suitable qualified personnel on 15 May 1987 in Glasgow, his Maw being Judy Murray and his Da William of that ilk. His maternal grandfather, Roy Erskine, played for Hibs in the late 1950s, hence Andy’s praiseworthy allegiance.

Battle of wounded knee

Hibs

Hibs

The bairn was born with a bipartite patella (knee thing), which should have been material for a sick note when his mother took him to play tennis on the local courts at the age of three. But naw. Thus began his downfall.

He grew up in Dunblane, attending the primary school where Thomas Hamilton carried out his notorious massacre. Andy was there on the day, taking cover in a classroom.

At 15, Murray was asked to train as a footballer with Rangers, but declined, opting to focus on tennis, where your shorts don’t get so dirty, and opponents get fewer opportunities to break your leg. He moved to Barcelona, in Spainshire, training at the Sánchez-Casal Academy, whatever that is.

Moving swiftly along, Murray was made an Officer in the Order of the British Empire in 2013 and knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours List for services to tennis and charity, making him the UK’s youngest knight, at 29. He is a founding member of Malaria No More, and helped launch the charity in 2009 with former ball-bending footer ace David Beckham. He has also taken part in several charity tennis events, including a Rally Against Cancer. In 2014, he received the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian of the Year award.

In 2015, Andy married Kim Sears, daughter of another tennisoid, at Dunblane Cathedral. The couple live in Leatherhead, Surrey – a tennisie sort of place – with their son and three daughters.

Andy supports feminism, which is about women, and also backs various sexuality rights stuff. He bent the knee for Black Lives Matter, though we do not know if it was the gammy one.

No laughing matter

The lad has also made a couple of subsequently regretted forays into the Scotland-England malarkey and politics, not out of a desire to proselytise but usually as off-the-cuff, even jokey remarks, the sort of thing that today can get you killed.

Again, we are moved to offer our gnarly wisdom to the nation’s younglings: never talk publicly about politics, my small-brained friends. It draws attention to yourself and attracts comments below the line, where the nutters live.

In 2006, ill-advisedly, Andy said he’d support “whoever England is playing” at that year’s World Cup. A frothing furore followed, despite decent English ex-tennis player Timothy Henman confirming that the remark had been made in jest and only in response to being gently teased about Scotland’s usual pathetic failure to qualify.

This teed Andy up nicely for the harmonious and joyful Scottish independence debate. Actually, after the abuse received from nice English (and Scottish) people in 2006, at first he refused to endorse either side in the 2014 referendum.

But, on the fateful day, he tweeted (never tweet, children; it just leads to trouble): “Huge day for Scotland today … let’s do this!” This was interpreted as supporting the idea of Scotland being a normal country, an idea passionately opposed by many Scots.

Police Scotland described the subsequent online abuse as “vile”. One message referred to the Dunblane Massacre, thus lending credence to the theory that decent, ratepaying punters are put off unionism by unionists (just as anyone swinging towards independence is discouraged by the loon-infested SNP).

Stroke of genius

Murray said later that, from now on, he’d focus only on tennis, risking a tragic and terrible slide into mental decline. Waddling reluctantly onto the pitch ourselves, we note that this year at Wimblebum he was batted out early by a “Tsitsipas” – presumably some kind of cunning stroke – leading to speculation that he might give it all up and get a proper job. “Not right now,” he has said, putting off the evil day.

However, in our unsought opinion, in sport as in life it is better to quit while you are behind. Sir Andy Murray is only 36. He still has the whole of his life ahead of him and plenty of time left in which to do something worthwhile.