Popular Culture

What Happened to the Giants of Scotland? Life after Archie, Arthur and Bob Crampsey The Scotsman, August 13th 2009 Gerry Hassan The big boys football season starts this weekend. All across Scotland, football fans will be tuning in their radios, watching TV results, and turning to newspaper back pages and special supplements. Another year, another season, and yet something has gone wrong with the way football is presented and reported in this country. It has come to represent a very unflattering, unattractive aspect of ourselves which should give us pause for thought. It wasn’t always like this. Once football

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The Secret World of Cathkin Park and Third Lanark FC Gerry Hassan Cathkin Park is one of the most moving and fascinating places in Glasgow: a tribute to a past age of a city, working class culture and football. It was the home of Third Lanark, or Third Lanark Rifle Volunteers to give their full name, Glasgow’s main ‘other’ team from their inception until they went out of business in 1967. It is a magical, mysterious place. Forty two years after Thirds passed into folklore most of Cathkin Park still stands – the bowl of the concrete terrace with their

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Blowing the Whistle on the 'McLad Phenomenon' Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, August 6th 2009 Scottish men don’t have good health, life expectancy or know how to open up about their emotions. They drink too much, are easily prone to violence, and are more likely to be the victims of violence. Negative images abound about men in modern society and Scottish men in particular. From Rab C. Nesbitt to the male characters in ‘Taggart’ and the ‘Walking Wounded’ lost men in McIlvanney’s and Kelman’s novels, it all seems a bit grim. Is it really this bad and why do these portrayals

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