To coincide with last week’s 40th anniversary celebrations of Dundee Utd winning the Scottish Premier League, a BBC pal sent me a clip of the late, great Jim McLean when he appeared on my old Monday night TV show Offside. (Feel free to check out the footage @therealtamcowan on Instagram.)
To the sheer delight of the studio audience, the famously crabbit-faced Tannadice boss joined in the fun from start to finish and, a tidy player back in his day with Kilmarnock, he even beat my other guest Tommy Sheridan in a keepy-uppy contest. (This, of course, was a couple of years before Tommy went on to prove NOBODY could beat him at keepy-uppy…)
In fact, I didn’t even have to use my secret weapon – a Ken Dodd-style tickling stick tucked beneath my chair – to make Jim smile. Yep, he was terrific fun and I still get goosebumps when I think of him coming up to me in the green room after the show, shaking me by the hand and saying how much he’d enjoyed himself.
