Longtime Ago People

Football, Faith, and Family: A Scottish Tale

• M I L E S • Season 2 • Episode 1

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Russell 1961

husband, father, son & supporter  

A red jumper at a community centre disco. A chapel aisle, some said, he shouldn’t walk. A bus to the wrong end of a cup final and a long, cold trek home from the station after a night in a cell. When I sat down with Russell, I found a life textured by central Scotland in the sixties and seventies—steelworks grit, Friday pay packets, and the tidal pull of Rangers versus Celtic—alongside the quieter courage of choosing love over the lines others drew.

We begin with the culture of sectarian identity and football, where schools and pubs marked allegiances from birth. Russell reflects on how that world shaped him, then walks me through the romance that crossed the divide: marrying Katie, the youngest of a large Catholic  family, and navigating the fallout with humour and resolve. From a near-miss at a professional football career to the hard lessons of gravel pitches and hot tempers, he shows how discipline is forged in the small moments no scout ever sees. Work anchors the story as we move from a boutique sales floor to a filthy, formative steelworks apprenticeship, redundancy, and an unexpected pivot to Prudential—where trust, doorsteps, and a thick book of names turned into a top-performing agency.

Our conversation deepens around family and drink: a father who worked hard and drank harder, a mother who held the home together, and a son who asked the right question at the right time. Russell’s answer—that he would choose not to drink—becomes a practical compass, echoed in his son’s turn to CrossFit and Taekwondo. Along the way, you’ll hear the soundtrack of Clyde Valley weekends, the clatter of pool tables, and the comic-serious tale of being stitched up at Hampden. What emerges is a candid, grounded portrait of identity and endurance: the parts we inherit, the parts we refuse, and the parts we build with our own hands.

If Russell’s story resonates, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who’s wrestled with identity, rivalry, or sobriety. Your support helps these lived histories reach the people who need to hear them.

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SPEAKER_00:

You listened to Miles, and this is a long time ago, people. I'm sitting in the Dakota Hotel in Newcastle with a good friend of mine. We've both got a cold, so we might sound a little bit bunged up, but this is episode one of season two, and I'm sitting here with Russell. How are you, Russell?

SPEAKER_01:

A little bit like yourself, Miles. I've got a little bit of a cold, I'm slowly getting rid of it. I think we've both came back from holidays. We have. We've had the repercussions of the nice fresh air on these aeroplanes.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right, the fresh air on the plate. I'm convinced you picked bikes up on planes, whatever they say. Right, I'm going to talk to Russell about various topics today. You were you grew up in central Scotland during the the sixties and the seventies. Yeah. What were the sites, the sounds that really defined your early years?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, because I lived in a location which was probably just outside Glasgow. The big thing was football. Football was the sort of mainstay for working men, and where I lived was predominantly Steelworks, and all these people that that that had their uh working week, they came a Friday, they would finish early, they would go to the pub, they would go to the bookies, and they would look forward to the football. And of course, you've got the big rivalry of Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic. Okay, so g explain that to me what what that's all about. Well, basically what you've got is you've got two divides. You've got Catholics and you've got Protestant. And unfortunately in central Scotland, when you're born, you're either born a Catholic or you're born a Protestant. And you don't have any choice, no matter you'll go at five years of age to a Protestant school or you'll go to a Catholic school. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred you will support Celtic if you go to the Catholic school, and you'll support Rangers if you go to the Protestant school. That's just the way that it is. That w that was the culture, that was the way in which you were brought up. And unfortunately, you had all the troubles in in Belfast at the time in Ireland with the UDA and the IRA and all that carry-on. It fuelled quite a lot of hatred towards Catholics and Protestants. And I think, in all fairness, the Celtic divide, the Glasgow Celtic, had their reasons for feeling bad done to, and then the Protestants had their reasons for feeling bad done to. So it was a a clash of cultures, a clash of tribes. Can't think of it anything else. Were you aware of this at a very early age? No, I wasn't. No, because when you go to primary school, the last thing in your mind is Catholic Protestant. Um matter of fact, I think the first time when I was young and I was ever admitted to hospital, I'd broke my arm playing in goals at football. I was asked what religion it was, and I said it was a Christian because you are. Correct. Because Catholic and Protestant didn't really come into you, and it it didn't really bother me as such and and my family, albeit we're all we're all Protestants. It wasn't rammed down my throat that, you know, you will support Rangers. I I ended up supporting Rangers because I was fed up watching my local team getting beat. Whereas the bigger Glasgow Rangers, you had a better chance they maybe winning a game. So that's what enticed me to go and watch Rangers, which I must admit has been a roller coaster of a journey throughout the decades since then, because of what's happened, different different things has happened to my team and different things has happened to Celtic as well.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been very loyal to them throughout your life then.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm I'm a diehard Rangers fan. I love going to watch um my team play. Don't go as often as as I used to go. And I have my wife, who um I I think explained to you, is is the youngest of fourteen. And way back in the late 70s, early 80s, she was the youngest of 14, one of the biggest Catholic families in the Italians that I live. So it cost a lot of animosity. So it did. So did that uh how did that was that like Romeo and Judy? I mean, how how did that play out? Katie, my wife, whom I've married for over 42 years now, she was 15, I was 17. And we fell in and out with one another, and my family knew about Katie, but her family didn't know about me. She wanted to keep it a secret because of the Catholic Protestant thing. But she had older sisters who were um beginning to explore the thought of getting a real a relationship with the Protestants. So I think Katie sat back and thought, well, see how they got on, because they were older. Yeah, and they were further down the line. And I think um Katie's s sister Agnes, who eventually married David. Unfortunately, Agnes passed away with cancer about four years ago, three, four years ago. He came if you had a Protestant Rangers background. So they broke the ice. They broke the ice. Yeah, they took all the heat. And then when Katie and I eventually divulged the fact that we were we were going out with one another. It was still a thing of a It wasn't a football thing. Well, football just happens to divide you. Yeah. So did the school culture, because you were either Catholic or a Protestant, so yeah, I went to the Protestant school, you went to Catholic school. So you were automatically separated. And and we were brought up in a very working man environment because of the steelworks. You had Motherwell Bridge, who did all the ermor oil vessels all around the world. You had Finlays who who built White City, helped built some of the the the major power stations, Torness, Dracks, the nuclear power stations. So all these all these works when the they they split up on a Friday, you had lads go to certain pubs that were Rangers oriented and certain pubs that were Celtic oriented. So even even then you had you had a continuation. Although we all got on well together, but when it came to the football and Rangers were playing Celtic, we absolutely hated one another for 90 minutes. That's the way that it was. She saw me with a red jumper on at the the local community centre disco and decided to ask her ask her pal or ask my pal if if uh I would I would go out with her. Sympathized, Russell. So I did.

SPEAKER_00:

So I did. And the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01:

And yeah, I mean it's funny though. I was quite lucky, I suppose, because Katie was my first and only love. Yeah. Um I'm not sure if I was her first and only love. She says I was, but I don't know. You don't know. You never know. You never know.

SPEAKER_00:

So her family finally accepted. Of course. Yeah. But how long did that take?

SPEAKER_01:

Probably took a few months. Yeah. I caused absolute havoc by deciding to get married in a chapel. It was a Catholic wedding. Yeah. Um that caused more animosity for some of my close friends and some of my dad's family than it did for my immediate circle. We were quite comfortable about it, and I I um I didn't see the fuss. It did feel strange. There's no two ways about it, but I didn't go to church. Katie went to chapel every single Sunday. She followed her religion. I stopped going to my religion when I left the Boys' Brigade and I found drink and I was playing football. It was a very Christian organization. And when I left that, I left my my Christianity aside. I wouldn't say I was a full atheist then, but it was probably quite close to being an atheist. So therefore, why should I have any choice if I don't attend? It's too bad I get married. Why don't I make it some? Was it a wedding day? It was fine. There was a few family members didn't turn up. Okay. There was there was a few friends decided that it wasn't for them because they were But very very few. You know, and as you said, it was it was probably their loss because we're still together. It wasn't just a a silly romance.

SPEAKER_00:

What decade are we talking here now?

SPEAKER_01:

Well we get married in nineteen eighty three, April, Easter Monday, nineteen eighty-three. We went on we tossed a coin to see if we were going to buy a flat or go on honeymoon. It came down uh going to honeymoon. So we went to Tenerife. I quite like that. We went to Tenerife and we stayed in a hotel called the Princess de Seal in Los Cristianes. And we've been going ever since. Ever since. And we're very fortunate now. We want a nice little uh property in Los Cristianes. Wow. Where we go on holiday and we take the family.

SPEAKER_00:

So you got property in the end where you had your honeymoon. Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

That's even better, isn't it? Unbelievable that it goes full circle. Going away back to to those days, uh uh I was not long made redundant from the Steelworks. My first job in sales.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm gonna come onto that in two seconds, not a problem. My first job in sales was way way back. Before we get into that, what was interesting to learn about you is that and I d I didn't know this, so uh I apologise because I should I should do because I've known you a long time. But you mentioned to me that you almost became a professional footballer yourself. Yeah. So I don't know what what did that mean to you for you at the time.

SPEAKER_01:

I played I played juvenile, which was under 21. I played um school football, wasn't too bad. But I got better as I got older, as I got more confident as I got older, and I played and captained a team called um U Men's Juveniles, and I was the founding captain. We were we were just newly established, and about halfway through the season, unbeknown to me, Hibernian had sent scouts to come and watch me play. And one of the travestiesy football in Lanarkshire back then, a lot of the parks were gravel ash packs, and we played with these m Mitre Molemaster footballs, so it was quite a speedy game, but quite a hard game. You didn't get a lot of time on the ball, and I was centre-half, so I was doing quite a lot of the the banging miles. I was hammering the centre forwards up and down, and unbeknownst to me, I was getting watched. And what happened to me? I lost the rag with the centre forwards. Oh no, I kicked it right up in the air, and I got myself sent off. When you were being watched. When I was being watched. And I and I was I was playing okay up until then. So that was it for football then. Yeah, I continued to play first division amateur after that for about several years, and then had to give it a an S duty of various different wee niggles and injuries.

SPEAKER_00:

I loved the football. You mentioned Steelworks, you saw that as a last resort. I mean, tell me a little bit about what happened there.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, I wasn't the most cleverest kid at school. I could count very well because my dad showed me how to do a bookies line and add up the odds. So I was good. I was good at English and I was good at arithmetic. I could get by, but I had no desire to go to university. Um I'd no desire to go to any further education. I just wanted out of school. And my first job was in a a gent's boutique called Chelsea Boy. Chelsea Boy. And I was one of the the the lads selling all the young folks that came in looking to get dressed up for the weekend. I'd sort them out in their jeans, their jackets, their t-shirts, it was all Levi's, it was all the bestie. Bestie gear, Falmers. So if you can remember Falmers. It was a Jewish guy that owned it, and I got on really well with him. Um when I got the interview, we we struck off a really, really good relationship, and I loved the job, but uh it was going nowhere. And I went and sat, you had to set a test to get an apprenticeship and it still works. And I went and sat this test and I got a letter to invite me through for an interview, and this was during my time in the in the Chelsea boy shop to go for an interview to see if I wanted to take on a trade. And it still works. So I I didn't have to think too hard about it, I thought it'd be a trade. Because if I work in a closed shop, I'm never going to get any much more money. Nah. My money's going to stay the same. I hand him a note to say the guy was devastated. He says, I thought you'd really like it. I says, I'm, I'm loving it. I says, but you know, you can only pay me so much. I says, I want to go and take a trade on. So I got a a a trade as a player welder. It was the filthiest, most um crazy apprenticeship you could ever imagine. Lots of theory, lots of schooling, you had to do all your sitting guilds, you'd a lot of work to be done in the shop floor, and you were working with real, real hard men, and that that taught me and it showed me um how to look after myself and how to become a grown-up. Because at sixteen years of age, you're still a kid. Yeah. You don't really know much. But once you get inside these big lads um who are doing all these fabrication jobs, you learn you learn very, very quickly. I got made redundant and that that was the ending my my welding and fabrication.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, so how long were you there? Four years. You mentioned the proof, so tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, what happened was, Miles, I was um I was in the house one night and the the the lad from Prudential, I I think he was the district inspector, came out with the local agent because my mum and dad had policies and he used to come and collect. So this guy came because he knew I'd be in, he wanted to chat with me, and he sold me a plan. And he said, Right, what what do you do now? I says, I I work with a male order company, I I work with with Morsies. So I go a around and uh I I service goods and a collector payments. You'd be good at insurance, you'd you've got a good gift of the gab. So he got me an interview and I heard nothing. And they said they would get back and touch me. A year later, got a letter in. Would you like to come for a final interview? There's a vacancy. So I thought, okay then. So my Morse's career came very quickly to an end. And then half decent money. And then I was introduced to the the big world of financial systems. Which we did very well. And that and that was in May 1986. I started my job at Prudential. And I loved it. Yeah. And I made I was the smallest income generating agency in the office, and within a year and a half I had it at the top. I was earning more than anybody else in the office. Were you just going out and knocking on doors? All my all my clients from Morse were all we're all taking out insurance policies with the game pro clients. Yeah. That's it. That's it. I had all the connections. So if you've got the connections and the people to talk to, you're halfway there, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00:

Coming back to uh Rangers Celtic and the divide that was there. Has that ever spilt out into any unexpected areas of your life? Is that terribly? Okay. Tell me more. Terribly.

SPEAKER_01:

When I worked in the Steelworks, I had probably three or four really good Catholic Celtic friends, and they'd got tickets for the Cup Final. And I thought, right, okay, how's this going to work? No, no, no. So we're going to share a bus. There's going to be two or three Rangers fans, there's going to be about twelve Celtic fans. We're going to share the bus. We'll got you tickets for the Rangers end. But unbeknownst to me, they had me. No. They got me tickets for the Celtic end. So I'm loud and very brash. I was probably the tallest. I wore my Wrangler jacket, my stay press, my Dot Martins. I looked a thug when I think about it. And I was there and there was a a thing called bandaging a flag. The Irish tricolour was against the law. Right. You couldn't it was a breach of the peace. So I'm standing at Hamden, and it's a half twelve kickoff with this flag the game's not kicked off yet, it's twelve o'clock. Does I knock it lift it and put it at Glasgow Central Jail where I spent the whole day and almost the whole night? They let me out in time to catch the last train back to Motherwell, just enough time to get off the train and the clocks went forward and all the buses were off. So I had to walk all the way from Motherwell, nine miles, to get to the house where my mother and father already knew I'd been lifted and had been put in jail for breach of the peace. And I'm I cannot believe what's happened to me. My good Selek fans, Porter's friends, stitched me right up. They did different yeah. Stitched me right up. And I went went to court and they were going to come as character witnesses. I had my lawyer and all the rest of it. I was not paying any fine, I was not shouting balling and cussing and swearing at a football match and bandaging the flag. That can't be right. Yeah, I get found guilty. Sixty pounds fed. I paid a f I think a fiver a week. Terrible. Terrible. And so that that was that was a blip in my character, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's just touch on your parents as you had just bought them up, really. Your parents worked hard and they faced their own struggles. How did their relationship fake uh shape your understanding of family and and endurance?

SPEAKER_01:

My dad was a hard, very hard working man. He worked in Cummins, he was very lucky. They made engines for for uh diesel engines for trades. So Cummins was the best place to get a job, the best pension, the the best conditions, they had some uh they had some really good pay structure. So m my dad always worked hard, but like any man in that day and age, he liked his early Fridays, he would go to the bookies, he would go for a drink, and he probably liked to drink too much. So that caused some real animosity all the way throughout my early childhood and probably upset my mum more times than tongue could tell. But I was very, very fortunate because my gran just lived across the road from where I lived. So if it ever got too much for me, I'd just go and stay with my gran. Was this your mum? My mum's mum's mum. Yeah, my mum's mum. And in all honesty, um she absolutely hated my dad because of the way he carried on when he was drinking. My mum tolerated it because she loved him so much. And eventually, as he got older, he started to come off the drink. You know, as you're younger, you you sensed a bit of hostility because he was he was quite carnaptious and cheeky when you had too much whiskey. So if you're thinking of I had one of those myself. Yeah Yeah, so that was that was the not so nice part of growing up. And your mum? My mum was just a very, very down to earth, lovely, lovely lady. Still is. She's eighty-nine in November. My dad unfortunately passed away two years ago, come this December. He reached his eighty-ninth birthday as well. So my mum's fighting fit. She's broke her foot there about six weeks ago, and she's back on the road to recovery. But my mum was always the type of person where I've made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it. Now modern day society, that carry on me a man and a woman and we drink and all the rest of it, they wouldn't put up with it. But as you rightly said in previous podcasts, that generation stuck by its family, stuck by looking after each other, and she certainly stuck by my dad.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's for sure. If you deserve the name of the greatest generation. Definitely. Are you touching your grand then? It sounds like you had a bit of a soft spot for your grand. She was quite She was my safe haven.

SPEAKER_01:

I was I didn't bank a mum and dad, I'd bank a grand. If I was ever shot, because I would spend all my money on a Friday Saturday, and then we used to go when we were young, we used to go to the the Clyde Valley Hotel, and the Clyde Valley Hotel was a a place for mods, and the music was absolutely dynamite. We ran a bus from a local pub. That's we minibus would come and pick us up and take us to the Clyde Valley Hotel, which maybe about half an hour, 40 minutes. So the music was definitely good. Into the valley. It was amazing. If carry-on you had with meeting girls, um the boys were all gallous and there were different parts of Lanark, because that's where it was. We'd all fight with other parts of Lanark, and we were neutrals. Because we're coming from another area. But of course, you get to know one side, that's the side you try to remember having a few scraps outside the Clyde Valley Hotel. This was the 70s, the Clyde Valley Hotel, and every Sunday we all managed to get ourselves to the round tree for a game at pool, and it was a chap called Watty Kyle at the mini bus, and we always used to say, We're going to style with Watty Kyle, and this minibus would come and pick us up. You wondered if it was going to make it or not. Because it was that by the neck, but it made it always made it.

SPEAKER_00:

It was like chitty bang bang, but always made it. I think if if you were to pass one story, one lesson, or one laughter from your life to kids, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01:

I genuinely believe that you know drink in moderation is a really nice thing to be able to do. If I could live my life over again, and funnily enough, my son's took it on board and he's 35 years of age, he's now 18 months teetotal. We went to the Tyson Fury and Dylan White fight in Wembley and I treated him, yeah, stayed in the Savoy, proper hospitality, and he sat me to one side. He says, Dad, if it was then you would change in your life, what would it be? I says, I would never drink. It doesn't bring any favours to you, it causes more animosity. So the one thing, having seen my dad the way he was, I was always very conscious that I was always a happy, go lucky drink. And when I have a when I have a drink, I was a good drinker. If there's such a thing, that there's a lot of people who are not, and that it can turn nasty. So the one thing that came out of that conversation with Graham is he took it on board, he turned to cross fit, he already was a fit lad. He does Taekwondo now, he lives in Qatar. And the one thing that has come out of everything that I do now is try and curtail with drink habits. Don't let drink rule your life, because it is a curse.

SPEAKER_00:

Definitely is, yeah. I agree with you 100%. Well, Russell, thank you very much for the time. It's been a pleasure talking to you. I think we survived with our blocked noses, but we're okay. But uh thank you very much.

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Miles

Host