'I Am Spartacus'

I had to laugh at Kevin McKenna's spirited defence of Tam 'the Bam' Cowan in the regular column that Kevin writes for the Observer on Sunday - boys will be boys, after all.

I'm still not clear whether Kevin found Tam's column funny in any way - sure he damns it with faint praise as not being in the 'his top 10', but that's quite different from saying whether such an unpleasant, anti-women rant qualifies as humour at all.

I don't know who these spiteful, arid 'liberals' are that Kevin so despises, Kenneth Roy is the only one that gets a mention, yet the fact is that Tam Cowan's apology was not forced out of him - he could have stood his ground but he chose not to do so.

Kevin goes on to cite double standards at the BBC in relation to John Inverdale and a recent episode of Mock the Week - although what I can't understand is why with a regular column in a major Sunday newspaper he didn't expose and challenge this behaviour at the time.

So, I find it more than a bit odd that Kevin should discover his 'I am Spartacus' moment in response only to Tam's treatment - before going on to describe his detractors as a "lynch mob" and "media junta" while making strange and coded references to "heroic drinking sessions" and the "songwriting of  Engelbert Humperdinck and Neil Sedaka."  

For me, Tam's behaviour was completely embarrassing - not the crime of the century for sure and for that reason I would not have sacked him or turned Tam into some kind of martyr - but I do think he's well past his 'sell-by' date and I'd let him go at the next convenient opportunity.          

Tam Cowan versus those spiteful, arid 'liberals'

Tam Cowan's column about women's football was not his best, but he hardly deserved to be hounded by a media lynch mob


By Kevin McKenna


Tam Cowan – suspended for two weeks by the BBC over his comments on women's football. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Observer

The true torchbearers of Scottish football in Europe these last few years had another fine result last week. Glasgow City Ladies FC travelled to Belgium and secured a 2-2 draw in the first leg of their tie against the much fancied Standard Liege and now have a very good chance of reaching the Uefa Women's Champions League. The women of Glasgow City must still pay for the privilege of training three nights a week while holding down their own jobs. Every time they take the field of play they bring honour to their city and their country.

One man who probably didn't celebrate Glasgow's success in the premier tournament of women's football is the journalist, broadcaster and comedian Tam Cowan, if his recent column in the Daily Recordcould be taken as an indicator. It's safe to say that Cowan is not a supporter of women's football and would probably rather extract his own teeth than attend a match. Cowan, a supporter of Motherwell FC, was appalled that Fir Park, home of his footballing heroes, had been used by the Scottish international women's football team to host their most recent fixture (a splendid 7-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina, seeing as you ask). Following this desecration, Cowan said that Fir Park should be torched. Elsewhere in his piece he wrote: "I've not seen a lot of women's football – just a few snatches" and he described two women footballers he'd recently encountered as "two of the nicest blokes I've ever met".

The piece was written in Cowan's normal brash, tongue-in-cheek style and was probably as much a clumsy attempt to bait the forces of political correctness as it was to lampoon women's football. I normally find his columns very funny, sharp and entertaining, but wouldn't include this one in his top 10. Yet for these crimes against humanity Cowan was forced into making an abject 800-word apology in the Daily Record 48 hours later. For it seemed that, no sooner had his column entered cyberspace, than someone had let slip the implacable forces of Scotland's so-called media and liberal elite. The BBC in Scotland immediately suspended him from his weekly Saturday football show. TheSunday Herald deemed the tale worthy of its splash and a laughably po-faced leader called on the national state broadcaster to sack him.

It demonstrated yet again how good we are in modern, smart, successful 21st-century Scotland at assembling a lynch mob. These people, many of them so-called self-styled liberals and media colleagues of Cowan's, exist in a spiteful and arid little world in which executions occur regularly; there can be no right of appeal and no apology will ever suffice. Liberals, my arse.

Cowan's two-week suspension by the BBC I found particularly surprising. This is the same organisation that employs John Inverdale, the man who, earlier this year, commented cruelly on the looks of the newly crowned Wimbledon women's champion, Marion Bartoli. The comments, made in all seriousness, were an authentic reflection of Inverdale's mindset, whereas Cowan was simply trying to be funny.

Last night, I watched BBC2's latest transmission of Mock the Week, in which six C-list clowns spent the first 10 minutes verbally abusing a photograph of Abu Qatada taken through a window of the plane deporting him from the UK. They made fun of his name, his appearance and his beard in a dire and badly judged segment that would have offended all Asians and the Muslim religion in particular. It angered me, a white, Christian western male. Yet Tam Cowan's possibly ill-judged humour induced a fit of the vapours in the corporation's Scottish executive.

The imbroglio that has swirled around Cowan these last two weeks is about much more than the temporary suspension and public hanging of a miscreant broadcasting personality. It brought into the light the jealousy, hypocrisy and viciousness of Scotland's self-appointed media junta in all its vengeful glory. I doubt that many of the people in this cadre were as offended by Cowan as they purported to be. But they certainly saw an opportunity to skewer an individual whose soaring and lucrative media career many of them resent. How can this West of Scotland oik, lacking a letter after his name and who persists in using the unlovely Lanarkshire vernacular, possibly forge a career with two of the finest journalistic organisations in the country?

Many of those who volunteered for the media firing squad are also, perversely, those who would subscribe to the lofty ideal of One Scotland, Many Cultures. But in their elitist little Eden, only one culture can exist and it certainly isn't one that speaks rudely of old footballers and heroic drinking sessions and that celebrates the songwriting of Engelbert Humperdinck and Neil Sedaka.

These people inhabit a world in which they attend £100-a-head cultural awareness weekends where people make their own cardigans and (lamentably) their own poetry. They engage with each other in social media, ostensibly to declaim and discuss the values of a new politics but more often to praise each other's work – "Lovely article, Morag." "Why, thank-you, Roderick, yours was really good too."

Their attitudes were eloquently espoused in an article by Kenneth Roy, one of Scotland's towering journalistic figures. It was a piece, regrettably, which also spoke more about the writer's prejudices than it did about the perceived failings of its subject and the culture that produced him. Writing in the Scottish Review, Roy had this to say: "Tam Cowan is no joke. What he represents, what he helps to symbolise and sustain, is a Scottish affliction. He is a strong, though fortunately not compelling, reason for believing that Scotland does not deserve independence."

You are so wrong, Kenneth, old chap. What Tam Cowan helps to symbolise and sustain is not a Scottish affliction. Instead, let's hope, in an independent Scotland, he will provide a counter-balance to the wretched assortment of introspective, self-regarding faux-intellectuals with too much time on their hands who seek to influence debate in this country. I admire him greatly.

Past His Sell By Date (3 October 2013)

If you want to understand why the fight for equal pay in Scotland has been such a long, hard slog - then read this ridiculous sexist rant by Tam Cowan which appeared in the Daily Record the other day.

Incredibly, this offensive piece was intended to be funny and the author - Tam the Bam - has since issued a grovelling apology, presumably in a desperate attempt to prevent himself from being sacked. 

Tam Cowan is also a well known broadcaster who appears on BBC Radio Scotland on a regular basis - but if I had anything to do with BBC Scotland I would certainly not be extending Tam's contract the next time it comes up for renewal - because he should have known much better.

To my mind anyone who can write so disparagingly about women and football is a complete clown - although I can't say I'm completely surprised since the same kind of hostile undercurrent has also held back the cause of equal pay - with people in a position to know better saying one thing then doing another.       
  
Now everyone says they're in favour of equal pay - of course they do - but when push came to shove over the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement - the big Labour councils in Scotland and the Labour supporting unions simply failed to stand up for the interests of low paid women workers.

Tam's barmy comments may be hugely embarrassing to both himself and the BBC - though Tam's real problem is that he was caught out by his own behaviour and prejudices - albeit he now says this was a genuine attempt at humour which went badly wrong.

Yet to me what all of this really demonstrates is that Tam is well past his 'sell by' date - he's had a very good innings and now it's time for him to move on. 
    

Fir Park should have been torched after it hosted women's football

By Tam Cowan

The Daily Record's own Gene Hunt, Mr TAM COWAN, gives his take from the dark ages - or the 1970s at least - on the Scotland women's match at Fir Park this week.


IF I had my way, today’s Premiership fixture between Motherwell and Ross County would have been cancelled.

That’s because Fir Park should have been torched on Thursday in order to cleanse the stadium after it played host to women’s football.

Why do they still persevere with this turgid spectacle? And why was it allowed anywhere near Motherwell’s hallowed turf?

Admittedly, I’ve not seen a lot of women’s football - just a few little snatches - and I’m not having a pop at the people taking part.

Just the other week, I bumped into a couple of women footballers (I’ve still got the bruises to prove it) and they were honestly two of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met.

But no amount of politically correct claptrap could force me to say I enjoyed a single second of that guff at Fir Park on Thursday night.

And those of you who disagree must be telling porkies.

Quite frankly – and at the risk of getting a slap from my old pal – I found it about as aesthetically pleasing as Joan Burnie’s full frontal pic in yesterday’s paper.

BBC Alba must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if they’re now broadcasting this tosh live.

Aye, give me an hour of some dreary Highlander reciting poems about the fishing industry – in Gaelic – any day of the week. Incredibly, the game was live on telly AND radio!

I can only imagine they were looking for the pundits to swell the crowd (if "crowd" isn’t too strong a word).

I initially assumed it was a closed-doors game. I haven’t seen Fir Park so quiet since Harri Kampman was in the dugout.

If women’s football is so good, where the hell are all the supporters? Surely even the most fervent fans must agree it’s time to chuck it?

Face it, folks, nobody cares about women’s football. There was barely a thousand inside the ground, shocking for an international in ANY sport, and I guess putting the girlies head-to-head with Emmerdale and Eastenders was a bit daft.

For anyone remotely interested, Scotland won 7-0 and Bosnia-Herzegovina were utterly dire.

I honestly think they’d struggle to take three or four goals off St Mirren.

This was a Group 4 game and the Bosnian team looked as if they’d just arrived in one of their vans.

Did you see their goalie? She put the baws into Bosnia (although on the off-chance she reads this, I hasten to add I’m only kidding).