13 Oct 2002

I watched with some amusement as "Sean" Connery sat next to Dick Advocaat in Prague and witnessed the latest hun debacle. Connery is a strange man to put it politely. As his name suggests, he is of Irish extraction a fact he is quick to conceal. His fellow Edinburgher Dick Gaughan expressed the sentiment very well in one of his songs when he said "You all turn to Scotsmen when you're over here".
Having read a potted biography of "Sean', much of what he does and purports to represent now makes more sense. Connery's ancestors came to Scotland from Ireland at roughly the same time Celtic was being founded. They settled in the East End of Glasgow but drifted eastwards to escape the poverty. However, they exchanged one Glasgow slum for an Edinburgh one.The Cowgate was the Irish ghetto of Edinburgh and its inhabitants received no better a welcome from its indigenous population than they had in Glasgow. A visit to the "People's museum" in the High Street will confirm that the Irish in Edinburgh were widely regarded with suspicion and mistrust.
Nevertheless, the Connery's managed to escape from the Irish and set up home in Fountainbridge on the Western approaches of Edinburgh and it was to this environment that "Sean" was born or rather Thomas Connery was born. After all, having a christian name like Sean in the Scotland of thirties and forties might not be the sort of thing you'd want to boast about.
Connery's main claim to fame was his physique and good looks. The guy was good enough to compete in a Mr Universe contest and like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the hunk had landed. His rise to fame in sixties is well documented through the James Bond movies of that time. About the same time that Tam was wowing the world , Celtic football team were doing the same throughout Europe. Seizing his chance, Tam took every opportunity to proudly associate himself with the boys in green and white. There are several photos of Tam standing shoulder to shoulder with Ceaser, John Clark and oor ain big Tam.
It seems that Tam Connery's support for Celtic was commensurate with the success that Celtic achieved. As soon as Celtic's fortunes faded so too did Tam's affections for Celtic. Post James Bond, like Post Stein were not good years for 007 especially in the seventies.
However, nostalgia isn't what it used to be and Sean/Tam like Rangers re-invented himself. Balder, fatter and more Americanised Sean/Tam emerged in the eighties as a paternal figure and supplemented his income with cameo roles in commercially successful movies. His one truly good role "Name of the Rose" was commercially a flop but critically acclaimed.
And then Tam met Davie....... Mid eighties amongst the carnage of shattered communities and huge deprivation caused by the madness of Thatcherism, one of its greatest proponents met Tam Connery. One could only imagine the type of conversation they might have had. Both were self-made men and ensured that everyone knew this fact. Whereas Murray had a home on tax-free Jersey, Tam had residences dotted all over the globe. It was at the very time that Scotland (which bore the greatest excesses of Maggie's madness) was being pummelled from London, Tam began to publicly espouse  the cause of Scottish Nationalism.
Like many of his generation Tam's political philosophy was confused to say the very least. It was a misty-eyed view of Scotland far removed from the plight of ordinary people. His admiration for Thatcher and disdain for socialists was very much at odds with the historical political climate of Scotland.
David Murray must have welcomed Connery with open arms, he had just acquired the mighty Glasgow Rangers and once he had worked out what football was all about he sought to encourage rich, influential investors to part with their dosh. Even Connery was not so daft as to invest any of his money in Murray Enterprises. However, there must have been a lot of genuine approval by  the ex-milkman for the public school educated Murray. "Celtic were the past " you can imagine Tam thinking to himself and "Rangers the future" with their bright, young and extremely confident young chairman. Moreover Rangers were going places because David had told Tam so. Europe was to be the target and no money would be spared in this objective.
One sometimes wonders what Tam Connery must have thought when he was sitting in the comfort of the director's box at Ibrox and lowered his exalted view to take in the plebs below. For a man who was so proud to emphasize his Scottishness, he would have struggling to find any obvious symbols of Scottishness or heard any anthems relating to his beloved homeland. Even Sean would have had to concede that Celtic had a legitimate right to emphasize their roots (after all he came from the same background whether or not he liked to admit it) it must have been a tad disconcerting to see thousands of people at Ibrox declaring themselves loyal to the oppressors of Scottish freedom throughout the centuries. But Tam had no problem with that and incidentally had no problem in accepting a knighthood from the Queen
One of my most pleasurable memories was watching Rangers take on Juventus in the Stadio delle Alpe, which Tam witnessed in all its splendour. The huns were given such a humiliating drubbing that even James Bond would have found rescuing the return leg mission impossible.
So Tam has finally outlived David Murray,Walter Smith, Graeme Souness, Dick Advocaat et al. Apart from making increasingly vacuous movies, his energies now seem to be taken up at telling the SNP how to organize itself. Whatever you think of the SNP and McSwinney, they do still represent a substantial proportion of Scottish opinion. It was therefore sad and disturbing to see Connery seek to humiliate McSwinney publicly at a "Scots night" in the States recently. Sean you see makes contributions and therefore thinks that he has a right to dictate policy. He's been away for too long and should realize that unlike America, financial contributions don't automatically mean that you direct policy or buy favours.
One of the few things that did upset me with the O'Neill success in recent years was the prospect of old grumpy features being spotted in the director's box at Celtic Park. We know our history, does Tam know his?

Martin O'Donnel