Summer of ’78 in the Editors office of the Sun newspaper “Right, sales are down. It’s been a bad summer. We’ve ran all the Scotland / Ally McLeod / Argentina Farce stories we can, but now we need something else. Any ideas?”
“What about bigger tits on Page 3?”
“Right now, we’ve got all the tits we want on Page 1, with Callaghan and the rest of the bumbling Labour Government. I don’t want anything political for now, we wait ‘til the Election is called and we get behind Maggie Thatcher and by God we’ll make this country great again. Or at least her Ministers will give us good copy for years to come. What a bunch of creeps they are; Parkinson, Mellor and all those others, they’ll give us good copy for years to come.
“ Boss, I’ve got a guy that says Jimmy Saville’s a perv and has been abusing people for years, he’s got a whole stack of evidence.”
“ Evidence, evidence, who needs evidence the guy creeps me out everytime he’s on TV. No, we know he’s dirty but then we would need expose an awful lot of other people after that and some of them are our friends in Whitehall, so let’s leave those sleeping dogs to lie”
“ What about a Punk Music piece?”
“Fuckin’ hell that was so last year, who cares what the Sex Pistols and Sid Vicious are up to?”
“ I’ve got it boss, I know what we need . . . “
“ Well . . . what is it?”
“Free football cards!”
“That’s brilliant, kids will hound their parents to buy them. Let’s do it but we need to do it cheap. I’m not paying footballers money for their pictures.”
“Hey boss, what about old Harry, our Court Artist. He could pump out hundred’s a lookalikes in days. Although his eyesight’s no as good as it was and his hands are bit shaky with all those lunchtime whiskeys.”
“ Aye, he’ll do. Get him right on it.”
Okay I’m not sure how they came about but the Sun published a 1000 football cards in 1978 and they must have had a guy doing tons of them everyday as they are piss poor. As a card collector I refuse to give them space in my collection but have occasionally got some in joblots.
I have just highlighted four of them and look at them. It’s just after Argentina ’78 and Alan’s Rough’s perm is obviously growing out, Willie Miller and Derek Johnstone’s collars seem to have a bit missing, although by the look of Johnstone, he was on the bevvy the night before, so maybe he lost his in a pub fight. As for Andy Gray it looks like someone’s dolloped a bowl of spaghetti on his head.
Among the set are Scotland All Time greats such as Bremner, Hughie Gallacher and Jim Baxter etc., which is fine but among the Scotland international Stars are Alfie Conn, Tommy Craig, Willie Carr and Alex Cropley; all well past their international star dates if they ever were.
David Stuart
First posted on Facebook May 28th, 2015
The Scotland Epistles Football Magazine 
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