Our choir’s rendition of ‘I belong to Glasgow’ in the Christmas concert at Coastal Villas brought back memories of Scotsmen I worked with in London.

We had a glorious mixture of races and classes, ranging from public school English (worst) to a Glaswegian streetfighter called Ian Black.

I once had to break up a fight in our open-plan newsroom when Black attacked a public school type who’d refused to join a strike organised by our union chapel.

News sheets flew, typists screamed and finally I had to step in to pull the pair apart.

It was all good clean fun, fueled by booze from the ITN bar.

The funny thing was that Ian was quite rightwing, but class loyaltiy came first. I admired him for this.

And they all seemed to hate the English.

Anyway, the next imbroglio was truly inspiring to the rest of us script-writers.

We had a ‘tea’ break from six to seven, devoted for a pint or three of brown medicine.

After that, the scriptwriters would go to a film editing room with the producer and one two others.

Our producer was an ex-army type called Philips who had the awful army habit of referring to us as ‘

lads.’

‘C’mon lsds let’s get crackinbg,’ etc. What

Well, this particular evening he turned tko Ian and said, ‘where’s your clipboard?”

Ian replied in broad Glaswegian, ‘Aw, Fuck off.’

Intead of taking it on the chin, Captain Philip’s rushed off to report Ian to the Editor.

It was a sackable offence, but most of us stood by Black, especially the Scots.

The happy end of this story?

ITN had to buy Ian off with several thousand pounds and a gloswing reference.

Up the Scots I say.