YouTube, seafood for tickets & long lunches – Chick Young on his friend Walter Smith

You won’t find company much more engaging than Walter. The good Lord knows – and so did his wonderful wife Ethel – that he liked a lunch. Aye, preceded with the adjective “long.”

We had a few that went on past the time of the last train to Helensburgh and actually his capacity for good wine held firm when the rest of us had lost the capacity for speech.

I don’t think I’ve ever known a manager who knew how to befriend the media like he did.

He spoke in tribute at the funeral of at least one of my former colleagues and was note free and brilliant. Oratory was another wee talent of his.

In the Europa League run of 2008 – and actually on every foreign jaunt when he was in charge at Ibrox – he took care of the BBC.

We had no rights to one-to-one interviews but long before the eve of away game press conferences he would invite me and the sound boffin to the team hotel for a beer and the exclusive wee chat.

The secret life of Walter Smith. Nothing should be hidden. The man was a diamond.

The YouTube sensation when Archie Knox invited me to stick my BBC microphone where the sun don’t shine was the only time in my life I braved the stare.

Walter had an ability to flick in a heartbeat from the eyes of the jolly man to those of a potential purveyor of grievous bodily harm.

And in the morning after the elimination from the Champions League by AEK Athens, when I rocked up to Ibrox, he wasn’t seeing the funny side.

He swore because he knew in those days, we would never broadcast it. But in the end I got the 30-second clip I required for Reporting Scotland. And then I kept the tape. And in these days it was actually tape.

Via a video of outtakes, it found its way into the big bad world. At first on grainy VHS tapes. It was 1995 remember.

But then on YouTube. No, neither of us had a clue what YouTube was. It has now been viewed millions of times.

“I wish I had never done it,” Walter told me a couple of years back. “The grandweans have seen it and want to know why I’m swearing at that nice man…”

Oh, Walter. The day of the live Sportsound interview at the mouth of then Ibrox tunnel when we were bombed by a seagull dropping a baguette. Imagine. A baguette in Govan.

We both seized with laughter. He was impish in his sense of fun.