Here’s an article featured on 18th March, 2008 in the Sun. Read up people!
by Bill Leckie bill.leckie@the-sun.co.uk
IT’S a very Scottish fall-out.
Three guys at one end of the bar, eyeing their old mate and telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s not as hard as he thinks he is.
Their old mate, eyes wide and palms raised, saying he was never looking for trouble in the first place.
An age-old scenario of working blokes looking for approval for a world that has a PhD in ignoring them. Totally and utterly p***ed off that the old mate’s getting bucketloads of attention.
As a nation, we should be proud when one of our own becomes famous. Instead, we hate it. We resent it.
And eventually, we have a square go about it. So it is in the case of Alex McIlveen, Mick Kerr and Stephen Clarkson v John Smeaton.
Except . . . well, except that’s the thing here. It’s NOT those three against John Smeaton.
It’s them against Smeato. And there’s a massive difference.
Because John Smeaton is an airport baggage handler who was skiving off for a fag when a carload of lunatics tried to blow up Glasgow Airport.
Smeato’s the guy who got a telly camera shoved up his hooter and told the world: “Try this in Glasgow and we’ll set aboot ye.”
Words that spawned a legend.
But the baggage handler didn’t nurture that legend. WE did. ALL of us.
Sitting in a bar in Canada that bizarre, terrifying day, a bunch of us got drinks bought for hours thanks to him.
Websites sprung up overnight in his honour ” the one collecting pints on his behalf, the one with Osama saying: ‘I thought you told me Smeato didn’t work on Saturdays!’ It wasn’t a big, daft asthmatic Rangers supporter from Erskine who became our hero. It was his alter ego, the person we WANTED him to be ” the person we ALL want to be. John has said it himself a hundred times ” he did nothing that Alex, Mick and Stephen didn’t do. He also didn’t make himself out to be as macho as, say, Mick. I quote: “I flew at the guy a few times but he wouldn’t go down. Then he punched me so hard he knocked my teeth out and sent me flying so hard I broke my leg.”
Now, another quote from the same man: “I landed next to the burning Jeep and thought it was going to explode. That was when John Smeaton dragged me to safety. He’s a hero.”
See? We ALL nurtured the legend.
I’ve always believed that people known by nicknames don’t just become detatched from their own identity, they actually become two people.
Paul Gascoigne; mega-talented but hyper-insecure Geordie footballer.
Gazza; mad, mental, obsessive-compulsive self-destruction machine.
Paul Hewson, young Irish singer with stars in his eyes. Bono, tube.
Crumbles
And now, there’s John Smeaton and Smeato. One the guy who nipped out for that fly fag, the other who gets phone calls from Gordon Brown, an invite to the Baftas and a gong from The Queen.
Question is, why didn’t Alex McIlveen become Veeno? Why is Stephen Clarkson not Clarko? Why is there no Kerrzo column in this paper every Thursday? That’s the tough one for all three to take. But the fact is, it’s just the way the celebrity cookie crumbles.
In today’s image-obsessed world, we crave personalities. We need characters who become symbolic of our emotions.
Look at football clubs. Who decided that their history and heritage, their successes and failures, should be represented by some dude in a furry animal suit? Who knows.
But Smeato is that dude. He’s the furry mascot of the day Scotland beat al-Qaeda. Maybe it was his cheeky face on a billion screens around the world. Maybe it was the fact that America had to subtitle his off-the-cuff rant. Maybe he just got lucky. Or maybe it turns out he didn’t.
Because let’s be honest, this day has been coming, the day when the tide turned. We’ve all heard rumours for months now that he didnae dae whit he
said he had done, all had the debate about whether he has the right to go swanning round the world on someone else’s tab.
But what WAS he to do? Refuse all the trips, the dinners, the TV appearances? Was he REALLY going to tell The Queen to stick her gallantry medal?
Or put it another way. Would you have done all that, Alex? Stephen? Mick?
Would any of you stayed in the corner, grafting away and being ignored, rather than grab your 15 minutes of fame?
We have a stupid pride in this country. We’d rather scrap with our pals than back down and show any sign of weakness.
Well, it’s time to put the boot into that pride as firmly as you did into those terrorists, guys. It’s no more John Smeaton’s fault that the world adopted him than it is the fault of the other three that they were left seething into their pints.
The shame is, though, that in typically small-minded Scottish fashion we allow this petty jealousy to take away from what matters.
Which is that this bunch of mates ploughed into hell that morning without a thought for their own safety. That without their actions, scores might have died.
That nine out of ten of us put in the same situation might have run like hell.
Remember that, you four. Get together and remember it over enough lager to put out a flaming Jeep.
As we sat in that Canadian bar watching those telly pictures, what impressed the locals most was the way our country was standing shoulder-to-shoulder against allcomers.
Don’t go ruining their illusions with the truth, boys.
Our man heads South again this Tuesday for a very big day indeed in the life of our Humble Hero..(As I am sure, all who saw last Tuesday’s the BBC 1 TV documentary: ‘John Smeaton Everyday Hero’ will agree…)
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