ALEX HAS VERY SPECIAL FAMILY REASON TO BE BAIRNS’ TV STAR

FOR Alex Jakubiak, a Scottish Cup quarter-final tie against Rangers at Ibrox is a chance to showcase his goalscoring prowess in front of the Sky Sports cameras.

And it would truly be fitting if the 21-year-old striker, with five goals in his last five games for Paul Hartley’s Bairns, proves the star of the show on the small screen.

For it was in Falkirk almost a century ago that Jakubiak’s great-grandfather, John Hart, played a key role in the invention of the television. A close collaborator with famous inventor John Logie Baird, much of the work on the early ‘televisor’ was done in Hart’s workshop in the centre of the Stirlingshire town.

In return for his help, Baird presented Hart with one of his transmitters. The earliest surviving authenticated piece of Baird’s equipment, it remains proudly on display at the Falkirk Museum in Callendar House.

There is also a plaque to Logie Baird, with a mention of Hart on it, outside the Howgate Shopping Centre in Falkirk, which was built on the site of Hart’s old electrical shop.

So Londoner Jakubiak jumped at the chance to dig into his rich family history when he joined the Scottish Championship side on loan from Watford in January.

‘My great-grandad on my mum’s side, John Hart, owned a shop in Falkirk called Hart Electricals,’ said Jakubiak.

‘In that shop, he worked with John Logie Baird and helped invent one of the world’s first televisions.

‘I remember a few years ago at Christmas when the whole family were together it came up in conversation.

‘I didn’t really think much of it afterwards, but I remembered about it when the chance to go to Falkirk on loan came up in January.

‘I spoke to my mum, Anna, and my gran, Isobel, about Falkirk. They were proud that I had come up here to a place with strong connections to my family.

‘There’s even a plaque in town with my great-grandad’s name on it. I’d been sent a picture of it before by my mum, but it was nice to see it in person and look a little into my family background. It’s a nice little piece of history.

‘I’m really enjoying my football and being at Falkirk. The game against Rangers at Ibrox on Sunday will be the biggest of my career.

‘When I was out on loan at Oxford in League Two in England, we played Cambridge. It was live on Sky and I came on for the last 20 minutes or so.

‘But Sunday will be bigger and I’m really looking forward to the game. The type of player I am, once I have confidence, it’s hard to stop me — and I’m full of coincidence at the moment.’

Jakubiak’s gran, Isobel Hart, moved from Falkirk to London, where she met his grandad, Zigmunt Jakubiak.

‘My grandad had been in the war in Poland,’ he explained. He was twice captured by the Germans when they invaded Poland, but he managed to escape twice and he eventually found his way to London.

‘That’s where he met my gran. They had my mum there and I was born in London.’ It was Jakubiak’s Falkirk connections that led to the former Scotland Under-19 international’s one and only visit to Ibrox to date.

‘I had a stadium tour at the stadium when I was younger,’ he recalled. ‘I was playing for Scotland Under-16s when I was a schoolboy at Watford. I came up with another lad from Watford called George Byers, who is now at Swansea.

‘George is Scottish and his grandparents lived in Glasgow. The family were big Rangers fans. His grandad worked at Ibrox, so he got us a stadium tour.

‘I’ve been getting a few messages from George this week joking about going to Ibrox with Falkirk. If we manage to nick something on Sunday I will make sure I message him!

‘Our manager, Paul Hartley, has been telling us that Rangers are the favourites this weekend. They are really clicking in the Premiership just now.

‘But it’s a cup game and we have to go there to try to win it. The manager will set us up that way and we all want to win.’

A look at the record books shows that the Bairns have not won against Rangers at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup since 1927.

But should Jakubiak help scratch that 91-year itch tomorrow in front of the television cameras, then John Hart’s great-grandson can claim to have written his very own piece of Falkirk folklore.