Death of football’s most celebrated tea lady

Aggie became a legend after her famous tangle with Rangers boss Souness

Scottish football’s most famous tea lady has died.

Aggie Moffat spent 27 years ago looking after St Johnstone managers and hundreds of players behind the scenes at Muirton Park and then McDiarmid Park.

But Aggie is best remembered for a 1991 Perth bust-up with the then Rangers manager Graeme Souness, which saw shocked club owner Geoff Brown forced to play peacemaker.

The row – tagged “The Storm in a Teacup” – was brewing after houseproud Aggie in her blue pinny made a beeline for an Armani-suited Souness in a corridor outside the boardroom in the wake of a 1-1 draw.

She was raging about a broken kettle and the mess left in the visitors’ dressing room.

Recalling a confrontation which has become part of football folklore, before severing her ties with McDiarmid she maintained: “That row grew arms and legs. It’s all water under the bridge now – but I still wouldn’t speak to the man.

“Mind you, I had bigger fallouts with Saints directors Geoff Brown and Stewart Duff and they never made the papers.”

Years later, Souness admitted the clash with Aggie persuaded him to quit Scottish football and return to Liverpool.

“What pushed it over the edge for me was when I became involved in an incident with a tea lady at St Johnstone,” he said.

“I ended up arguing in the boardroom with the club chairman (Geoff Brown) and I’m one step away from . . . you know. I asked myself what was I doing?

“This lady (Aggie) wasn’t scared of me!”

She hung up her apron in 2007 at the age of 62.

Aggie began laundering the Saints kit and cleaning the dressing rooms back in 1980 and her late husband Bob assisted making match day sandwiches.

A St Johnstone spokesman said: “Aggie was a great servant to the football club over many years. Everyone at St Johnstone is sad to learn of her passing on Thursday.

“The ‘tea lady’ title didn’t do justice to the jobs Aggie carried out over many years at both Muirton Park and McDiarmid Park, where laundry duties and preparing lunches – including her legendary home-made soup – for the players formed the bulk of her busy days.

“Aggie briefly came to national prominence after a well-publicised fall out with Graeme Souness but she was very much a private person with her husband and family the most important things in her life.

“Many former players will be sad to hear of her passing.”

Picture: Graeme Hart. Aggie served St Johnstone faithfully for 27 years.

Graeme Souness – spat with Aggie led to him leaving Rangers.