Tonight’s the night for football legends

TONIGHT is the night as former Dunfermline Athletic manager and one of Scotland’s top after dinner speakers, the legendary Dick Campbell, will host and take part in a ‘Football Comedy Night’ in the Carnegie Hall.

The current Arbroath boss will share the stage with another exDunfermline manager, Jim Leishman, and popular after dinner speaker John Gahagan this evening, Thursday, October 26.

Dick is very much looking forward to sharing the stage with Big Jim.

“I’ve known Jim most of my life since we played against each other at primary school,” he said.

“We were also on the books at the same time in our early playing career with Dunfermline Athletic

– though to be honest we didn’t actually play together very often as I was in the first team and Jim was in the reserves!

“On a serious note, however, it was a tragedy that Jim’s playing career was cut short at such an early stage, as I’m confident he would have gone on to be a fantastic player.

“I was playing alongside Jim when he broke his leg, and it is one of the worst breaks I’ve ever witnessed. I remember our trainer, wee Jimmy Stevenson, running on to the park to tend to Jim who was writhing around in agony.

“Jimmy asked me to take the shin guard from Jim’s good leg and put it in Jim’s mouth to bite on to help him fight the pain.

“Looking back now, and having had to listen to some of the poetry that Jim’s recited over the years, I sometimes wish I’d never taken it back out!

“Football has been very good for me during my life.

“I remember signing on for Dunfermline at a time when I was working as a shipwright in the Dockyard on £11 a week and my dad was on £14 a week in the pits. I started on a weekly wage of £44 with a signing on fee of £2K in days when you could buy a house for £500, so I felt like a millionaire!

“I’m looking forward to sharing a lot of funny stories from my time in football on the coaching side as well as the playing side.

“I was invited to try my hand in coaching when I was playing with Brechin, but wasn’t keen initially to go down to the SFA set up at Largs to do that. However I then read in a newspaper that Largs was the nightclub capital of Scotland at that time, so that changed my mind for me!

“I’m glad I did, and rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest Scotland coaches there such as Alex Ferguson, Wattie Smith, Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown provided me with some of the highlights of my career, and I look forward to sharing some very funny stories about that side of my life with the audience in the Carnegie Hall.”

Tickets for a ‘Football Comedy Night’ on Thursday, October 26, at 7.30pm, which is sponsored by ‘Ian Brown Motor Engineers’, are available priced £20 from the Carnegie Hall Box Office on 01383 602302.