THE SCOTSMAN SPORT

He can laugh about it now but Tortolano admits fans’ criticism got so bad he dreaded playing football. Then, as his career ended, the Hibs cult hero considered suicide

Did you see that was won by Edinburgh Uni? Hip, hip, hooray for them. Ultimately it was the enormo-brained quartet’s knowledge of Byzantine empresses and heavy metal rockers Iron Maiden which proved decisive but, bolstered by Hibernian season ticket-holder and one-time Easter Road mascot Robbie Campbell Hewson, maybe they would have known the answer to this burning question:

Quizmaster Jeremy Paxman: “Fingers on buzzers, when was the last time Hibs finished higher up the league than Hearts two seasons in a row?”

Campbell Hewson: “1993-94 and, not surprisingly, 1994-95.”

Paxo: “I’ll do the gags, Edinburgh, but here’s your chance for a bonus point: who was that Hibee XI’S left winger-turned-full back, Italian descent, luxurious hair, not always luxurious first touch, the inspiration for a chant of ‘Joe, Joe, Super Joe’ which might have been ironic but there was no doubting the boy’s guts?” Quite often the posers on

are Byzantine, in the sense of being

ON CONSIDERING SUICIDE IN 1998 beyond the scope of my keelie state education, but I’d get that one right and today Joe Tortolano is sitting with me in Burger King at the Bannockburn interchange of the M9, having just finished work. In his post-football life, the 53-year-old Tortolano checks schools and hospitals to make sure there’s nothing horrible in the water. Er, is that keeping him especially busy at the moment? “I cannae tell you that.”

Thankfully he is much more forthcoming on his football career – 11 years at Hibs – even though a lot of the time he was the target of those fans who like to go to the match and have a bloody good moan.

He has lots of funny stories about this, how pals would talk into his right ear, assuming he was deaf in the other one from all the abuse on his torrid touchline beat. How some of the catcalls were deserved: “There was a game against Falkirk – don’t know if you were there, hope not – when one, two, three, four times in quick succession I let the ball bounce over my foot and out for a shy. They were still getting the subby ready when I put the heid down and walked – I knew it was me coming off.”

How Andy Goram, his goalkeeper, would put a vicious spin on the ball when throwing it to him – “to make sure I was paying attention. He’d say to me: ‘Do you know, Joe, you’re the best five-a-side player at the club.’ I’d say: ‘What about Saturdays, though?’ ‘Aye, well, that’s a different matter.’”

And how he failed to persuade stadium car park orderlies that he was a player. “This guy wouldn’t let me use one of the bays reserved for the team. He even shouted over to his mate: ‘Hey Wullie, have you heard of Joe Tortolano?’ For christ sake, I’d been at the club eight years by then. So I had to park out in the street.”

There are so many slapstick yarns about Joe Tartan Lino, as he was christened by the Easter Road terraces, and he laughs so much in the telling of them that it comes as quite a shock when he reveals how he once contemplated suicide.

This was 21 years ago following his unhappy spell at Clyde, which followed his even more godawful tenure with Falkirk: “I was out of work for the first time in my life. What the hell was I going to do? I went after a job with the Scottish Prison Service. All I thought would be required of me was remembering to lock the cell doors at night but there was this big application form with tricky maths questions. ‘That’s it,’ I told myself, ‘I’m a failure.’” At the time his wife Hilary was pregnant with their first child. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to provide’, which was ridiculous, because ending it all would have left the family in an even worse state. But for a wee moment I did think about driving the car over the Kincardine Bridge.”

Tortolano came through that dark time, just as he came through the grimness of being the No 1 whipping boy at Hibs, reinventing himself as a cult favourite. Now a happy dad to two girls, he’s probably a better footballer in the collective memory than back in the day. Fans who’ve grown older with him have forgotten about those four miscontrols and, in this era of short-term loanees and players leaving clubs with barely a backwards glance, remember instead all his plucky striving. And they also acknowledge: we are Hibs and there will always be some incidental comedy. A typical Hibee mantelpiece may offer pride of place to a replica of the Scottish Cup, but there should also be room for action-pose figurines of Ally Brazil, the pre-tortolano butt-ofthe-jokes, and our man.

Hisstorybeginsinthe1950swhen great-grandfather Antonio arrived from Caserta in southern Italy, quickly establishing himself as an ice cream tycoon in the Raploch district of Stirling. “He was 5ft 4in, big moustache, wee watch in his waistcoat pocket. There’s a great photo of him with his brother standing on the running boards of an enormous fancy car. Benedito was 6ft 5in and they were like Arnie Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito in .You didn’t mess with them, or try to sell sliders on their patch.”

Stirling-born Tortolano is a real twin and with Mario on the right wing and him on the left the pair tore up the local juvenile scene with all-conquering Tullibody Hearts. Who was the better player? “Obviously there was only one winner there. Seriously, some folk reckoned Mario had more skill but he lacked a wee bit of heart and, when he was given the chance to sign for Leicester City, he decided he’d miss his mammy too much. But he became my biggest fan and followed me everywhere. We’re identical so sometimes he got mistaken

“I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to provide’, which was ridiculous, because ending it all would have left the family in an even worse state. But I did think about driving the car

over the Kincardine Bridge”

for me and he wasn’t shy about signing autographs using my name!”

Tortolano’s first shot at the big time came as a 14-year-old at Celtic’s Barrowfield training ground, much to the delight of his lorry-driver father Giuseppe, and then Hoops manager Billy Mcneill was there to watch his trial. “Billy told the scout afterwards that he didn’t think I would make it. I’m afraid I bore a bit of a grudge about that and once when Celtic came to Easter Road and the ball went loose near the away dugout I battered it at him. I missed – of course I missed – and Billy shouted at the ref: ‘Sort that idiot out!’ I apologised afterwards. He was a great man and I’ve shed a few tears at him passing.”

Unlike his brother, Joe did venture south, to West Bromwich Albion. He constantly sends himself up and does so again now: “I was on the bus to Birmingham with my suitcase and my toilet bag – the toilet bag was bigger, naturally … ” But right away he too wished he was back in the arms of mum Mary: “I stumbled right into the Handsworth riots: cars upside down, lorries in flames, fighting, looting – I was shite-ing myself.”

Illness restricted his chances under Baggies manager Johnny Giles and he and his toilet bag came back up the road. He had a tryout with Hearts but Alex Macdonald didn’tsignhimeither.sodidheseekrevenge on Doddie, too, with a wild clearance? “No, I would have been way too scared.” And so in 1985 it was on to Hibs, an association which somehow lasted 11 years, and started as it meant to go on, with some daftness. “Mum said: ‘There’s been a Mr Blakey on the phone for you.’ I thought: ‘Does she mean that bloke from to be offered a job as a I had an uncle who di my mind works. I ca Blakey, it’s Joe Torto on the other end said Joe, John Blackley, t of Hibs.’”

That confusion ov come, he knew imme diately he was in the right place. “One of the first questions I asked was: ‘Don’t you use old tyres here?’ Hearts they were str your back before yo the sand dunes at G Training with Hibs yo see balls – luxury!” He good start as a Hibee, in a titanic tussle with the Scottish Cup and s over the cross for Edd best-of-seven winn were Under-21 caps modelling gigs. “Th