Jungle Days: Supporting Celtic in the 1980s (Pitch Publishing, 2025), by John Wight Jungle Days: Supporting Celtic in the 1980s by John Wight does what it says in its title. The book chronicles his support of the Bhoys in the one of the most turbulent decades of the twentieth century. Yet the tome delivers far more, giving a superb history of Celtic and its importance to the Irish in Scotland.

Cast your minds back to the 2017 Scottish Cup Final against Aberdeen. It was a match that not only sealed an unprecedented unbeaten domestic treble, immortalizing its winning squad within the annals of Celtic greats, but which also consolidated Brendan Rodgers’ position as unimpeachable leader of the club’s playing outfit into a new era of outright dominance. And yet, in the 54th minute of a very evenly matched contest, Jonny Hayes broke clean through Celtic’s backline, and with his teammate Kenny McClean catching up, his square ball narrowly evaded the latter’s toe to scupper an easy tap-in.

Cast your minds back to the 2017 Scottish Cup Final against Aberdeen. It was a match that not only sealed an unprecedented unbeaten domestic treble, immortalizing its winning squad within the annals of Celtic greats, but which also consolidated Brendan Rodgers’ position as unimpeachable leader of the club’s playing outfit into a new era of outright dominance. And yet, in the 54th minute of a very evenly matched contest, Jonny Hayes broke clean through Celtic’s backline, and with his teammate Kenny McClean catching up, his square ball narrowly evaded the latter’s toe to scupper an easy tap-in.

The decade kicked off with a Glasgow derby at Celtic Park which unfortunately gave us a fair impression of how things were about to go for the next few years, this being our last meaningful cough and splutter in the league campaign. Celtic’s farewell to the 80s had been a 2:0 defeat at home to Dunfermline. Tommy Burns had just been allowed to leave for Kilmarnock and the number of knives out for Roy Aitken would have made a gang of Yardies blush.

Time to take some of the shine off the Oscars once again and announce the NTV Hackwatching Awards for 2025.

We don’t have too many claims to fame here at NTV Mansions, but this was the day we made the back page of a national tabloid.

We don’t have too many claims to fame here at NTV Mansions, but this was the day we made the back page of a national tabloid. OK, it was only the Daily Mail, but we were there nonetheless. On the morning of the 1995 Scottish Cup final when Celtic were due to play Airdrie you can imagine how upset we all were when we realised our pen pictures of the Airdrie team had offended then Diamonds manager Alex MacDonald.

Celebrate the Centenary of Celtic’s greatest goal by one of the club’s most iconic figures, Peerless Patsy Gallacher – The Mighty Atom A 48-page A5 magazine celebrating Patsy, his…

The summer of 1990 was the setting for yet another Scottish World Cup debacle.

NTV 309 Includes paper copy and 120 page PDF. £3.50 Click here to purchase.

Part One of Andy's chronicle of the 90s. If you have some strong drink handy and the number of a good therapist to cope with the flashbacks then read on...

Love Street (or St.

Awards season is with us again so it’s time to get your nominations in for the Hackwatching Awards 2025. Simply cast your vote for the horse’s arse you feel most deserves one of our gongs and we will announce the winners in NTV 309, due out before the end of the season. There might even be a wee prize for the best nominations.

Build a 60,000 stadium, float an over-subscribed share issue, win the league and leave with a £40 million profit? All in a day’s work (well, five years’ work to be more accurate) for Fergus McCann. 31 years on, AB MURDOCH and The Wild Colonial Bhoy look back at the revolution and its aftermath. March 2025: Celtic are top of the league, still involved in the Scottish Cup and are in rude financial health by comparison with just about every other club in Scotland.

Fergus McCann‘s influence proved to be immense in many ways. First and foremost, he saved Celtic from oblivion. If Celtic had gone to the wall in 1994, there would have been far less pressure on Murray to overspend recklessly at Ibrox, less temptation to gamble with foolhardy tax avoidance strategies and no meaningful resistance to his plans for complete dominance of Scottish football.

NTV 307 Where else are you going to find Colin Kazim-Richards, Quark the Frengi barman from Star Trek and Slovenian political philosopher Slavoj Zizek mentioned in the same magazine this month? £3.50 Click here to purchase.

Philip Vine in his book ‘Immortals’ looks back at the return to the club of one of its most famous sons. “Morning Boss,” Stein said. It was Tuesday, 9 March 1965 when Stein limped through the doors of Paradise as manager of Celtic, and he immediately sought out Jimmy McGrory, ousted by Kelly and about to begin his stint as public relations officer.

Our Scottish Cup draw against Raith Rovers will doubtless see a plethora of articles in the media reminiscing about the 1994 League Cup Final. Here’s our version from part 4 of our series on the 90s. November 27th 1994 was the date of Celtic’s first major cup final for four years. The club had lost the last two cup finals they had been in, but the opponents in those games had been Rangers and Aberdeen.

Tommy’s entry in an Alphabet of the Celts by Eugene MacBride, Martin O’Connor and George Sheridan covers the flame haired maestro’s playing days, Andy Murdoch looks back at TB’s career as seen from…

NTV 306 All the usual stuff, including match reports, letters, randy refs and a recipe for spinach soup. £3.50 Click here to purchase.

It was wonderful to see the legend that was Sean Fallon chosen to raise the league flag at the start of season 2012-13 (at 90 he looked a sight more sprightly than some of those that were on the pitch). Sean joined Celtic on 27th March 1950 from Glenavon for the princely sum of £27,000 and made his debut against Clyde at Shawfield in a 2-2 draw during which he had the unfortunate experience of scoring an own goal in the 34th minute (Fernie and Tully were Celtic’s scorers, the latter in the 88th minute).

Marmaduke Baglehole takes a listen to some of the more offbeat (in some cases quite literally) unofficial recordings which used to grace the stalls of the Barras. Altogether now, "Three cheers for Tommy Gemmell..." Celtic’s glory years of the Sixties and Seventies brought the club unprecedented success and world renown. In order to cash in on this phenomenon, the fledgling Celtic commercial enterprises division, operating from a wee office above the bookies in Renfrew Street, were using the Celtic brand name to endorse everything from carpets to cigarettes (no kidding - 20 Celtic tabs for 1/6d - support the team, smoke the colours!).

With the fan songbook taking on a decidedly retro feel last night, join Marmaduke Baglehole as he looks back at some of the club’s past offerings on vinyl. Apart from the huge number of books, magazines and publications - both official and unofficial - devoted to Celtic throughout the club’s history, there remains one genre of memorabilia which has passed by largely without comment, even though it has left us with some of the most surreal and bizarre examples of Celtic folk culture imaginable.

January 1952 and the Celtic board find themselves at the centre of a row with the SFA over the flying of the Irish tricolour above the stadium. Philip Vine takes a look back at a time when it was the directors instead of the fans who were at the centre of a flag flutter. In the North British Hotel, Kelly’s mind wandered momentarily as he watched heads nod in agreement to the appointment of Jock Stein as manager of Celtic.

Visit the post for more.

Never mind that the cumulative total of trophies won by Celtic following our latest League Cup win. There are a few pots and pans adorning the cabinet that will forever be a permanent source of ang…

Rangers – then later sevco – supporting referees have been a feature, not to mention a running joke, in Scottish football for decades. After they hang up their whistles they can often b…

Note: We reserve this feature for those incidents that under normal circumstances you only ever see in the primary school playground. The ones that have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief and later…

Visit the post for more.