Alan Pattullo: Wee Jim gets het up over lawnmowing tale

Published on Sunday 12 December 2010 13:09

Jim McLean still has the esprit de corps to splutter and shout 'I'm suing youse all', it's gladdening to hear.

But you would hope even he would see the funny side of it after it was explained to him that a simple misunderstanding had led to the Evening Telegraph suggesting that the former Dundee United manager had once ordered skipper Paul Hegarty to cut the front lawn at his Broughty Ferry house. Actually, the Dundee evening newspaper had more than just suggested it.

Included in one part of their serialisation of "The Dave Bowman Story" was a rather graphic account of Hegarty carrying out the mowing duties at chez McLean.

No detail was spared as Bowman's memoirs were given a little spice. The midfielder was recounting being given a tour by "Wee Jim" on his first day in Dundee, following his transfer from Coventry City. The lawnmower was a "horrible, smoke-belching thing", pushed, he was surprised to note, by "Heggie", who was a 31-year-old Scottish internationalist at the time.

"Not exactly the kind of player you'd expect to be charged with trimming the gaffer's lawn," Bowman observed - though not, it turned out, very accurately.

McLean was reportedly incandescent upon reading this last week.

It was like the old days as he reached for the phonebook, running a finger down the page until he got to DC Thomson. It was lost in translation he was told by a fretting journalist - it had actually been Hegarty's own lawn which he had been spotted moving, apparently.

But the amusing part of the tale is just how many people would have read it and deemed the scenario entirely plausible.

And it's just as well Bowman hadn't seen David Narey tending to his gaffer's chrysanths round the back.