Radio Listener: Managing the Old Firm | Sidekick

No-one seems entirely sure how or when the hoary old term "Old Firm" was coined for the less than cosy relationship between Rangers and Celtic football clubs. One school of thought points to a report of their game against each other in 1888, which remarked that the players "got on so well you would believe that they were old firm friends", another that it simply emerged as the two clubs began to dominate the Scottish football scene and it all became big business.

Whatever the origins, running either team has become one of the most prestigious – and demanding – jobs in Scottish football. In the five-part series Managing The Old Firm, Chick Young has tracked down the 17 managers of both teams who are still alive and asked them about the triumphs and trials of the job.

Kicking of a rather more metaphorical kind is the subject of Sidekick, in which Frank Cottrell Boyce, who as an author and screenwriter has created many characters of his own, examines the traditional role of the hero's faithful assistant – as in Holmes's Watson, Batman's Robin or Don Quixote's Panza. The programme reasons that all great heroes require a sidekick – loyal but with all too human failings, all the better to connect us mortal readers or viewers with the sometimes impossibly exalted lead character.

Boyce interviews other authors and directors who have created sidekicks and the actors who have portrayed these down-to-earth characters who forever play out their essential roles in the shadow of brilliance.

Managing the Old Firm

Today, Radio Scotland, 4pm

Sidekick

Tuesday, Radio 4, 11:30am

• This article was first published in The Scotsman on 22 May.