Interview: Airdrie’s madcap keeper John Martin on kissing royalty at Hampden, Robert Duvall, the miners’ strike and showering with Justin Fashanu

John Martin, now 61 and still living in Prestonpans, helps coach local youth team Musselburgh Windsor and works in Tesco. Picture: Alistair Linford

John Martin doesn’t really look like John Martin anymore. It’s not just the fact he’s missing a sombrero or joke-shop specs or a trick knife dripping blood and pretending to pass right through the skull or any of the other accoutrement from his knockabout tabloid fame. All his hair has gone, the bubble perm a distant memory along with the Zapata moustache. Oh, and he’s not swinging on the doorframe to greet me the way he used to swing on the crossbar as Airdrie’s goalkeeper, the maddest of the mad.

But I’m in the right house because on the wall next to the loo is a letter from the Duchess of Kent thanking Martin for “inspiring many young footballers”. No mention of the kiss, I say.

“That’s between me and Her Royal Highness,” he laughs. The occasion was the 1995 Scottish Cup final. Royalty has rarely visited Hampden Park, before or since, and if there’s any prospect of an ex-miner with a front tooth missing who fancied a smooch, we can possibly understand why.

Martin, 61, who’s lived in “the Pans” all his days, didn’t know the form, just like when told as a Diamonds newbie to get ready for a close-season jaunt to Spain and he had to admit: “What’s a passport, gaffer?” “So in the line-up before the final, Jimmy Sandison, our captain, shook hands with the Duchess and introduced her to me,” he says. “Aye, I leaned in, kissed her on the cheek. It just seemed polite given she’d come all the way up to our game. Afterwards Jimmy said: ‘What the hell did you do that for, big man?’ I was like: ‘Well, she didn’t refuse me!’”

While the kiss didn’t necessitate the Queen calling an emergency Sandringham summit and the Duchess of Kent didn’t wipe her face and immediately decide, in Harry and Meghan’s words, to “step back” from such duties, Martin remembers how the moment made the front pages of the small, excitable papers, almost at the expense of the result. He adds: “Maybe, though, the Duchess was hoping Celtic would win, so that when she presented the cup I didn’t try for a snog with tongues!”

Celtic did win that day and Airdrie had been runners-up previously in 1992, Rangers hoisting the trophy that time, but what a cup team Airdrie were back then. The Beastie Boys, as they were dubbed, had an awkward, all-elbows, all-for-one philosophy. When balls were shoogled in velvet bags in the draws for knockout competitions, invariably No 2 – second alphabetically behind Aberdeen – was the sphere to fear. Airdrie went up to Pittodrie and won a tie, also triumphing at Motherwell in a Lanarkshire derby. These hard-cut Diamonds beat Celtic in a riotous quarter-final at the old Broomfield and our man – 19 years’ service, 769 appearances, proper leg-end – saved two penalties in the shootout. He saved again from the spot at Easter Road, one of two triumphs at Hibs’ ground. And in semis Airdrie twice ended the Scottish Cup dreams of Hearts, the current team’s opponents at Tynecastle today.

Martin works at Tesco now, helps with the training at Musselburgh Windsor and with his wife Angela minds the grandchildren for sons Richard and John Jr. He also keeps alive the memory of Jordan, Richard’s boy, who died aged 11 from cancer by organising charity events. I assume he’s not recognised much anymore for his heroics between the sticks – and photo-op malarkey off the pitch – but I’m wrong. “I still get asked for my autograph, the last time a couple of weeks ago. I did say: ‘You’re kidding me…’” Alan McLaren, a Jambo opponent in the ’92 semi, popped into the supermarket this week. “And someone else came visiting recently, a right blast from the past. He said hello and I said: ‘Oh, so you’re speaking now?’ Basically this guy hadn’t talked to me since the strike…”

In the national pit dispute which stretched over the winter of 1984-5, Martin joined workmates at the Monktonhall colliery in Midlothian on the picket line. He was part-time with Airdrie, earning £30 a week, so the food parcels handed out to the miners were gratefully received in his house. “Then one day they stopped. I asked why down at the Pans Labour Club and was told that because I was taking a wage from football I didn’t need them. ‘You’re effin’ kidding,’ I said. After tax and travel – two nights a week training, getting up at five in the morning, putting in a shift, going through to the ground by assorted buses because I didn’t drive, then not getting back home until 11 at night – I was left with just 20 quid. In other households, the wives were bringing in good money from their jobs. Angela didn’t have a job – she was doing her bit for the strike, serving at the soup kitchen. I said that for me the strike was over and I was going back. After that shift I was told the problem was sorted but I was scunnered by the whole thing and carried on working. So every morning I got on the bus and they shouted ‘Scab’ at me.”

And at many football grounds, too. “Honestly, it didn’t bother me. That guy I bumped into recently… there were a few after the strike was done who shunned me. I didn’t have any problem with what I did. Ally MacLeod was the Airdrie manager at the time. He’ll have known miners from being at Ayr United. About me going back he just said: ‘Son, it’s nobody’s business but yours.’ Later, Gordon McQueen took over and he made us full-time, which I was glad about.

“Folk who called me a scab during games didn’t know the full story. Sometimes I’d turn round and say: ‘Of course I am.’ But fans were always shouting stuff at me. I’d get: ‘Hey Martin, you’re effin’ hopeless!’ So I’d go: ‘Really? And which club do you play for?’ Their mates would laugh and you wouldn’t hear another peep. Then there was Fergie, Hamilton Accies’ biggest nutter – I had some fun with him. One time he shouted: ‘Hey Martin, your wife’s a good ride.’ I shouted back: ‘Aye you effin’ better believe it!’”

Are goalkeepers by their nature, if not full-blown bonkers, then on examination likely to have a screw loose? “I think we must, and, not boasting, I think I was madder than most. You’re diving down at flying boots for a living. Who would do that? I’ve got so many stitches on my head it’s like an old fitba. Sometimes centre-forwards would say: ‘You’re crackers, you.’ One time playing Dundee United big Duncan Ferguson walloped me three times. He stood over me and said: ‘Will you not stay doon?’”

You’re digging underground – who would do that? Martin shakes that bashed-up bonce of his. “Down the mine there could be a collapse at any moment. One time, away in the distance, a bloke was killed when he got snagged up in the conveyor belts. I didn’t see it happen but a guy in my team was crushed to death between two buggies – I had to watch that.”

When he was down the pit, blackness all around, he might have dreamed about a football life but not one where there would be brushes with royalty and – don’t forget – movie stars. After his real career wound down at Cowdenbeath Martin was the goalie in the 2002 football flick A Shot at Glory which followed fictitious little Kilnockie’s improbable run to the Scottish Cup final. Robert “I love the smell of Deep Heat in the morning” Duvall was the manager and there was the classic exchange when Martin conceded a soft goal. “Sorry boss,” he groaned, “I should have shut my legs.” Duvall: “No son, your mother should have shut her legs.”

Martin adds: “I loved making that film and Duvall was great. On set during breaks he’d say to me: ‘Big man, come here and make me laugh.’ One day his wife turned up, 40 years younger than him, a gorgeous Argentinian. I said to him later: ‘You’ve either got a big tadger or loads of money.’ ‘Big man,’ he said, ‘I’ve got both.’ Ally McCoist was in the movie, of course, and a couple of Airdrie boys, Oweny [Coyle] and big Andy [Smith], and Duvall told us to drop by his ranch in Kentucky any time we liked. My character missed the final – he got injured. The replacement was a young lad played by Cole Hauser who went on to Good Will Hunting. I tried to give him a few tips but he was bloody hopeless. I said to him: ‘Cole, have you ever caught a ball of any sort in your life even at all?’ For the final I became one of the photographers behind the goal so I could tell him what to do. It was like I was working a Subbuteo goalie.”

At Airdrie, Martin’s first manager, Bobby Watson, was probably his favourite – “Because he had faith in this big gowk.” He remembers Watson questioning the wisdom of his young keeper coming the full 18 yards to claim high balls. Bold as, Martin inquired: ‘Aye boss, but how many have I missed?” The movie apart, he did miss one or two, nominating a 35-yarder in a game against Alloa Athletic as his biggest howler. “I saw it coming. I could have ran round the park three times before it got to me. I was already throwing the ball to my  full-back. It went right through my hands.” Martin is in the book of Scottish Football Quotations offering this harsh truth: “You can look like a world-beater for 89 minutes but one mistake and you’re a choob.” Goalies’ union? Yes, it exists – “It has to, because only keepers understand the job and offer the kind of sympathy you want when you muck up.”

He was also managed by Broomfield icon Ian McMillan and Jimmy Bone: “There was a game, forget who against, where everyone played terrible. Boney ripped into all of us. You had to take it but I went ‘Stick your effin’ team up your arse’ and grabbed my bag. I stormed out the door, stopped outside for a couple of seconds then popped my head back round: ‘Is it effin’ training as usual the morn?’”

Then came Alex MacDonald with whom Martin had issues. “I didn’t think much of his man-management. He brought in [ex-Celt] Allen McKnight before a pre-season friendly and said we’d get a half each but I was left on the bench. McKnight had the jersey for a bit but then he had a McNightmare and is supposed to have gone back to his flat and smashed it up. We never saw him again and I got my place back, although Alex never said anything to me.”

MacDonald, though, must have done something right, steering Airdrie to those finals, with Martin still regretting how ’95 panned out. “We could have beat Celtic. We had chances but then the ball bounced off big [Pierre van] Hooijdonk and they won it. Last time we met I told him he had a head like a 50p piece.

“Celtic, though, didn’t like playing us – no one did. One of the reasons we were successful was we never had a big-time Charlie. We all fought for each other. No one strutted about the place as if they owned it and  that included big Fash.” Airdrie were the 18th club of Justin Fashanu’s career and Martin has fond memories of the flamboyant striker’s season at Broomfield. “We had a laugh with him. I mean, we dealt with the fact he was gay the way daft footballers would. Everyone was bums to the tiles the first time he walked into the showers. He was a great guy.”

Martin, who scored two goals from kick-outs in his career although one was nicked off him by a Falkirk player’s desperate attempted clearance, rates as his best-ever save a stop from Richard Gough with the Rangers man already turning away in celebration before the crackpot custodian was able to contort his body and stick out a glove.

Martin’s technique when facing penalties was to swing his hips one way, persuading the opponent to shoot in the other direction and this worked a treat in the ’92 semi shootout when he smothered Dave McPherson’s effort.

“Airdrie were your worst nightmare,” he says. “When our name was called in cup draws the reaction must have been ‘Aw naw!’ Three years later when Hearts landed us again I think they shat it.”

Forsooth, I hope he didn’t use such language when he puckered up to the Duchess.