C is for Craig Whyte
The man who needs no introduction.
No person in the history of football has ever gotten so much fun out of a quid, nor spread such joy to the people around him.
The events of 2011-12, his reign of error, was truly game-changing.
Some of us think the club would have fallen anyway, but he added that special touch that means so much … he gave it the public face we never could have dreamed of; a smirking used car salesman, a back-street boiler room wide-boy, Del Trotter without the three-wheel van or any of the scruples.
He was the owner they deserved, and proof that a good layer of bullshit can cover a multitude of sins.
And oh what bullshit it was.
Oh what sins they were.
They said he was a billionaire, but his “Glasgow headquarters” was a room with grates on the windows and a single file cabinet behind a locked door. They said he was an international jet-setter, but the building he closed the Rangers deal from was a portacabin in a field full of cows.
The media reported all of it after the fact; the Bampots were way in front of them.
The Scottish public still doesn’t know the half of it.
The Bampots dug up so much dirt you could have buried a hundred bodies in it. From the multiple variations of his name which appeared on documents, different dates of birth, from his involvement in land deals, his links with other football club scams and even a period as a gold-trader who caught the eyes of the US Justice Department and the FBI, Craig Whyte’s story is a book just begging to be written.
Of course, you would need good lawyers if you ever wanted to have it published … but let’s face it, the guy is never going to get on the stand, put his hand on a bible and swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth is he?
