“Dear BBC Complaints Department … I’m Writing To You About Charlie Adam …”

Due to the inevitability of Charlie Adam, who announced his retirement as a player today, ending up in a BBC Sports Scotland gig, I thought I’d start work on my complaint letter already. So here it is …

“Dear sirs/ma’am’s

There are things in life that are inevitable. Like death, taxes and an ex Ibrox player landing a gig with the Scottish Sports branch of your organisation. Whenever I hear that one of them has been sacked from a management job or is hanging up his boots as a player I instinctively know that at some point I will be hearing his meandering, barely lucid, unintelligent rambling on one of your shows. Or worse; I’ll have to look at his face on the telly. Uggh.

When I heard that Charlie Adam was retiring from playing football I naturally feared the worst. Unfortunately, I had only the most limited idea what the worst could possibly involve. Now I know better and I fear I might have been scarred for life.

When I heard he would be on the radio I knew I would hate it. I knew that it would dumb down a show already floundering under the weight of having to hold up Neil McCann and Alan Hutton. But I bore up under the mistaken belief that not even the organisation which sat Ricky Foster on the same sofa as Michael Stewart would even contemplate a worse horror.

But on the weekend’s show reviewing all the action from the matches, there he was; a man who makes Kris Boyd sound like a Harvard don, bringing a new low point in discourse to the telly which many of us thought (hoped) had touched bottom with the last Tory Party leadership debate. How wrong we were. Nothing could have prepared us for this.

For the inane drivel. For the incomprehension on his co-anchors face as he trotted out indefensibly stupid positions on Celtic’s goals (they weren’t all offside, not all six of them) or attempted to defend the latest elbowing incident involving Morelos. That would have been assault in any street corner, anywhere in the world … he didn’t even think it was a foul?

It would have been bad enough if we’d had to just sit through the garbage that came out of his mouth, but God almighty, what a mouth … that handful of teeth … that multitude of colours, some of which I didn’t even know existed in nature, all in stunning 4K. I have never, since buying the set, wished so much for standard definition. Or a blindfold.

You could have warned us what was coming at the very least, and whilst I appreciate that the show broadcasts after the watershed there are requirements on news organisations to inform people if what they are going to see can impact on their mental and emotional wellbeing; well I feel like I’ve been boomeranged after having to sit through that.

So thank you for that BBC Sports Scotland, thank you for proving once again that you are – as some people around me call you – nothing more than a repository for washed up ex-Ibrox employees; The Ministry Of Struth. And all of it under tax payer funding.

Well, I’m writing to tell you that I’ll not be paying it until this abomination is off the air, television first for obvious reasons, but radio too. It’s bad enough knowing that Derek Ferguson is on somewhere, I refuse to put up with any more of this.”