Seven-Forty-Seven. Peter Lawwell, This Is Your Celtic Legacy.

Andrew Grimson’s brilliant biography of Boris Johnson’s premiership opens with one of the most spine-tingling chapters in the history of political memoirs.

It is entitled Death Of A Prime Minister, and it opens thus; “On the morning of Tuesday 7 April 2020, I was commissioned by The Daily Mail to write Boris Johnson’s obituary. At 7pm on Monday evening, the Prime Minister had been admitted to the intensive care unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, and nobody knew if he would pull through.”

The political obituary is as old as politics itself, and Grimson had probably written a few of them. But he was being asked that day to write an actual one, for the still living PM on the off-chance that he would die and they would need to rush something into print.

It’s staggering to think of having to sit down and write such an article.

I have always loved the political obituary, which differs from the actual obituary in that it merely denotes the end of someone’s time in the public arena.

I particularly enjoy the ones people got wrong.

The best example is the notorious “political obituary of Richard Nixon”, which was rushed out in various US newspapers and in one amazing TV news segment after he had lost to Kennedy in 1960 and then followed it up in 1962 by losing to Pat Brown in California’s gubernatorial race.

His career was deemed over, they closed the book on him, and most people thought that was it. Hell, Nixon himself considered his career done; he went out with a bang in the notorious “Last Press Conference” in the aftermath of Brown’s win where he lashed the media for what he rightly or wrongly saw as their years of negative coverage.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, to open that infamous tirade. “Now that Mr. Klein has made his statement, and now that all the members of the press are so delighted that I have lost, I’d like to make a statement of my own.”

And so most people concluded that it was over. They wrote him off. Seven years later he was in The Whtie House. So those obituaries … they don’t always get it right. Because in politics there is always the possibility that you can rise again for a triumphant second act.

Former CEO’s believe that too. They are suckers for the redemption story.

One of the best historical examples is that of Steve Jobs, who was fired from Apple’s board of directors in 1985 by then CEO John Sculley, the guy Jobs had personally recruited to the company from Pepsi. We all know how that story ended; Jobs’ return to the company he founded launched a new era and made them the most profitable business in the world.

I looked forward to Dave King’s departure from Ibrox from the moment he took his seat on the board for a second time. He saw his story in redemptive terms.

I saw it as the opposite. I thought it would be a disaster and that he would leave in disgrace. He never got his moment in the sun; he was gone by the time they won the COVID title.

My obituary of him was called “He Was A Crook” and it was an homage to the actual one Hunter S. Thompson wrote for Nixon himself.

I was able to publish it swiftly on the day he quit, because most of it was written ages before, for much the same reason as The Daily Mail asked Grimson to write the real one for Boris Johnson; it looked like ending badly and I wanted to be first out of the gate.

I can’t recall writing a CEO obituary for Peter Lawwell, although I’m sure I did and it would have been less vicious than King’s but not that much more complimentary.

He wasn’t a crook, at least.

That’s about as nicely as I could have put it.

But he was an egotist and too damned controlling for his good or ours. It would have been something along those lines. I know I didn’t write a word of it in advance. Maybe I had a premonition that it was … premature.

And so it has turned out.

As I wrote about the Glib And Shameless Liar in “He Was A Crook”, Lawwell “was a publicity hungry harlot, ever greedy for the limelight, like a thirsty bird pecking at groundwater.” He sloped off the stage after his Lennon hiring blew up in his face, but he has always loved being the centre of attention, the man of the moment, basking in the glow of other people’s successes.

His return to the stage was about nothing other than milking the applause which Ange and the team he had assembled were drawing from the crowd.

The strategic leaks to the media that it was he who “discovered” the manager and played the crucial role in his hiring were awful. The pieces praising him for it were sickening, sycophant claptrap designed to make Postecoglou’s achievement his own … that’s all it was, it was pure attention seeking self-serving egotism.

It did this club no good whatsoever.

And because Ange’s team seemed so far in front of the domestic competition Lawwell could not resist returning to ride that wave, sure that it offered him his path to redemption and just maybe that statue on the Celtic Way after all.

Well Peter Lawwell is still the Celtic chairman today, and in good health. This team has not yet lost its grip on this title. But the damage has been done, come what may.

His return to this club has been a disaster of momentous proportions, an utter embarrassment which reveals his alleged great strategic genius for the smoke and mirrors deception some of us always suspected that it was, and which some of us even said that it was over and over again.

Some will say that it’s too early to write him off, that anyone who would attempt to write the “political obituary” of Peter Lawwell, at this point in time, is a reckless crazy fool. Well, I will go where others fear to tread.

Because even if we turn this campaign around, he’ll get none of the credit and deserves none. He was never going to be a beloved figure in Celtic history, not after the first Rodgers debacle and the hiring of Lennon. But he would not have been reviled.

His grasping, desperate, need to be at the centre of the universe, and the subsequent chaos that utterly selfish decision has wrought on this club in a little over twelve months, has almost certainly guaranteed that he will be.

Recently, I had a weird epiphany when I “saw” the ending for one of my two unfinished novels. I was in a taxi with a friend of mine and we were talking about the project and she said something or I did and I had the ending in a split second.

I saw it so clearly, I was even able to tell her what the final words of the book will be, and without giving away a single plot point here they are. “I do too.”

As just as I began that obituary for Dave King years before he left Ibrox for the last time in an executive role, I confidently predict that when I come to write my second one for Peter Lawwell that I will start with the following words; seven-forty-seven.

That’s days. Day 748 is significant for being a day that won’t come to pass. It’s today, and today will never happen the way that it was supposed to.

You know when I quoted John Fogerty recently when I said that “someday never comes”? That’s day 748. A nearly day but not quite there. Today is that day, the day that never was. Peter Lawwell Day, you could call it if you were feeling morbid. The day of the big parade in his honour.

Because that’ll never come either, only now the metaphorical roller of big cigars and the political equivalent of a visit from the emperor of ice cream. Lawwell once said that his tombstone would have Steven Fletcher’s name on it. He was wrong.

His legacy is much worse than Steven Fletcher.

His legacy may well be an Ibrox club, financially doping itself to the gills with borrowed money securing a Champions League jackpot which will cover a multitude of sins, and one we gave away by accumulated cash from weakening the team.

That would make the Steven Fletcher window look like a roaring success story. It would make the John McGinn one look like a triumph.

As I told him on the morning after the AEK Athens game, when I realised that he had briefed the BBC the previous night against Brendan Rodgers, “Look on the bright side; if you get this wrong, you’ll never have to worry about hearing Steven Fletcher’s name again.”

Seven-forty-seven.

That’s what should be written on his headstone instead.

747 is how many days it had been, until yesterday, since the Ibrox club had a clear lead at the top of the SPFL. And by a clear lead I mean on points with the same number of games played.

It’s a long time. It would have been even longer had that man and those around him not made such a mess of this club.

The Ibrox club were ahead for less than a day in August 2022, the third weekend of last season, but we had a game in hand and comfortably beat Kilmarnock (of all clubs) 5-0 the following day to move back to the summit.

So, the last time they had breathing space was 2 February that same year, but on that night they came to Parkhead a point in front and they left on the end of the 3-0 beating that put us top.

On that night we were in the ascendent, and coming off the back of two phenomenal transfer windows in a row. Two major events sandwiched between Day 1 and Day 747 changed that, decisively.

The first was the day Peter Lawwell’s son took over the transfer strategy, and just a few months later Daddy Lawwell returned to Celtic as chairman, and we immediately launched headfirst into a paroxysm of self-immolation.

The first to go was Ange Postecoglou, and if you believe the narrative the board has spun they were absolutely shocked to discover that he was looking to get out of our club as fast as he could. Shocked even after they had offered him contracts and he one at a time turned them all down.

Their story justifying Lawwell Jnr’s appointment has ever been that Postecoglou wanted him as part of some “dream team.” It’s a lie, and Postecoglou himself has confirmed that on numerous occasions when he’s made it absolutely clear that he never saw himself remaining at Celtic for other than a brief time.

If Lawwell and Desmond didn’t know that he had one foot out the door from the minute he rebuffed their first effort to tie him down on a long-term deal these are the stupidest two people running a football club anywhere in Europe.

And you know what? Looking at their history, they might well be.

Peter Lawwell is, right now, just 414 days into what was supposed to be his redemption story, and it’s already obvious that this is headed for a collapse in utter ruins along with the ambitions we had of going on another long run of titles.

Today, it’s the Ibrox club with the wind at their back as we flail around in this abject state and I hold Peter Lawwell personally responsible for that, and I find the idea that he and Desmond intend to build family dynasties here to be noxious. It is completely unacceptable.

Those family names are as tainted as the Kelly’s and White’s and mark my words, they are heading for a similar end. Celtic fans have been asleep at the wheel for too damned long … but when this support is fully awake and tuned in and recognises what these people have done, that ambition will get its very own obituary. It will simply not be permitted.

You know that old question about what if you could attend your own funeral? There is a wonderfully dark story which, to me, is a classic tale of egotism and the obituary coming together.

In 2007, a Bosnian guy called Amir Vehabovic, for reasons which only he will understand, decided to find out who his friends really were. He planned a funeral and then faked his death. And then he visited his final farewell to see how loved he was.

You know how many people showed up?

The priest and his mother. And having got the answer he was looking for, he then penned a furious letter to all the people who had failed to pay their respects.

“I paid a lot of money to get a fake death certificate and bribe undertakers to deliver an empty coffin,” this pitiful screed read. “I really thought a lot more of you, my so-called friends, would turn up … It just goes to show who you can really count on.”

That sort of self-centredness is rare. But you do find it in some former CEO’s.

Lawwell, who once dreamed of exiting Celtic Park on a wave of grateful cheering, as a conquering hero, will leave with a very different sound ringing in his ears.

If the club decides to throw him a farewell bash, I suggest they hire some extras to fill out the hall. 747 of them would be an appropriate number I think.