Richard Keys thinks he’s a Celtic fan? No, mate, you’re really not …

Since it’s Christmas—and a time when we should all be trying, at least, to be as charitable as possible towards our fellow human beings—I thought I’d do something nice for someone today. Uncharacteristic, I know, but here goes. I’m going to do Richard Keys a favour. I’m going to resolve, once and for all, the issue over which he’s currently getting barracked. And I can do it very simply, indeed, by saying just a few words: you’re not a Celtic fan.

What a flap some people are in over this. To me, the matter is very simple. I’ll say to him exactly what I said to Jamie Carragher earlier in the year when he attempted the same flip-flop, seemingly because Steven Gerrard is no longer working at Ibrox. This isn’t something you flip-flop over. You’re either one of us, or you’re not. You don’t flip from being one of us to being one of them, then think you can climb back over the fence. That’s not how this works.

Celtic is something you feel deeply. You don’t try this on like an ill-fitting jacket and hope you’ll grow into it. You either are this, or you’re not. You either feel it in your soul, or you don’t feel it at all. Personally, I couldn’t care less how Richard Keys self-defines, but I know this much: self-defining is all it is. If he told his story about how he’s “gone from one club to the other” in any Celtic bar in the land, he’d be told, simply, to stop kidding himself and beat it.

There’s nothing really newsworthy in this; we have a third-tier celebrity who thinks it’s kosher to change his mind on this like he’s changing shoes. Apparently, he does the same between Everton and Liverpool. What a clown. Does he even understand the game he’s spent his adult life commenting on? Does he get it beyond the surface level?

His mate, Gray, recently told him that Ibrox fans don’t want him back should he decide to leap the fence again. I’d be surprised if more than a handful of them cared any more than a handful of us do. What Gray should have told him—because Gray actually does get how this works and wouldn’t dream of changing his club allegiance—is that we don’t want Keys either.

In politics, there’s nothing activists hate more than a traitor: the person who crosses the aisle and starts banging the drum for the enemy. No matter what fallings-out there are within the party itself, joining the other side is the single, unforgivable act. It’s the same here. I have no time for fair-weather friends or people who think being a Celtic fan is some sort of cool fashion statement. You either get it, or you don’t. If you’re in it, you’re in it for life. The only way out is Death Do Us Part. He doesn’t understand any of this. He never will.

But hey, at least Keys no longer has to worry about the dilemma of which side to claim membership of. He’s persona non grata to all of us.

On that, the Ibrox fans and ourselves can, at least, agree.