The Ibrox fans reaction to the Oasis news is classic Main Character Syndrome.

As someone who enjoys tropes and studying them, I was actually surprised that there was an entire internet ecosystem of them that I had never heard of before.

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but there were a couple that I really enjoyed and that I’ll talk about over the course of the next week. One of them is called main character syndrome. That’s when someone believes that they are living inside a movie, with the whole world revolving around them, or acts as if they believe they are.

The other day, as you know, we got the details of the coming series of Oasis gigs. A number are going to be held at Celtic Park.

Now, it’s a big deal for our club to be hosting those, especially so many of them, and Paulina wrote a really good piece about how Celtic should be trying to maximise the publicity from that. We should use it to get more concerts held at our stadium, making it more of a multi-use venue instead of sitting empty for large parts of the summer.

An announcement like that, which is obviously very positive for Celtic, was never going to go down well elsewhere. But the response on some of the Ibrox fan forums and among some of their online goons was truly hilarious, and offered some of the clearest cases of main character syndrome that you will ever see.

There were people expressing their absolute horror at the decision and saying that they felt personally betrayed, as if Oasis’s booking department should have consulted them first. Others literally put it in those terms. “Why didn’t they ask their fans?”

A couple of them claimed they were now going to sever any connection they had with the band, and it made me wonder: “Connection? What connection is this? You know them personally?”

Even those who vowed that they would still attend the gigs had to do it in the context of some kind of personal protest, as though that mattered at all. One said he was going to go, but he was going to wear his home jersey.

Because that’ll show them, right?

Because the whole night revolves around one guy’s clothing choices. Because his act of defiance, which no one will even notice, becomes the whole focus of the evening for everybody else. At least inside his own tiny mind.

And that’s main character syndrome to a T, because at its core is the idea that the world, and everything that happens in it, revolves around you. There are a lot of people out there afflicted by that very thing.

Main character syndrome can be a collective thing as well, because you can impose that mindset onto anything you want, even a football club.

And it’s at the heart of all the stories about the Grand Conspiracy of the Unseen Fenian Hand. Because what else is that grand conspiracy but the idea that all these different organisations, and all these individuals connected with them, got together and plotted, actually plotted, at the possible risk of their own reputations and even, in some cases, their careers, to do everything they could to harm a west of Scotland football team?

That suggests that these people have nothing else in their lives but the downfall of the Ibrox operation.

That is main character syndrome extended to an entire football fanbase, and that they absolutely believe this is not in the slightest question. That’s why none of those comments sent to me yesterday surprised me in the least. This is just how they think.

Oasis didn’t just want to play concerts at a venue they think will be great. It had to be some kind of calculated snub. They’re not just a band making a commercial decision all on their own. How dare they! They should have consulted people, or they should have consulted those particular people, before they made that choice.

It’s fascinating to ponder these people, and some might say I’ve wasted a lot of my time doing it, but I don’t feel like I have.

I like to understand what goes on in the heads of deranged and delusional people, and I find it absolutely fascinating that people like this are everywhere, all around me. That I live in a city teeming with them, the stars of their own show, which in this case is a sitcom, although they don’t appear to know that.

They have managed to turn even a band booking their next gig into something in which they feel they should have had some personal input.

Their manager is a little bit like that, and he walks around Scottish football right now thinking he’s a swaggering hero.

He has done no more than Barry Ferguson did before in managing to beat a very badly organised Celtic team. There really is nothing special in what McInnes has managed here. But he has always been one of the great sufferers of main character syndrome, and he’s talking like he and his club are now in the ascendancy. The one that was knocked out of Europe. The one that is currently five points behind us in the league.

Without a doubt, these people go through their lives feeling as though they are the stars of their own movie and that all reality shapes and bends around them.

But you never hear from them or their little bubble, until things don’t go their way. And that’s when the neurosis becomes clear. That’s when they go onto websites and wail that their favourite band has booked a venue they don’t like. That’s when you hear them talk about unseen conspiracies directing their lives.

How many of them get happy endings? Very few, I would suggest, because when your whole life is a self-centred bubble, things do tend to get a little funky in and around the environs of your film set. Oasis will play those gigs, and they will be sold out regardless of what the fans of a west of Scotland football club think. Those who turn up on the night wearing their Ibrox tops will blend into a crowd of tens of thousands without even being noticed, which will drive them even more crazy.

And that arrogant, strutting fool McInnes?

Well, before the end of this season, I expect his particular film to end without the swell of hero music, but with the twist ending that leaves audiences gasping. “Did you see what they did to the main character? Oh my God.”

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