HAVING viewed Mark Daly’s sensationalised would-be “public interest” documentary a few times now, I have to say that, on the face of it, our largest shareholder, Dermot Desmond and his ops don’t exactly come up smelling of roses (albeit his alleged transgression is very small beer, indeed, viewed against the overall backdrop of dodgy dealing, “creative accountancy”, tax evasion and / or avoidance etc the programme purportedly sets out to lay bare).  Well, he’s a billionaire, a breed not noted for its propensity to stand on ceremony when there’s an easy buck to be made.

As such, hell mend him if, in common with many of his grasping peers in the shark-infested waters of the business world, he has … and I’m not saying he has … some sort of case to answer in relation to his or his companies’ routine business  – something I am signally not qualified to comment on.

So, I won’t.

However, to the best of my knowledge, the affair in question has absolutely nothing to do with Celtic.  Yet Daly goes out of his way to obliquely create exactly the impression that it has.  His summing up of the DD section of his production is blatantly shot against a luridly-contrived backdrop of the environs of Celtic Park on a big Champions’ League night – where and when he chose to “doorstep” Mr Desmond, with the clear and flimsily-disguised objective of lending the allegations a direct Celtic dimension; and the whole programme is carefully choreographed to close in a manner cynically designed to implant in viewers’ minds a final ( … though entirely illusory … ) incriminating link between Celtic, business malfeasance and tax avoidance or evasion.

It was gutter journalism of the lowest order, masquerading as a public interest exposé, disgracefully funded at the taxpayer’s expense and totally unbecoming a journalist of Daly’s hitherto assumed stature … assumed by me, at any rate.  The more so when he (… notwithstanding his earlier effort on the sale of jerseys …) and his masters at the BBC are persistently prone to doing a three wise monkeys impression in relation to the very real, massive-scale, financial, corporate and anti-sporting scandal unfolding right under their noses in another place not anywhere remotely as distant as the Isle of Man and Jersey … not to mention Bermuda and the BVI.

Shame on you, Mark Daly … I genuinely expected better of you!  Shame on you, BBC Scotland … though, in your case, sadly, I didn’t!!!

Johnbhoy