Graham Spiers interviews pundit Chick Young

I’ve watched Chick Young as a journalist for years, first as a football fan myself, and then as a press colleague out and about. He is the type who grows on you, an essential jack-the-lad who loved women and parties, but who also has quite a sensitive side to him.

Young was also the subject of one of the most startling compliments I ever heard about someone in hard-bitten sports journalism. “There is essentially a very decent side to Chick,” a BBC Scotland colleague said of him. “There seems not a trace of malice in him. Chick is not the slightest bit interested in slandering anyone.” I can scarcely think of anyone else – including me – that you could fit those words around.

He will be 65 in May. It means that, whether BBC Scotland bin him or not – and it’s currently a moot point – he has already clocked up 46 years in the business, starting out as a copy boy at the Daily Record in 1969.

“I’ve had the career I wanted to have,” he said. “I’ve done newspapers, magazines, radio, television, I’ve written a couple of books. In that sense I have fulfilled all of my ambitions. I’ve travelled the world and met the legends. It’s not been so bad.”

And is he soon to be bowing out? The retirement of Chick Young from our airwaves has been a recurring rumour.

“I’m 65 soon. In all these years of earning on the gravy train, and giving houses to women, the one sensible thing I did was I seem to have set up a pretty handsome pension, which kicks in soon.

“I’m not planning to retire as such. But I’m not daft, I can see my presence as a pundit being diluted. I’m not involved at the BBC as much as I used to be. That’s fine. I’ll take my pension and see what comes along.

“I hate the winters here. I’m a sun worshipper. I’ve a pal who lives in Cape Town, and I also love Spain. What I want to do is go out for long stretches of winter holidays in these places. So if the Beeb say to me, ‘well, all the best Chick’, then that’s fine. But if they tell me they’d still like me to do some games here and there, that will also be fine.”

If or when he goes, he will be sorely missed – even by his detractors. There is this strange phenomenon at large whereby even those who cannot stand Chick Young still tune in to hear what he is saying.

“Everything fades away eventually,” he says. “When I do chuck it – whenever that is – you know your fame and your profile become diluted. Other generations arrive and no-one remembers you being on the telly. My ‘celebrity’ - for what it is – is something I’ve always found totally bizarre. I’m just a journalist.”

A journalist, too, with a reputation. This is an area I have to tread carefully over with Chick. I put it to him that there have been times when his public image has seemed a bit cheapened by his image, as if he wasn’t quite taken totally seriously. Perhaps the famous Jonathan Watson send-ups of him didn’t really help in this context.

“The tide blew me in a certain direction,” he says. “I’ve been knocked by people over time but I don’t believe any of it was ever evil. None of that stuff really bothered me.

“It took me a long time to deal with being ‘a bit famous’. After starting to do TV, such as Friday Sportscene with its huge audiences, it seemed that everything took off. I was astonished that newspapers would show an interest in my private life – and my love life – which they did. It took me ages to come to terms with this.

“But I’ll be honest – I also realised in time that I could turn some of that daft newspaper coverage of me into hard-earned cash. There is no point in being famous and not getting a few bob out of it.”

Before all this madness Young was witness to the way sports journalism and punditry changed. He grew up as a reporter amid some of the old newspaper heavyweights of Scotland – John McKenzie, Hugh Taylor, Ken Gallacher, Alex Cameron – and has observed changes over the decades. There is a withering note about Young towards some of the new kids on the block.

“These guys had personalities, they formed relationships with people in the game,” he says. “All of that has changed in my time.

“I suffered at the hands of people who, to this day, I still call Mr Waddell and Mr Stein. I had to phone Willie Waddell and Jock Stein every day, and they bullied me and battered me about, not in the physical sense, obviously. I was learning my trade, that’s how it was back then. It’s not the case now. Today I see some people who think they have made it, and who think they are entitled to their opinion, but actually, in terms of what they’ve done and seen and been through, I’m not sure they are really entitled.”

And what about the failings of Scottish sports journalism in more recent years, especially in the context of Rangers and Sir David Murray? The perceived sycophancy?

“A journalist should have relationships within the game,” says Chick. “I still defend David Murray to a degree, in terms of a time when he was good for Rangers, but that is a whole separate debate. I had a relationship with David Murray, and he gave me any number of stories – am I then going to turn round and say he was a terrible so-and-so?

“The point was, a relationship was key in journalism. It was how you sourced stories, which everyone wanted to hear about. That is not to say that you should be without criticism, of course not. But journalism, essentially, was about building relationships.”

Amid it all, Young’s life was damaged forever by the events of January 18 2001. He was at a party abroad, having the time of his life, when the call came through that Keith Young, his son, had been killed on his motor bike. The pain of this tragedy, riven deep within him, will never cease.

“I’ll be haunted by it until the day I die,” he says. “No-one can ever understand the pain of it. God forbid that even my worst enemies go through something like that.

“It was as black a time as you could have – your own son being killed. I had a strange strength about me at the time – I don’t know how – but now years later there is this darkness inside me which I don’t think will ever leave me.”

He says the accident scarred his mind, and the anger and bitterness had to be fought off.

“The 9/11 twin towers tragedy in the States was the same year. This is a terrible thing to say, but I remember watching it at the time and thinking, ‘you know what, some of you are only going through what I’ve gone through.’

“A little later I remember flying in a plane to Geneva, when it suddenly plunged about 400 feet. There was screaming and shouting in the cabin, but I just thought, ‘oh aye?’ I didn’t care. I’ve moved on from that, thankfully. But I think about my son every day.”

Young was at Ibrox yesterday covering Rangers-Hibs for the BBC. Whatever your take on him, he is quite the trooper, an incorrigible spirit.