They found a way to kick drugs, by kicking a ball. Now Calton Athletic are tackling their financial crisis by returning to the football pitch.
Words: Stephen Naysmith
ACTORS AND MUSICIANS from the movie Trainspotting are to take the field in a charity football match in aid of the troubled Glasgow drug agency Calton Athletic next month.
The event, on It June, Will feature key figures from the smash-hit film, including members of the cast, production team and stars from the spin-off soundtrack,
Ewan McGregor is already confirmed to appear, as wrll the production team of Andrew McDonald, Danny Boyle and John Hodge, who were responsible for both Trainspotting and Shallow Grave.
Nick Hornby, whose obsessron wrth football was documented in Fever Pitch, wrll also take to the field. lnvrtations have gone out to lrvrne Welsh, Robert Carlyle, Pulp’s Jarvrs Cocker and Damon Albarn of Blur, among others.
Calton Athletic Recovery Group (CARG), who run football teams as part of a programme to help people
Boyle and McGregor: teaming up again for women's drug service
kick drugs, have arranged for the match to help stave off a funding cnsrs — one br0ught about, ironically, by the success of the film.
When the drug rehabilitation group advised the makers of Trainspotting, they responded by promismg CARG a share of the profits.
The huge success of the film meant a Windfall of £100,000, but the money is now gone. As a result, CARG claim they have had to close new services launched with the Trainspotting cash.
One such programme is the women's service, which CARG’s founder Davie Bryce claimed was the most successful in the UK, until it was closed last month. 'The game of football Will raise cash for a new women’s serVice. It is vrtally needed and was working well,’ he said.
Danny BOer, director of Trainspotting, said he was delighted to be able to support the group again. "We are all very pleased to take part. They were very supportive during filming, and we are behind them 100 per cent,’ he explained,
I The Trainspotting benefit match will be at 7.30pm on I 7 June. At the time of going to press no venue
had been finalised. Contact Calton Athletic on 0747 248 5848 for further details.
AGENDA -
Calton Athletic have rejected criticismsofth'eir lecture programme in schools, after ‘a report described their visits as ‘a calculated risk". .
The study, by the University of GIaSgow Centre for Drug Misuse Research, was commissionedby the Challenge Fund set up as part of the Scotland Against Drugs campaign.
It reports concerns among school staff over the ‘shock horror‘ approach of Calton Athletic, and the risk involved in giving former addicts unsupervised access to schoolchildren. The authors also suggest that lecture teams should be vetted and tested to ensure that they are drug free.
The criticisms highlight differences in‘ approach between Calton Athletic and other organisations in the field of drugs education. Many of the responses from teachers and pupils in the survey were positive. However, concerns over vetting of workers and training, point to a fundamental philosophical divide.
While educationalists aim to meet the recommendations of the Cullen report for those working with children, Calton Athletic are adamant that self-regulation wo'rks.
'You wouldn't believe our standards,’ said founder Davie Bryce. 'Most of the people that work for me have criminal convictions, but that goes hand in hand with drug abuse. It's the people without convictions that concern me,’ he argued.
He was angered by the suggestion that his staff should be checked for drug use. ’That is a dirty cheap innuendo. It is well-known throughout the country that to stay in the programme you have to be drug free.’
Bryce feels the criticisms come from those who have not seen his team at work. ’The only people who criticised our message had a vested interest. Too much time and space was given to people who haven't seen it,’ he explained.
George Hall, joint manager of the Scotland Against Drugs challenge fund, said there was no obligation for Calton Athletic to act on the report. 'The recommendations are aimed at Calton Athletic, it is up to them how they take that forward,’ he said. '
And finally . . . No face value for Phil as he gets blown out
DRAMATIC UPDATE ON the ’origins of Elvis' controversy. Having established conclusively that Mr Presley was a Paisley Buddie, it is now claimed that The King sprung from the loins of a Icon. The evidence that he was an Aberdonian is the existence of villages in the north—east with the names ‘Presley' and 'Alves.‘ Put them together and what do you get? A story with about as much credibility as the last Elvis media caper.
JIMMY HILL HAS scored a famous victory against the Tartan Army. The loathed pundit has manfully ignored defiantly un-PC chanting from the fans ever since the 1982 World Cup, when Scotland‘s David Narey hit a scorching goal against Brazil. A goal
described by Anglophile Hill as a ‘toepoke'. The animosity spread to the Internet where the We Hate Jimmy Hill page was spawned, until Hill’s lawyers took offence. The page has been withdrawn. Despite the sheer vastness of it, even he couldn't take that on the chin.
SHOULD ANYONE NEED further . reason to hate Hale and Pace, here's a traumatic tale. In the mode of their finest comic creations The Management, the duo had a wardful of the afflicted removed to another part of a cash-starved hospital in Surrey. And all because they needed the area to film a hilarious sketch. It was ‘an absolute disgrace' and ‘crude and insensitive,’ the patients stormed. Can't they see that the relocation probably saved their lives? For had the patients been
allowed to stay would they not have died laughing?
WHO SAYS CRIME shouldn't be glamorised? In Cumbernauld, police are searching for a gang who carried out an armed raid on a security van. They could have a problem. The raiders donned ‘female wigs and foundation to cover the texture of their skin,’ an irked rozzer explained. Makes a change from a stinky old sock, I suppose.
PHIL COLLINS MAY be a world- renowned superstar with a knack for the bland, banal, and bog awful. But his ego must have landed with an almighty thump when his bagpipe teacher claimed he'd never heard of him. Ex-Scots Guard Jimmy Banks had to ask his wife who the un-hirsute bloke was. ‘I've never
Collins: the ego has landed
been interested in pop music,‘ asserted the boy Banks, not realising that this is no barrier to an appreciation of the chirpy geezer's back-catalogue. (Brian Donaldson)
30 May—12 Jun 1997 TlIELISTS