The Gallant Few

Torry Gillick Book Launch - Interview with Authors David Herd & Ian Stewart!

Colin speaks to David Herd & Ian Stewart on their upcoming book launch for Torry: The Life and Career of a Football Great, a biography of the late Tor Gillick - a true Rangers Legend!

Available to order now:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Torry-Life-Career-Football-Great/dp/1801509026

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Duration:: 33m
Broadcast on:: 16 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. Linked in, the place to be, to be. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project to do tomorrow. Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first, call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee with your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 in order, additional terms apply. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile unlimited, premium wireless. Have it to get 30, 30, 30, but to get 20, 20, 20, but to get 20, 20, 20, but to get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of detail. Hello folks, I'm Colin here, host of The Gallant View Rangers podcast, and I hope you're all well. I hope you're doing half as good as me because I'm delighted to be joined on our very special episode of The Gallant View. We're going to talk about Tory, the wife of Tory, football great, and I'm privileged to have the co-authors on David Held and Ian Stewart. First of all, welcome back, friend of the board, David Held. Quite a very joy on The Gallant View. Yeah, yeah, it's good to be back again. It's familiar faces. Faced for radio, I've always felt I've got, but never mind, I'll try my best. Don't photogenic for you. Yeah, it's great to be back and I'm looking forward to reaching out. And we're also joined The Gallant View. This is The Gallant View debut for Ian Stewart, another one we're talking about, the kind of Rangers full calling. You're up well with Lisa, David, and several others who we kept the Rangers as to how I've got you seeing this, absolutely a pleasure to have you on. Yeah, thanks very much, Colin. I'm delighted to be here and to talk a bit Tory, and there's probably more come on to join the podcast. This is a period in Rangers sister, which really fascinates me. And I think we need to keep the history alive, so to speak. So that's what we'll try to do. So thanks. I'll maybe find my first question to you, then Ian, because I've picked David's brains about certain eras in Rangers history, and I'm fascinated way. I'm pretty much anything before I can remember, because there's so much great history in the club. And I find it very hard to know how they're doing what you're listening to, and I find myself, time, time again on Wikipedia, rabbit holes, just like I can link after I'm reading up and stuff. We can't even be able to talk about any where we're physical, testing the team behind it. Do you have a particular interest in the way you thought it was supposed to be fair? Yeah, so I tried to pick up a helicopter someday. That was just a toe in the water. I've been a supporter of sales. I wasn't a lot of writing on it, to be honest. But there was a weekend where it was either 442 magazine at the Sunday times, had a article now 50 greatest British managers, and Bill Struth wasn't among them. So that to me seemed ludicrous, knowing what we know, probably all three of us know. So that set me off, and set me in the journey, probably, journeys are really cheesy, well done to it. But the journey to write in conjunction with David Mason, the Bill Struth story, that Bill Struth the boss. Now, I found that fascinating, and probably more so, the personal aspects and family aspects, as opposed to the football, or along with the football. But it was stuff that folk didn't know. In fact, it's granddaughter. There were things that David and I discovered that it's granddaughter didn't know about them. And then during that, after I did that, it was, I moved to a village called Glenboy, just outside Coolbridge. And I was thinking, what's my next book going to be? To find out that Tiger Shaw used to live five minutes walk from a front door. And his granddaughter actually works for the same organization I do. So that seemed a bit of fate. So Tiger was to be my next project. And again, it was covered in that same period. And a lot of the social history in North line, actually, I covered in that as well, because it was really, really interesting. Two tiny, and there's a small village called Annette Hill. It can't be more than, I don't know, a few hundred folk live there now. One time they're 1,500, but three of the residents of Annette Hill played for Scotland against England in the 1946 Victory International. Tiger being one of them. And that, you know, there was always facts. He emerged, which were really, really fascinating. And then the next progression for me was, during writing a bit of Bill Struth's book and writing a bit Tiger Shaw, Tori Gillick came coming up, his name came coming up. The fact that Bill Struth had signed them twice as well was particularly interesting, but his character and the type of character he was seemed a bit of always with Mr. Struth. But clearly, Mr. Struth thought very, very highly off of me. We'd never have signed them twice if they didn't. So it's those, you know, that together, Colin, I think it becomes really interesting. And then when you add in the family aspects, the social aspects, what was life like for a football, the way I actually far removed from the man in the street all makes for, well, I find it fascinating. I know David does as well. And, you know, I think there's a lot of folk out there will find Tori's story particular interesting, because there'll be things in there I would imagine very few folk knowing the things in the other family weren't aware of. And it's those things, those nuggets of information that I find really, really interesting. I love what you mean with, I don't know, just moving somewhere. And then seeing that, I don't know, that wank tearing. Just, well, I find that it's something beautiful, but I mean, just being, I don't know, being in awe, I've always went to the base story after the games, I've ever gone after the game, and I've been up and, you know, it was maybe about 11 years after going, that I found out that I was torn down. So, I mean, I think I was the only person in the bar that I know. And then, you know, it was, it was, when I tell people, everybody seems to know, but I don't know, you're thinking that there's something powerful, but it's just having that, like, coming to nature and out with, like, out of love and rangers. Um, David, I'll, I'll, I'll get your thoughts on it. Um, that, that was going to be one of my frustrations, uh, that Ian's trying to touch stone. Howdy now, Rodan, which player you're going to, you're, you're gonna be right about, uh, because we've got, well, spoilt for choice at the end, doesn't we? Yeah, but I think, um, Ian's alluded to the fact that, Tony Gillick's name keeps coming up, um, when you research, that period of rangers history, if it's a 30s to 40s, um, his name keeps appearing on it for various reasons, on and off the pitch. Um, I suppose my initial involvement came a lot, but by accident, um, kind of slightly end-roping here, but Ian and I do, do the occasional, um, well, videos for, like, for rangers TV, the club TV channel, Ian Sans, they have, uh, started doing some great films and rangers history, and he gets authors like ours to come along and, and speaking them, um, and we made one that was going to be about the Iron Curtain team at the late 40s, and I happened to talk about Tory Gillick's, uh, contribution to rangers, and not, um, and then the Gillick family visited iBrux, they got a tour, they got VIP tour and all that kind of stuff, and they just he'd be made a film over it, and they put me in it, speaking of it Tory Gillick, I hadn't met the family at this point. The family then contacted Ian Sans to say, "Can we talk to this? They the held guy, he seems to know what I thought, but my papa, 'cause she was desperate to know more about his career." Um, so we got in touch with each other, and the more I got to know them, the more, and the more they're talking about some of the family stuff that I didn't know anything about, I'm thinking, "This ain't make a cracking story, this ain't make a great book." Um, so I, I, can I fair on to it a little bit, and then Ian and I hooked up because we found out, through our Facebook page, that we were both in, that both of us were actually starting to the search for Tory Gillick book, we had, we had decided he was going to be our next, our next person to, to write a book about, and then we, we found out, we said, "Well, why don't we do it together? 'Cause you'll find out things that I do, and I'll find out things that you do, and why don't we do it together, then it'll all present the one book, and it'll be the best we can make it." So we, we've done the book together, and we're, we're really happy with the actual ending, what's, what's, what's made even better as the family are happy with it, and that, that's, that's the best work on finishing again. David, that must be, like, speaking about the, the book, so what you've done before, we've had, how do you own here, um, like, when they are, when they sell them on, and when they are, like, diving through the archives, um, that's must be sort of really different, this must be a really different way, or how you're going, you know, time, like, yeah, I feel stuck with a character here, or you're going, and, but, it's not just how many goals, how many games, how many trophies, everyone that's, um, well, say, oh, yeah, I, I true, Rachel's great, as nature is what they do on the field, it's the market, the man off the field as well, but, that, I can't help but hang out, must be some amount of pressure on knowing that, that his family have invested so much in it as well, I don't know, I'd be blicking at that. No, well, I don't think you can really do a biography of anybody, unless you find it as much as you can a bit the, but the life, not just the professional life, but the, the family life, the personal life, um, and the best way to do that is actually, because, you know, I've quite a long time ago, there, there isn't anyone left that played against them that we could talk to, there isn't anything, the new in particular, where we're left apart, apart from his daughter, his remaining daughter and his sons, his gang, his grandkids remember him a little, but he, he died quite young and his grandkids were also quite young when, when he passed away. So, um, it's surely the, the daughter who, who has been the source of most, the older stuff, but, we actually found out lots of stuff, getting through old newspaper archives, etc, that, that she didn't know. So, so I, I've got one example, so one example is that, um, it was involved in a car accident in the '90s, same forever, um, and he's daughter didn't know that, that was before she was born. So, why, why would she know that? So, the, yeah, there's, there's, there's, it's good fun researching these things, you find it all kinds of stuff, and you, sir, it, it does take you down articles, and at the same time, it gives you a, it gives you a look at, um, what life was like back then. It means, can I rotate them? Football players are nothing like, they had nothing like the lifestyle that they've, they've got it now. I mean, to, to what a girl had to eat, he had a bit fearful different jobs when he finished playing football, because he, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't have any money, basically, he didn't see anything as a football player. So, he then had to root and have a whole new character. I think, in, um, I, I mentioned at the start of the context, the, like, the, the players in their lives, um, I think, I think, I think it's really important to remember that, like, behind the goals and the games and the trophies they want. Now, there is a completely different lifestyle, um, you know, the, these players, then they have the luxury that today's players have, they didn't retire in the mid days and they will have to work again in the life as well. Well, I, I find out all the more fascinating as well, when I think Tory Gulk is definitely, uh, a great example of that. Yeah, as a, as a, they didn't have the riches, though, I think it's, to talk about another range of great Ralph Brown, I think Ralph Brown once said, while they weren't that far, and this was while I was in the tiger show book, they weren't that far removed in some respects from the man industry, but they still felt well off. Um, and that'll promote that would be the same for Tory as well. I'm sure, um, compared to being down the pit, um, which was North Line actually would have been your feet. You know, football player was a far, far better alternative to that for sure. Um, and I think there was a work ethic where a lot of these players as well, wouldn't have crossed their mind or finished playing football. So I'm not going to work again, though, they had to work through in this essay, but I find a lot of them would have, even if they had been rewarded relatively comparatively today, a lot of them with a character on working because that was a kind of standard. So that was the ethos. That was what was drilled into, um, a bit being a ranger, talk a bit rangers, specifically a ranger's player. Myster's truth, they've drilled that into them. Nothing but the baseball too. It's like the bowler heart thing and wearing it, turning up for training collar and tie, which I must admit, I may be an old, an old fuddy-duddy, but I still think the player should be turning up and calling tie and not track his, but that's a personal preference. That's what sets rangers apart. And that's what set rangers apart back then to the standards and the standards that the players were put in here to. And I know Tori would carry his bowler heart in the paper bag and only put it on when he came within sight of Mr Stritt's flag and coat and road, but those things are what makes rangers different and what makes us unique. Just stepping away for rangers for every minute, I'll start with you. And, um, it's really fascinating about Tori Gauterke's, he's a Hall of Fame member for rangers, but ever as well. Um, how, how much, oh yeah, how much of the book is, um, you know, touching on his ever, clearly as well, because that's some, some achievement to, to be a Hall of Famer for two British clubs. Yeah, absolutely. I think it'd be better that his ever career and thanks to Rob Sawyer, a particular who got us a lot of, provided a lot of information or access to information such as old Everton minute books. And it really, really fascinating going through them. And that's by, by goodness, that's a rabbit hole, you can go down if you want to go through all the old minute books. And you say, oh, and it plays the likes of Tommy Lawton and Dixie Dean as well. Tori, but he was revered in Merseyside. He moved there as a 19 year old as sort of the next shining star from Scotland. Um, joined part way through the season, had a very good first season, a bad injury the second, a full season, and then a third full season, Everton won the league title, the top division in England for, and they've only won it nine times. So that just shows you what an achievement that that was. And only yesterday actually got a copy of Rob's, Rob Sawyer's book that he wrote about that Everton team. Um, and that shows you the steam in which they're held. There's an actually a book dedicated to that period in Everton's history. And Tori was an integral part of that, absolutely integral. Though in saying all that, um, fate took a hand, a little bit, I think, with the, with, obviously, the war, it became a long, and they needed a really bad accident and a fire on his garage, which my dad works in B2B marketing. He came back by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man, then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be to be. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited to premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of CDtales. It was out for a fair line for time, but during that period, him and his wife made the decision to return to Scotland for his to complete his rehab, really, with among more friendly faces, though the way it's very well settled and there's a side. But, of course, they draw it, come home pro at that time. Plus, with the war been going, was all the greater. And that's where fate took its hand and essentially led him back to range us. And thank goodness for that for our sake. I'm already saying that was that reported to be a lack of fee forever, at the time, to take a look at what we're doing as that choice. It was, it was, but it's not with the minute books. Now, David and I had a bit of debate. Why would that be? Why would one thing be reported in the press and something different in the minute books? So you could speculate and I think we'll maybe put a bit of maybe it was because of in the book. But in the press, yes, it was a record deal, though, as I've said, the, what's in the official month, the record of the minutes is a bit different. It was out because before I read the book, I went to see all the Wikipedia and I went on the range of heritage pages and I tried to read up and I'm like, why? Why is one heaven for ranges? Obviously, I've got to be biased, you know. So, you know, ranges are bigger than my eyes. I don't like it, but, you know, I was, obviously, where such a fee is, I think, fee anyway, then it's the imagineer that came with a decent ways to. David, you've kind of touched on the research, the time you spent in with the family and you've started storing, like, going through the rabbit hole of a heaven minute book. And I think we've touched on this conversation before in previous sports, or how well our Rangers bring in a life that they're on history and suppose that I know the club would have been forthcoming. But how well documented that is the least Victoria Girl looking next period of time in the Rangers archives as a club in DC, DC, that's here getting more as spotlight in the museum in the future. Yeah, well, I think the, when you talk about Victoria Girl, it's kind of unique in that his first spell was the kind of David Miquel join the Bob McPheele era, you know what? It went to my theories. So, that was one great Rangers team then that dominated sports football, and then when he came back, and then the war finishing after the Second World War, you had the great Iron Curtain team, you know, the one with the bomb, and Barivaldo, Tiger Charlotte, etc. So, he basically is the only one that kind of straddles those two great, and I mean great Rangers teams, teams that, when I can imagine most Rangers historians would, if you don't know who's the greatest Rangers team ever, both those eras will get mentioned in that conversation. So, he was a big part of not one but two absolute Rangers, Dennis, that we talked about forever. He got in the museum, there's lots of stuff in there about both those teams that he played in. As I say, he's got this kind of unique part in a, the Bible says he's installed, but the only man that goes to it's saying twice. So, he's got two Rangers, he has to talk about, he's got the one as a teenager, when he was more akin to goalscore and wear, although he was same as I said in the fall, but he was kind of goalscore and wearing it on his first Rangers career, he played all over the fall, but his second Rangers community became this thinking clever inside, right, and inside forward, who still scored lots of goals, but he was running around for how clever a footballer was, how he, how he made things tick, and he created more than he scored. So, so when it comes to going to the museum, seeing Rangers history films and stuff like that, his name crops up, obviously. My personal view is that he's probably not as well known as somebody I'm cutting team on. If you talk with I'm cutting team, you tend to talk about, what do we do, what do we do, what we thought, Bobby Brown, you don't hear Gillick's name as much as then, and that was probably another reason right at the start of this that I thought, this is an end that I think people need a bit better educated in, when you have some of his achievements, right, he's in the top 10 and just goalscores all time, and yet he wasn't saying it forward, if you look at, if you look at the top 10 goals, because they're never all saying it forward, he actually wasn't one, he's more than 200 goals for Rangers. So, he was an absolute superstar. It's funny, because when we first were in contact, you were doing this book and had it coming up two ago, it was a name I know, but I remember I don't see it, I still we are for like, I get like 30s and then he told me that he came back, I knew he had many years from the end of the Rangers jersey, then he quite realized that he'd been away and came back, actually, I thought was, I would, if I was to get a first one to your quiz, he's David, I would have said that, like, maybe everything is to, every 40s, he may have left you on the wall, but again, I'm probably a good example in backing up what you said there, or it's another one of the many, many players that we just don't speak a bit enough. And you've kind of mentioned earlier in the show about, it's not just whether or not off the pitch, he's an interesting guy, he's an off the pitch, and also he will not go in the, too much details in the book as well, but there's a few decent stories, we've already got a couple, so you mentioned these, he's maybe left out, we about weight, taper, he's baller hard, or as they all are there, story or two about hens, and you know, we love these trials as well, like, it's, I think, I really, I really like when, when books, I guess, can add a flavour area of character, because it just humanizes the, you know, the legend they have where they're going to? It adds a bit of colour, but it doesn't turn as well, it just, it's the colour and the, and what they're like off the park, and I'd say down their own, the thing, one of the things, the hook, one of the hooks for me was, knowing what Mr Struth was like, and knowing what a disciplinarian he was, he was drawn, he appeared to be drawn to Toregillic, Toregillic was one of his favourite other players, and in some respects Toregillic was in titthesis of what a Bill Struth player would be, David said, the other night, and it's true, Tiger Show would be a typical Bill Struth player, hardest nails, die for the jersey, you know, never short attack, or we will fight till the day is done, so to speak. Toregillic probably was all those things as well, with a wee bit of development about him as well, and a wee bit of a character to say the least, and that part of it, I think Mr Struth would secretly have admired, because it was different, you can't have, you can't have eleven or however many characters and all be the same, you need a good mix, and he would have known, if it, if Bill Struth was good at anything, it was man management and picking a team, we all know he wasn't a football man in the traditional sense of it, it was athletics and fitness, what his main things, but then we've also spoke about the, how he built more, I think probably four great sides, he built a team in the thirties, and he built a post-war team, and how he did that was probably a wee bit, the wee Bo Paisley did it, in Brian Clough, you get the right players, and the players run the team, and the players control what's on the part, and you need a good mix, you need some day look Toregillic, to sprinkle that star dust and make the difference in the big games, and you wouldn't be able to do that without that underlying character, and that wee bit that made them different, and made them, David used Superstar, and that's absolutely true, it was a Superstar of his day. I've got calls, John, can I just one wee thing that reminded me of, Molly's daughter, one of her earliest memories, is George Young, what I waddle in Tiger Show, coming round to the house in a Friday, to talk tactics of how they were going to play the next day, and the opposition to Brooklyn. So, you were just talking about there, Bill Struth was mainly great things, one thing he wasn't was a football tactician, that's not the era he was from, that wasn't your part, I've been a football manager a lot of the time, the players decided in the tactics, and quite often they did it in Toregillic's level. That's surprising, I'll be honest, because I don't know, maybe I'm doing this, that's the era I would create the service, because I would have thought it would have took the way through there, the managers' pictures were when we were focused on the threat system, you know, the barrage of college, but at the same time, I don't know through all the conversations that these are, that team could play, but it does surprise me, and we don't really think about their tactics, it's with some of the five side rules, or five forwards I should say, now that's a great memory, I have always probably gone the first one of the earliest memories, with no terms of any video analysis, pretty much. So, David, it's like with you, tell the rationales when the books come out and where you can get up. Yeah, well, it's always by pitch publications on Monday the 19th, so it's not that far away now, it's been on Amazon for pre-order for a number of weeks, anyway, you can get it direct for the publisher, you can get it from Amazon, it will be in waterstones, shops, and online, it'll be WH Smith, online, I would imagine. So basically, any bit of sales sports books you'll be able to get it, and if there's any range of season ticket holders sitting watching this that fancy a copy of it, I'm sure the audience could meet them before again, hand in our eye books, depending on when it is, we can get a hand over a book in person, sign it if they want, and they'll get it a bit cheaper that way. Well, nobody be that guy, he's sure, for us not to have gold macro up here, right here. So, but, James, I think it's been a place that's in a funny shop, just to echo what David said, the links, as always, I'll put them as in the link in the description, I really enjoy doing myself, so thank you for being here, I quite glad to answer that in general, but last night's link is in the description, I'm absolutely going and, you know, get pre-ordered and have a look at David's and Ian's other works as well, carefully, I really enjoy that, I've read through and you enjoy these conversations, more talk through them, whether they're all false, just, James, don't forget about it as when, you know, well, you're on range of TV and you know, as well, so just, that's kind of the gallon for you every now and then about. Ian, it's been an absolute pleasure meeting you, my friend Danny Parton, well, to the listeners. No, just, hopefully, if you haven't read something on range of history, going back to this era, I would strongly recommend that there's a few books out there covering this era and it really is fascinating, and I guess the other thing, never forget is that we are the people. David, time for that, I'll be good back. I can't, I can't compete with that. It's been, it's been great, you know, you know me, I could, I could sit and talk with you and just yesterday for as long as you want me to, totally echo what Ian said though. I think that this book covers a football and a man whose story won't be all that well-known, and I think on and off the pitch, it's actually especially off the pitch, the image that reads it is, they're going to finish it and they're going the utmost admiration for a guy who had a lot of things to put up when he's life, you know, what troubles, what tragedy is to do with, and he comes through them stronger every time, and his family are proud of him, and there's a reason for that, they should, so they should be. And I think you've both done the man and the family very proud with us, with this book, so thank you both for coming on, as always, and thank you to all the westerners for the western, and again, go and click the link in the description, and we'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Thanks for going. Thank you. [Music]