Training Example: Glasgow Times – Review the Data, Give Your Score & Compare to the Real AI Evaluation

As a subscriber, you are shown 80% less display advertising when reading our
articles.
Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local
services.
These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local
community.
It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need
as much support as possible during these challenging times.

[H1] Glasgow play tells untold story of Scotland’s first black footballer

A Play, Pie and a Pint

Glasgow

Oran Mor

West End

Football

Entertainment

People

Sport

Theatre

Glasgow

Scotland

[IMG: Alasdair Ferguson Profile Image]

By
Alasdair Ferguson
Multimedia Journalist

Share

0 Comments

[IMG: USA Today logo]

This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today,
and has been written by our American colleagues.
It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald.

The “remarkable untold story” of the world's first black international footballer who captained Scotland to a historic 6-1 win over England is set to premiere in Glasgow next week.
Andrew Watson's story about how he faced racism and discrimination, and fought his way to break down barriers and become the world’s first international black footballer when he arrived in Scotland, will soon hit the stage.
The story about how Watson went on to play for Scotland’s national team between 1881 and 1882 will be told at the world-famous A Play, A Pie and A Pint.
The Corinthian – named after the Brazilian side Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, who Watson played for – will run from June 1 to 6, with the ticket including a drink and a meat or vegan pie.
Written by Joe McCann, directed by Martin McCormick, and starring Dayton Mungai in a one-man show, the “tour de force” production is a “raw, unflinching exploration” of Watson’s life and what it means to belong nowhere and everywhere at once.
“I always wanted to write a play about football, but I never could quite find the right story, and then I was reading about Andrew Watson years ago,” McCann said.
“At the time, there seemed to be so many football players coming out.”
Dayton Mungai plays Andrew Watson in Corinthians (Image: Corinthians)
He went on to explain: “I wanted to do a football play, but something that's not really a football play too, so it's more about erasure and identity and legacy, so a man who's essentially been written [out] from history.
“A man who was a pioneer in many ways, but also being a pioneer didn't mean he had it easy, he's the first, black international footballer, he represented Scotland and even though he wore the Scottish shirt, it didn't mean he fully belonged in Scotland.”
McCann, a black working-class writer from Glasgow, said the semi-biographical play is a “call to arms” for all those written out of history and a testament to the enduring power of refusing to disappear.
He explained that just because Watson broke down barriers, it didn’t mean he was always accepted, as he experienced a large amount of racism and discrimination.
McCann adds that by the time Watson died, he was forgotten and his name only really resurfaced around five to six years ago.
“He's a metaphor of sorts for every outsider who has had to earn their place,” McCann said.
Dayton Mungai rehearsing for Corinthians (Image: Corinthians)
“I think it's something that's always going to be relevant, and it speaks to people today because we still have a struggle in Scotland.
“Like who belongs, the cost of belonging, who gets to belong, who decides who belongs, does a person of colour belong in a Scotland shirt? Does he belong in Scotland?
“Does a person of colour feel truly Scottish or fully connected to the country?
“I think it's an important story, and it'll be something that will be relevant forever, I would say. There's always going to be that question of, does someone belong in this country if they don't look like your typical Scots?”
Born in 1856 in Demerara, British Guiana, Watson was the son of a wealthy Scottish sugar planter, Peter Miller Watson.
During his playing career, he went on to represent teams including Queen's Park, Parkgrove, Bootle and Corinthians.
McCann’s previous work has garnered critical acclaim, including the black comedy The Bookies, which won a Pick of The Fringe award at the Edinburgh festival, and his play Alföld, which received a Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland nomination for its run with A Play, A Pie and A Pint.
Corinthians writer Joe McCann (Image: Joe McCann)
He said that when writing the latter parts of The Corinthian, he had Mungai in mind, as he knew the young actor would bring the “fire” in his performance.
“He's a brilliant actor, I'm so happy to have him,” McCann said.
“It's a tough role because he has to embody so many different characters.
“He's not just playing Andrew Watson, he's playing Andrew Watson's mother.
“He's playing Andrew Watson's father. He's playing Andrew Watson's teammates, his friends.”
READ NEXT:

Bay City Rollers stars join musical cast outside Glasgow theatre on tartan-clad bus

I watched The Bodyguard in Glasgow — and this Whitney classic still delivers

Slow Horses star says Peter Manuel role is 'like nothing I have done before'

Award-winning production returning to Glasgow to mark 30th anniversary

Giovanna Fletcher to star in new adaptation of bestselling novel coming to Glasgow

McCann added that the timing of the play, with it showing just weeks out from Scotland’s opening World Cup match against Haiti on June 14, has certainly helped with generating excitement from audiences.
However, he did say that when the theatre suggested hosting the play just weeks out from the World Cup, Scotland hadn’t even qualified yet.
“The Denmark game had not happened, it was like, let's hope Scotland qualify and there'll be a bit of buzz about the World Cup.
“But I mean, they've been right because there's been a lot of attention for the play.”The Corinthian runs at Oran Mor in Glasgow from Monday to Saturday, June 1 to 6. For more information and tickets, visit A Play, A Pie and a Pint's website

A Play, Pie and a Pint

Glasgow

Oran Mor

West End

Football

Entertainment

People

Sport

Theatre

Glasgow

Scotland

Share

0 Comments

[H2]
Get involved
with the news

Send your news & photos

As a subscriber, you are shown 80% less display advertising when reading our
articles.
Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local
services.
These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local
community.
It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need
as much support as possible during these challenging times.

[H1] Glasgow TV star Andrea McLean on debt

Debt

Loose Women

Entertainment

TV

Glasgow

Scotland

By Prudence Wade

Share

0 Comments

3

Skip to next photo

1/1

0 Comments

[IMG: USA Today logo]

This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today,
and has been written by our American colleagues.
It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald.

TV presenter Andrea McLean describes going into debt as a “whirling feeling of hopelessness and helplessness” – one she dealt with secretly for a long time.
McLean left her 13 year stint on ITV’s Loose Women in 2020, going on to found a female personal growth business called This Girl Is On Fire – but when the business failed, she and her husband, Nick Feeney, found themselves having serious money troubles.
“It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever endured – and I’m a menopausal woman,” McLean says suggesting the feeling of “powerlessness” was like “nothing on Earth”.

She continues: “For me, it was a whirling feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, which mainly came at night. Because in the day, you’re trying to stay upbeat for the kids and do all the practical things – being a mum, a parent, a wife, all of these things. You keep busy with that, plus the firefighting.
“But at night, when you’re laying there, everything was just overwhelming – in terms of, I don’t know how to get out of this hole. I know I found it mentally a lot harder than my husband.”
This is a handout photo of Andrea McLean. See PA Feature WELLBEING Andrea McLean. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature WELLBEING Andrea McLean. PA Photo. Picture credit should read: Mark Harrison/DK/PA NOTE TO EDITORS: This (Image: Mark Harrison/DK/PA)

READ NEXT:

Netflix announced axing of 11 shows - with 5 more coming to an end

Hit TV series to return to BBC this summer after 35 years and viewers 'can't wait'

Apology issued to Shotts after Outlander's Catriona Balfe 'likened town to armpit'

Stars of hit ITV show coming to Glasgow as part of live anniversary tour

River City star on character's 'great ending' as she reveals next role in Glasgow

Every night the couple would list three things they were grateful for, which Glasgow-born McLean, 56, suggests is “really easy to do when things are good” – but much harder when they’re not.
The complicated feelings around her money troubles are detailed in McLean’s new book, Shameless: Finding Freedom And Resilience Through Failure. She describes the difficult period after shutting down her business – from being forced to borrow money off family members to pay bills to desperately sending Starbucks a job application, and eventually selling her house in the UK and moving to Spain.
McLean’s TV career began as a weather presenter for GMTV in 1997, and she has since penned books like Confessions Of A Menopausal Woman, which detailed her debilitating symptoms of menopause and undergoing a hysterectomy. She says she made the decision to write Shameless because she was “getting fed up of the feelings that I was feeling: where, ‘Oh, I hope no one finds out’.
“Initially it was about feelings of financial shame because our business had gone under. In this financial shame, there’s loss of status, loss of identity, all of this kind of thing.
“I got fed up of feeling like that, and I thought – I can’t sit in the dark hoping all these feelings will go away.”
This is a handout photo of Andrea McLean. See PA Feature WELLBEING Andrea McLean. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature WELLBEING Andrea McLean. PA Photo. Picture credit should read: Mark Harrison/DK/PA NOTE TO EDITORS: This (Image: Mark Harrison/DK/PA)
The book isn’t just about debt, but covers a range of different types of shame – including topics of sex, parenting, work and more, and how it all showed up in McLean’s life.
She describes writing the book “both cathartic and tough” – and while many readers will relate to the feelings of shame she details, few will have experienced it on a public stage quite like McLean has. She writes about having a brief affair when her first marriage to producer Nick Green was ending – and when someone sold the story to a newspaper, she “took the full hit of public shaming” and felt like “the whole world was judging me”. Feeney is her third husband, and she has two children from her previous marriages.
Looking back on her first brush with public shame, McLean says: “That was the first feeling of, oh, that’s something I’ve experienced personally – now the whole country has a view on it. That’s really weird, because I’m just me: being a human and making mistakes and figuring things out. That took me a long time to get over.”
Once she came out the other side, she says she realised that “actually the world is still turning and it’s kind of OK. It makes it easier the next time.”
Debt hasn’t been only thing disrupting McLean’s life in the past few years, as she’s also experienced some serious health issues. She’s had multiple bouts of Covid, and over Christmas in 2024, she was rushed to hospital with pneumonia, kidney failure and sepsis.
After leaving hospital, McLean suggests she found it difficult to focus on her recovery – particularly as she’s “operated at 100 miles an hour forever”.
She says: “I work really well when there’s lots of plates [spinning] and I’ve got loads to do and loads to think about. It excites me, invigorates me, all those things – until it didn’t. Until I literally crashed and burned.”
McLean says enforced bed rest was “horrible”, until she reframed her recovery.
“I have had to learn to not feel bad when I’m not being productive every minute of the day, and realise that in itself is being productive – just in a different way. When Nick and I re-labelled my time of not working as: your job is to get well.
“I reframed it that way – so my job is to get eight hours sleep, my job is to eat well, rather than it being something that we try squeeze in around everything else, and that massively helped.”
McLean says the moving to Spain last year helped her recovery: “Coming here and slowing down has been a massive part of it. It sounds very ‘woo woo’ – but [it’s been] a part of healing.”
In the book, McLean also speaks about how going to therapy has benefitted her at different stages of her life, but it’s something she came to relatively late, adding: “It came back to being a very pragmatic person – I pushed things down that I didn’t want to look at, and dealt with the thing in front of me.”
She went after taking part in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2019, saying she had “a few things to work out”, and has since gone with her husband – suggesting it helped them get a “better understanding” of how to argue in a constructive way.
“It really reshaped my whole attitude to therapy – you don’t have to do it in crisis. You can do it if something’s coming up: I think this is going to make things a bit bumpy, let’s get someone on board who is used to dealing with this kind of thing, so there is no drama.
“It’s a great tool, I think everybody should use it.”
McLean ends Shameless with a touching scene of her paying off her final debt on the phone to the credit card company. While she writes that she wasn’t “now somehow flush with money”, it still marked a big moment and a new chapter in her life.
Now, she says it’s her mission with her book to help people feel less alone.
“Shame is such an isolator – it makes us feel less than, we feel hideous, we feel like we’re the only people that are going through whatever it is we’re going through,” she says.
“So that’s why I thought, right: I’ll go first.”
Shameless: Finding Freedom And Resilience Through Failure by Andrea McLean is published by DK Red, priced £16.99. Available now.

Debt

Loose Women

Entertainment

TV

Glasgow

Scotland

Share

0 Comments

[H2]
Get involved
with the news

Send your news & photos