ARMED TO THE TEETH

Desmond doesn't mind being seen as hard as long as he is fair as he bites back at fans' accusations

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Andrew Smith is a veteran of Scottish journalism and was one of the few granted an interview with Dermot Desmond after being commissioned for an official club publication. Here, for Record Sport, he recalls that talk and the recent turmoil

THERE is something Banquo's ghost-like about Dermot Desmond and Celtic.

The Irish billionaire and controlling shareholder is perceived as the club's overbearing presence...without really being present.

The dissolution of any “unification” - the word deployed by interim boss Martin O'Neill at the weekend following the clown show of Friday's AGM that never really was one - between the support and kingmaker Desmond and the Celtic board is, in part, the product of that maintained distance.

A distance I know firsthand that the 75-year-old not merely cultivates, but demands. A distance that in no small fashion relates to his hatred of the reactionary ways of his team’s football supporters. A hatred almost as visceral as that which he holds for those in the journalistic profession.

Desmond doesn't give interviews - doesn't sit down with such scribes for near two-hour profile pieces. Back in 2008, though, he did for me.

One of the precious few occasions he has ever granted such access to a Scottish-based journalist in the three decades since he bought in, both literally and figuratively, to Fergus McCann's plan to rebuild Celtic on and off the pitch. Courtesy of a share issue that was meant to place the club in the hands of the supporters, following the removal of the White and Kelly dynasties that had controlled it for a near century.

Now, Dermot Desmond met me not because he had any regard for my work. He did so because I had been commissioned to produce his profile for club publication The Celtic Opus - the monster-sized tome, bound with fine leather and in a silk, clam-like case that cost a mere £1967.