There’s an old adage which ought to be etched in stone when it comes to the business of column writing.
It’s the ‘I’s, my’s and me’ rule. In normal circumstances, those words should be avoided at all costs and, preferably, outlawed entirely.
Their use tends to demonstrate a narcissistic, egotistical disposition and very often it results in laughter behind the back. Rightly so.
So you’ll have to excuse me just this once. Because, on this occasion, the subject matter happens to be so deeply personal that a bit of blatant self indulgence is required.
There’s no other way of saying it and little point in beating about the bush. I liked Sir David Murray. If truth be told, deep down I admired the man.
But the fact is we haven’t spoken for the best part of 15 years and it’s highly unlikely that we ever will again.
We didn’t fall out. As far as I can recall there was never a cross word spoken.
Rather, we simply ended up encamped on two sides of a divide at a point in time when Murray was attempting to convince the world that black was Whyte. And when it was my job to call it out.
So, now that Murray has broken cover and told his own story by releasing an autobiography, allow me this chance to explain.
The Murray that I got to know as a young reporter was a genuine behemoth.
He was Scotland’s Jordan Belfort. The Wolfe of Charlotte Square.
His personality was so huge and so much larger than life that simply being in his presence felt oddly intoxicating.
He also inherently understood that fostering healthy media relations was all part of the game. And he was more than happy to play it.
Phone him and he’d almost always pick up. Ask him questions and he’d almost always provide a straight answer. Yes, there would be instances when, in return, he’d ask for discretion or for that particular story not to go to print for 24 hours or so.
And that was fine. It was all part of the information trade off. David Murray played the game alright and there are plenty of others in the newspaper world who would testify to this.
He was the powerhouse behind a period of dominance which saw Rangers romp to nine league titles in a row. He was the man responsible for buying Mo Johnston and shattering a sectarian singing policy which disgraced the Ibrox club.
On a personal level he was capable of considerable kindness too, which is where this story really begins.
I had a question for Murray which needed an answer. So much time has passed that I’ve long since forgotten the details behind the actual enquiry.
Suffice to say, it was a story of some significance, most probably involving the identity of a potential new Rangers signing.
Anyway, the call went in as usual. Murray was busy attending to some other part of his business empire but assured me that he’d get back later the same day.
In between times I received another phone call. My dad Joe had been blue lighted into an emergency hospital ward where he was in a critical condition and fighting for his life.
I was rushing to be by his bedside when Murray returned my call.
Having explained the severity of the situation we agreed that the story could wait, whatever it was.
By the time I arrived at Hairmyres, Murray had sent a hand written fax to my old man, wishing him a speedy recovery. The pair had never met.
That was the David Murray I knew. A genuine, decent man.
But what happened around 2010 – at a time when Murray’s world was on the brink of financial collapse – would change the nature of our relationship permanently.
Circumstances dictated a change in his own persona. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable and perhaps even uncertain of himself.
And it was during this period that he spirited up Craig Whyte from almost nowhere and presented him, via the pages of this newspaper, as the man best qualified to take on his own mantle as the next custodian of Rangers Football Club.
I’ve done the mea culpa on this one many times before. But, for what it’s worth, I apologise for my part in it once again. The whole Motherwell billionaire abomination will go with me to my grave: Here lies Keith Jackson, finally off the radar.
What has been forgotten along the way, however, is what followed almost immediately and would go on for most of the next six months between November 2010 and May 2011.
Within a day or two of that initial story naming Whyte as the man on the brink of an Ibrox takeover, it was becoming very obvious to me that the Daily Record had been misled and used, largely to Murray’s advantage.
Around this time I first met Paul Murray, who was a director on the Rangers board. He smelled a rat from the start and for the next six months we worked together to expose it while there was still time to do something about it.
David Murray, on the other hand, was battoning down the hatches.
To this day I vividly remember what was to be one of our final phone conversations. I asked Murray straight out if he truly believed Whyte to be the real deal.
Not only did he admit to not knowing for sure but, moreover, he also expressed his concerns about Whyte’s apparent lack of ‘trappings of wealth’.
From memory, it went something along the lines of, ‘Yes the guy owns a castle but you’d struggle to buy a two bedroom flat in Edinburgh for the same price!’.
That was the moment I realised without doubt that Murray was, at the very least, prepared to take an enormous gamble by signing off on the takeover deal. Six months later he went through with it anyway and the rest, of course, is history.
And it’s why it’s so unedifying to see Murray doubling down on his position in his newly published memoirs.
He wasn’t duped. Don’t be so ridiculous.
On the contrary, he was warned over and over by his own directors and a whole load of others that selling to Whyte would almost certainly have catastrophic consequences for the club. And he chose to ignore them.
At the eleventh hour, in sheer desperation, Paul Murray tabled a counter offer and one which would have safeguarded the club by making Murray International responsible for any tax liabilities left over from the reckless use of EBT’s.
Given that the full extent of those HMRC penalties was unknown at that time, no other deal made any sense at all. And Sir David knew it.
In many ways, it’s really quite sad that this will be his lasting legacy. But Murray is just going to have to live with it.