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Song row QC considered suicide

The QC said the affair had taken a "tremendous toll" on him and that he was probably depressive by nature.

"I worry about the job, the people I represent, and I'm aware of slipping into a depression, of having less and less interest in life, in pleasurable things," he said.

"I really don't care any more about doing for myself and to actually, at one point in time, to find yourself seriously contemplating ending your life is a remarkable experience to go through."

Mr Findlay quit his position at Glasgow Rangers in May after a video of him singing The Sash - a song viewed as being sectarian and anti-Catholic - was made public.

In the wake of that incident he was snubbed by St Andrews University with plans to award him an honorary degree being dropped.

Speaking on BBC One Scotland's Kirsty Wark Show he said he had considered taking his own life after being asked whether the affair had had an impact on him mentally.

Asked if this happened recently, and how he got through it, he said: "No, it was not long after the whole thing really got going.

'I won't ever be free of it'

"I sat for a very long time, but what that would have done to the people that I cared about and who cared about me was a price I was not prepared to pay just to get away from the pain."

He said he had talked about his mental state to no-one "other than a few people very close to me."

Mr Findlay claimed he would never feel free of the fall-out from the episode.

"I'll never be free of it because the one thing that I know is that come the day when somebody writes my obituary, it will be there somewhere, large or small, and that is an appalling thought - knowing that I won't ever be free of it."

He said that at the private party in May which followed his club's 1-0 victory over Celtic in the Scottish Cup final, he took to the microphone in "the exuberance of the occasion".

"There was just a tremendous sense of euphoria and the crowd are going and songs are sung and you join in ... because you want people to know that as the vice-chairman of Rangers you're not a suit," he said.

"You are from first to last what I am and always will be ... I'm a bluenose and I make no secret of it."

But Mr Findlay said songs like The Sash were "a very different thing" to the uglier side of sectarianism - which he equated with an attack on another person because of the colour of a football scarf.

But he accepted there were "aspects of the songs" which were "clearly hostile", were not acceptable, and should not be sung in public.

"I wouldn't sing them in public and people shouldn't sing them in public," he said.

But he also said few Rangers fans would put their hands on their hearts to say they had never sung The Sash.

Relevant Stories

University snubs song row QC (08 Oct 99 | Scotland)
Violent reminder of sectarianism (22 Sep 99 | Scotland)
Unlikely alliance in sectarian row (18 Aug 99 | Scotland)
Composer attacks 'anti-Catholic bigots' (09 Aug 99 | Edinburgh Festival 99)
Scotland coach starts legal action (14 Jul 99 | UK)
Findlay songs inquiry launched (09 Jun 99 | Scottish Premier)
The bitter divide (02 Jun 99 | UK)

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