A rather peculiar incident occurred around Billy Connolly the other day. The Big Yin was in Glasgow, taking up a new ambassadorial role at Celtic, and let off about the bigotry which he believes is still a curse in Scotland. Connolly’s central gripe was that there was a media silence about sectarianism which does our country a grave disservice.

Right on cue, almost as if to prove his point, a couple of yesterday’s Scottish papers, such as The Herald, chose to picture “a smiley Connolly” at Celtic Park, while in text virtually omitting the most pertinent point that he was trying to make. It was yet another example of the fearful, anxiety-ridden approach to a subject which Scotland should long ago have taken by the scruff of the neck.

I don’t bow down to every observation Connolly made at Celtic Park on Thursday about — as he put it in his tart way - “the crap” of bigotry. It is a complex subject which deserves careful sifting and analysis, as does the view of Professor Steve Bruce at Aberdeen University - a view I disagree with - that the whole sectarianism issue in Scotland is a myth. Amid a sore subject, all points deserve to be weighed up.

Yet this was precisely the point about Connolly’s speech on Thursday. What was it about his particular excoriation of bigoted attitudes in Scotland that couldn’t - or mustn’t - be heard? What is so scary about it? Why should it not be aired and digested? Why this peculiar knee-knocking which takes place when a figure as well known and acerbic as Connolly chooses to have it out on the subject?

It is a particular intrigue for those of us immersed in Scottish football, because it is in our arena that bigotry most often manifests itself. Sometimes that manifestation is for real, at other times it is merely phoney or an empty ritual, and that is part of the complexity. But to fearfully ignore? What good does that serve?

Connolly expressed some truths and, to me, some other points that were blurry and somewhat off-beam. For instance, it is naive and an exaggeration to say that Neil Lennon, while he was at Celtic, was booed “the length and breadth of Scotland” because of bigotry.

Lennon, in fact, was barracked for two main reasons. One, plain and simple, was due to some bigoted attitudes, perhaps most especially heard at Ibrox. But there are also thousands of Rangers fans, and thousands of fans of other clubs as well, who booed Lennon in the same way that opposition fans booed, say, Graeme Souness 20 years ago. Football fans are actually allowed to jeer opposition players whom they deem arrogant or contemptible or even ugly. It is a part of the colour of the game. And in Lennon’s case, as Connolly would have it, it shouldn’t all just be bundled into a folder marked “bigotry”.

The blight of bigotry in Scottish football needs to be recognised and addressed, without both camps bringing such extreme views to the debate. To put it at its most basic, any Celtic fan who feels that our nation is heaving or saturated with bigotry simply needs to pop a perspective pill and be less fevered on the subject. And on the opposite side, those who like to insist that there is no real bigotry around at all need only to spend some time on the Old Firm beat - and especially “on the road” where the real zealots come out - to appreciate the folly of their complacency.

What I found disturbing about the Connolly experience the other day was an editorial policy which effectively said: “Play that down. . . don’t say too much about that bigotry stuff.” If this had been Scotland’s intellectual attitude down the years - which, mercifully, it hasn’t been - we’d be no further forward today than we were, say, in the 1950s. Connolly got some things right and some things wrong. But I, for one, was glad he had the guts to stand up and say, there’s still a problem here.

- I promise this is the last word I shall utter in print on my Paul Le Guen book, which came out this week. But I would like to highlight one amusing incident which happened involving your correspondent and Barry Ferguson, the Rangers captain. There is a perception that Ferguson takes a pounding in my book, which isn’t really the case. Le Guen had his views on Ferguson’s “betrayal” during his time at Ibrox, and I have my views on it, and the book attempts to grope towards the truth.

On any billboard, though, it is simpler to say: “Spiers Book Zaps Ferguson!” The excellent Peter Martin of Radio Clyde decided to crank up this issue. The bold Pedro tracked down Ferguson at Rangers and recorded an interview with him about my book, and then hauled me into the studio to do some sparring around what Ferguson had said. I think the hope was that there would be blood everywhere.

Well, as I point out in the book, Ferguson is not just a fine footballer, but a likeable guy. And when I walked into Rangers the following day, who should I meet but the bold Bazza. The two us were engulfed with laughter at the whole daft episode.

With enemies like these, who needs friends?