Even when things get as mad and agenda-driven in the sectarianism debate as they did last week in Scottish football, some aspects remain crystal clear in their need of condemnation. That is, if people have the courage to say so.

Celtic, streets ahead of Rangers when it comes to cleaning up their act, nonetheless will find it hard to fully divorce themselves from their benighted city rivals unless that clump of idiots in their away support who croon about the IRA can be silenced. The Celtic Park club, and in particular their chief executive, Peter Lawwell, have spoken out about it before, but perhaps another public push on the matter is essential.

The fact is, the IRA chanting is galling for Celtic, given that the club have led the way over the past 15 years in eradicating bigotry from the vast swath of their support. For years now Celtic Park – unlike Ibrox – has been largely free of sectarian or racist chanting.

Over at Ibrox, the latest favoured chant to pollute the air deserves open condemnation from Martin Bain, the Rangers chief executive, if only he can find the guts to do it. The so-called Famine Songsmacks of a brain-dead racism of the type too many Rangers fans simply cannot leave behind: antiIrish and antiCatholic. No wonder Strathclyde Police are now threatening to make arrests at Ibrox for racist behaviour. And it is inconceivable that, in private, Bain does not deplore the song, though he can’t bring himself to say so publicly.

I have only one measure of sympathy for Bain, who in every other sense is a decent man and a talented football executive, and it is this: he must be weary of the prejudices of the white underclass which continue to infect a large minority of the Ibrox support. Rangers have suffered humiliation upon humiliation in recent years – in Villarreal, in Pamplona, in the Uefa prosecution over bigoted chanting, and most recently and shockingly in Manchester. Just what must it be like being this club’s chief executive?

That, however, does not excuse Bain’s timidity last week over the Famine Song. Of it, without a word of condemnation, he said: “Clearly some of our supporters feel aggrieved that a song they believe to be no more than a ‘wind-up’ of Celtic supporters should be singled out like this...”

I’m sorry? Unfairly “singled out” and a mere “wind-up”? Given the recent tradition of the bigotry problem at Rangers, I fear this latest dirge about “Irish” or “Fenians” being sent back to Ireland deserves something slightly more withering than Bain’s folksy “wind-up” claim. The song is trash, it is racist, and he should find the guts to say it.

Back in 1972 – yes, it goes this far back – when the Rangers fans rioted in Barcelona and got the club flung out of Europe, you didn’t find the then Ibrox manager, Willie Waddell, indulging in this sort of obfuscation. On the contrary, facing his own supporters and with the steam coming out his ears, Waddell went straight for the jugular in condemning those who embarrassed his club.

“It is to these tikes, hooligans, louts and drunkards that I pinpoint my message,” Waddell said. “It is because of your gutter-rat behaviour that we [Rangers FC] are being publicly tarred and feathered.” Every football club chairman or chief executive, like Bain, needs to keep reasonably “on-message” with his own customers. But racism and sectarianism need to be condemned, not shirked.

The madness of last week, involving BBC Scotland headlines and pages of the fall-out in many Scottish newspapers, had its own peculiar evolution. We have now reached the stage where organised bodies of Celtic and Rangers fans, often via those modern lunatic asylums called fans websites, are in a race to land the first propaganda blow.

I must admit, when last week’s story first broke about alleged “Irish diplomats” poking their noses in by “getting in touch” with the Scottish Government about the chanting of Rangers fans, something wasn’t quite right about it. Just who was stirring which large pot here? There was something strained and farfetched about the way the story developed. Personally, it made me suspicious, and it only fed the now-rampant paranoia that goes with wearing a Rangers scarf.

Then, predictably, something even more ludicrous happened. A group of Rangers fans, voraciously casting around to find someone – anyone – to make a similar complaint about Celtic, came up with the dubious figure of Gregory Campbell, a Democratic Unionist MP from Northern Ireland, who duly expressed his inability to venture to any Celtic game due to some supporters’ unsavoury singing.

You could almost hear the underground clamour: “Quick lads, we’ve found an equaliser, get this Campbell bloke on to the TV stations!” And so the whole daft scenario unfolded, tit for tat, jibe and counter-jibe. In terms of addressing sectarianism, last week was not one when our media covered itself in glory.

One other fallacy needs to be debunked here. No one is suggesting that football chants should have either a squeaky, Mary Poppins air about them, or that they should be strictly football related. On both counts, of course not. Football largely enjoys the colour and daftness of its fans, and any killjoys in this regard should be kept well away from the debate.

But neither bigotry nor racism is funny. If only someone, somewhere, could teach a section of the Rangers fans to love themselves, rather than hate others, a huge step forward would be taken.

And another thing...

Quiet times are over for Calderwood at Pittodrie

Are we not about due another Aberdeen FC crisis? It’s almost four years now since we had a thoroughgoing palaver at Pittodrie – far too long a period for those of us who had been accustomed to one every 18 months or so.

Aberdeen managerial crises often had their own unique quality, with a venom unmatched even by the Old Firm.

I’ve seen the environs of Pittodrie positively spluttering with invective on such occasions. There were the dramas of Roy Aitken, Paul Hegarty, Alex Miller and Stevie Paterson – all managers who came a cropper amid a hot-breathed northeast lynch mob. It is quite a spectacle.

Now I’m starting to worry if this might not be around the time for “Jabbering” Jimmy Calderwood to fall into the trough.

Calderwood, notwithstanding the odd close shave, has had quite a serene time of it these past four years, but I smell a set-to on the horizon. In their four home Premier League games now, Aberdeen have won none, drawn one and lost three, and their fans were haranguing Calderwood on Saturday following the 1-0 loss to Dundee United.

On top of everything, more than a few of them still begrudge him his alleged Rangers leanings.

It may be time to look out the hard hat, Jimmy.

Lawwell shows how to survive at top table

Peter Lawwell, the Celtic chief executive, left, surprised quite a few last week by turning down the offer of the same position at Arsenal to stay at Celtic.

But one thing Lawwell did get right in his decision-making was avoiding the nightmarish real estate problem at their former ground at Highbury, which Arsenal are struggling to resolve, and which would have fallen Lawwell’s way.

I still say Lawwell’s longevity at Celtic is amazing. That’s five years he’s clocked up now, in a job where, previously, the men in white coats arrived with the strait-jacket roughly every three years to take them away. We’re talking here of a born survivor.