During his playing days, DAVIE MACKINNON had an unusual meeting with Saddam Hussein.
“After we were knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Dundee in 1985, Jock Wallace arranged a double-header against Iraq in Baghdad — where there was a war against Iran raging,” Mackinnon explained.
“We met Saddam Hussein, and his foreign minister Tariq Aziz, the night before the game.
“Saddam said to us in perfect English that the Iranians were aggressors and Iraqis were friendly people who wanted peace.
“That night air raid sirens sounded, and we went down to the basement. Iran was bombing Basra, which was 100 miles away, but the Iraqis were taking no chances.
“The next day at the stadium, the secret police were thumping people on the heads with long bamboo poles.
“A young man walked towards me wanting an autograph and as I took the pencil, a policeman whacked him on the head and blood poured out.
“Our interpreter said, ‘We need to control people, that’s why we need a leader like Saddam’.
“We drew 1-1 and lost the second game 4-1.”
He’d had a run-in with comedy royalty earlier in his career, and Eric Morecambe had the final laugh on MacKinnon.
“When I was a youngster at Arsenal, we played a closed-door game against Luton and Eric, as Hatters chairman, ran the line,” he explained.
“He was resplendent in a sheepskin coat and deerstalker hat. At one stage I stepped out to leave the winger offside.
“Eric shouted, ‘Onside referee, play on’. The winger crossed and their centre-forward scored. I yelled at the referee, ‘He was a mile offside’.
“Afterwards, Eric came over and shook my hand. He said, ‘It was a mile offside but we need all the support we can get’!”.
We told you about MacKinnon’s terrible near-death experience after a tumble in Edinburgh last year.
He had a stroke and then fell down a flight of stairs, severing an artery in his brain.
However, the ex-Gers and Killie defender believes it was a LUCKY fall since it revealed a hereditary heart ailment – the same one that tragically killed Motherwell ace Phil O’Donnell in 2007.
