Disco as a Scottish football anthem??? Verily, the mind doth boggle…

 

I had to laugh at this report from the BBC.

Thousands of Scotland fans are in London ahead of their Euro 2020 match with England – but the skirl of the bagpipes has largely been drowned out by a 1970s disco classic.

Videos of the Tartan Army belting out Yes Sir, I Can Boogie on the streets of the English capital have been all over social media.

So how did the song become the country’s unofficial national anthem?

It started when a video of ecstatic players dancing to the tune went viral after Scotland clinched qualification for the tournament by defeating Serbia on penalties in November.

The song by Spanish duo Baccara spent a single week at the top of the UK charts in 1977.

But last year it got a fresh lease of life when it was used by the Keeping the Ball on the Ground podcast as a tribute to defender Andrew Considine.

The Aberdeen cult hero – who was called up to the Scotland team for the first time last year at the age of 33 – famously starred in a spoof video of the song on his stag do.

The player was unrecognisable as he dressed in drag to strut his stuff to the tune alongside friends and his father, with the professionally-produced video being played on his wedding day in 2015.

. . .

The boogieing began in earnest once more as Euro 2020 got under way, with the 12,000 fans who were allowed to be inside Hampden belting out the song ahead of Scotland’s opening match with the Czech Republic.

The game – Scotland’s first in a major tournament for 23 years – ended in a 2-0 defeat.

But the result didn’t appear to have dampened spirits too much ahead of the eagerly awaited clash with the Auld Enemy at Wembley.

Videos of fans singing the song on planes and trains as they made their way south for the match have been racking up hundreds of thousands of view on social media.

And regardless of what happens in the game, a certain song will keep the Tartan Army boogie-woogieing all night long.

There’s more at the link, including photographs of the stag (drag?) party that started it all.

For those of you too young to remember it, here’s the 1977 hit.

And, for a giggle, here’s the BBC’s Scottish symphony orchestra – in makeup, drag and football gear – doing their thing with it.

Tartan Army, indeed!

Peter