Of course, things have moved on a lot from my schoolboy days at Bayview and Starks Park, with the stench of cigarette smoke and stale booze wafting across the terraces and old men checking their crumpled betting shop coupons against the half time scores.

I wouldn’t dream of filling in a bookie’s sections list now. I sit near the halfway line rather than behind the goals and, if I am watching a game at home, I turn the sound off so I can form my own opinion of the action, free from the editorialising influence of the commentators and pundits.

With my background in betting, I was the perfect candidate to conduct an investigation for The Observer newspaper into the world of subscription tipsters, an area I’d always been fascinated by. How did they work? Where did they get their information from? And above all… were they worth the money?

The Observer Tipster Experiment, conducted throughout 2005, became my www.progambler.co.uk website, where leading tipsters continue to proof their bets to me every day.

Progambler readers wanted information on my personal bets, so I started to send them out on a weekly email. Proofing every bet to the hundreds of people on my list every week. All the selections advised are recorded here and the original messages (all 150 of them) are archived on the Progambler site.

I don’t work alone, crucially. The Progambler project tapped me in to a fantastic network of research, professional punters, industry odds compilers and local football expertise.

This support structure that allies genuine betting nous to a formal and informal network of insider football contacts, built up over many years of writing and betting, ensures that there are few people better placed to make money from betting on Scottish football.