forfar four, east fife five

As so often with BBC4 you drop in just for a second and end up catching something really interesting. Tonight I dropped in just to catch the last five minutes or so of Nicholas Crane's programme about Sir Hugh Munro and his mountain-cataloguing activities - inspiration for countless hillwalkers who've followed in his footsteps, myself included of course. That was followed by the always entertaining Jonathan Meades and his eccentric tour of Scotland, Off-Kilter (you see what he did there). The whole thing seems to be available on YouTube as well - start here.

There are very few people who can hold the attention just by talking at you, occasionally while walking round some deserted location, but Meades is one - you never quite know where he's going with his train of thought, but it's usually somewhere interesting. One of the interesting points he tossed out in passing this evening, while using a tour round some of the lower-division Scottish football grounds as a jumping-off point for musings on various subjects including architecture and Irn Bru, was how many Scottish football teams have names totally unrelated to the communities they represent.

Almost all English league clubs' names are just the place they represent plus some qualifier, be it Rovers, United, City, whatever. A lot of the Scottish ones are not, for some reason. The obvious ones like Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Hibs aside, here's a selection:

Club	Town
St. Johnstone	Perth
St. Mirren	Paisley
Queen of the South	Dumfries
Raith Rovers	Kirkcaldy
Ross County	Dingwall
East Fife	Methil
Albion Rovers	Coatbridge

Maybe it's a sort of escapism - being reminded where you're actually from being too depressing?