MY God this will sound terrible, but BEFORE I FOUND DRAMA all I did was play football, tennis and golf. That was pretty much me until I was about the age of 16.

As a youth I played for - and I’ll give them a shout out - Glenpark Boys Club in Edinburgh, Loanhead, for a couple of crazy managers. I was never good enough to sign an S form or even think about anything like that but I loved the sport and was obsessed by it.

So you can imagine what getting to play on a real size stadium and pitch was like when I got the invite to play at Celtic Park for Paul McStay’s Maestrio charity three years back. To be involved in things like last week’s Street Soccer dinner with Sir Alex Ferguson was great too, because obviously there is a very socially-driven aspect to their work and I am delighted to be part of it.

Anyway, myself and Martin Compston were invited to that Maestrio match and it was Paul McStay versus Rio Ferdinand’s select XI. There were loads of moments that I will never forget.

Even when we were queuing up for the lunch before the game. In my schooldays, that didn’t happen. But these guys obviously need carbs. I clearly don’t, look at the size of me!

It was a wee bit of pasta and I was queuing up who should be in front of me but Gianfranco Zola, while behind me was Dwight Yorke and Paul Scholes. So I sat down at the same table as them and just basically stared at people.

Thankfully one of them interrupted my stare and said they had watched Fresh Meat. They didn’t know anything about Gary: Tank Commander but they had watched Fresh Meat.

I asked the guys what they did now, was it football management or whatever, and they said golf. So having finished going the round the world earning £60,000 a week, it turns out that now they just go around the world playing golf. It is not a bad life. So we had a few conversations about that.

Then playing at Celtic Park itself was just unbelievable. And I did have a moment where - and Martin Compston will back this up - I skinned Zola. It’s all on tape. I did a drag back and played it out wide. This was the stuff of dreams - but it did actually happen. And of course there was an end product! It was zipped into feet, the pass was so precise.

I don’t get to live matches so much now due to my work - I could quite easily be filming on a Saturday or a Sunday now.. I live down in Brighton now and I have a family so it is more a family life than it was when I was younger. While I will check scores on my phone, for me it was always about playing rather than following scores. I was never that fanatical about a team and I am still like that.

My grandad was a Celtic season ticket holder, so that was the first team I went to see and it did mean a lot to me actually to play there, because he always went to see me play and he had passed away by the time I got to play at Parkhead. But I don’t follow any team. I am the guy who tweets like he knows who is going to be in the Scotland team.

One match I did get to see though was the El Classico between Barcelona and Real Madrid. Myself and Kevin Bridges (and his brother) have made that pilgrimage a few times.

One time we met Graham Hunter, the Spanish football expert, but we were introduced to him out there. It was just a phenomenal trip, and what made it even more special was that it was for the 5-0 classico in October 2016, one of the best games ever played. Barca destroyed Real to the point where it was a bit like watching the Harlem Globetrotters at basketball, Real were just hacking them but couldn’t even get near them.

I can’t tell you much about that night, but all I can say is that while Graham Hunter is a fantastic writer, he is not a great negotiator in late night Karaoke clubs, even though his Spanish is superb. We still haven’t finished our version of Meatloaf’s ‘I would do anything for love (but I won’t do that).

Another thing on the bucket list for me which I managed to tick off was doing a charity thing for Unicef with Andy Murray, for his Andy Murray Live event at the Hydro. As I said football, golf and tennis were the things I loved growing up so when I got the approach ‘would you be up for having a bit of a knock at the Hydro with Andy Murray, Ally McCoist, Gregor Townsend and guys like that’ it really was a bit special.

At one point I ended up shouting at Tim Henman as Gary, ‘TIM-MY, TIM-MY, GET TO THE NET TIMMY’. That was a great laugh. I had to actually brief Tim Henman on what it was. He wasn’t like ‘oh great, it is Gary Tank Commander’. It was like ‘err.. (affects posh English voice) so what are we doing here?’.

He just had to go with it when we got on the court but to be fair to Tim Henman, he has got a fantastic sense of humour. I mean I had only met him for an hour or so but he was awesome, just so laid back. I will always remember coming off court and backstage at the Hydro, and I was like ‘this is amazing, get me a beer, or get me a wine’.

Tim Henman walked past with some sushi, and I thought that is the difference. He was on the sushi. I was on the beer.