Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Dundee

Nickname: The Dark Blues

Ground: Dens Park

Stadium Capacity: 11,506

Song: Up Wi’ The Bonnets

In 2008, Scottish comedy legend, and Glasgow born comedian, Billy Connolly, caused controversy when he claimed in The Scotsman newspaper that people from Edinburgh were just not funny.

“I don’t know why. I think it’s about immigration, because I don’t find Edinburgh people all that funny,” he said. “They’re very interesting and nice, but you wouldn’t point to funny as being one of their features.” 

Billy must have been deliberately provocative because as a stand-up and folk singer in the sixties and seventies he would have shared stages with one of the greats of Scottish comedy, an Edinburgh comic called Hector Nicol. And he would have thanked Hector, because, without Hector, Billy would not have had a stand-up act – Nicol was one of the first comics to introduce blue material to his routines.

Hector wasn’t just famous as a comic, he was also an actor and, before his death in 1985, he was a regular on Scottish screens in the soap series Take The High Road, which was like a Scottish Emmerdale Farm, or Emmerdale Croft. But Nicol’s lasting legacy was not his jokes or his performances but his songs. Hector was a prolific song writer for football clubs.

For Hibernian he wrote ‘Glory Glory To The Hibees’, a song and tune ‘borrowed’ by Manchester United today, for Hearts he wrote ‘The Hearts Song’. He also wrote ‘The Terrors of Tannadice’ for Dundee United and ‘Up Wi’ The Bonnets’ for Dundee.

Ironically, Nicol, despite his east coast home, was actually a fan of St Mirren, based in the west coast in Paisley, the town where he was born – though he never, as far as we know, wrote a song for them.

‘Up Wi’ The Bonnets’ sings of the pride fans feel at watching the players play in its traditional blue shirts.

“You can sing of your glories of teams you have seen,

like the Saints and the Dons up in old Aberdeen,

but in all this wide world there’s just one team for me,

that’s the brave(bold) boys who wear the dark blue of Dundee“

(Source: Hector Nicol)

But although Dundee’s best days are behind it, as the 21st Century has seen the club yo-yo between the SPL and the lower leagues while battling financial problems, its greatest moment came in 1961 when Bob Shankley (brother of Liverpool’s Bill) led Dundee to its one and only league title. The title winning team is commemorated in the final verse and is remembered before every home game as the team walk out to Nicol’s song:

“For there’s Robertson, Penman and Alan Gilzean,

with Cousins and Smith there the finest you’ve seen,

a defence that is steady heroic and sure,

Liney, Hamilton, Cox, Seith and Wishart and Ure“

(Source: Hector Nicol) 

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