My ex-wife's face was a picture of disdain and pity.

She’d asked me if I had any ideas for what I might like as a Christmas present. “Well, I happen to know that the scarce Rosenborg v Celtic 1972 away programme is available from a dealer I know. I think he could be talked down to a reasonable price.”

A momentary curl of her lip was all that betrayed her feelings as she quickly asked for the contact details. And on Christmas morning, this little unadorned jewel from Celtic’s early European away programmes was duly handed over. The Rosenborg red isn’t much to look at. An A5 booklet-sized, 16-page, advert-laden effort that looked and felt like it had been printed and then cut roughly on an old Gestetner before being delivered to the stadium for the game (which Celtic won 3-1 after an unconvincing 2-1 first-leg win at Parkhead). It would barely have done justice to a parish race night let alone a crucial European Cup first-round game.

Being a cultured woman of taste and discernment, she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave it in such an impoverished state and had gone to the trouble of setting it in a little glass frame so that it felt substantial swaddled in its single sheet of Christmas wrapping-paper, bless her. Perhaps she’d hoped that I’d perch it on the bedside table where it might eventually come to resemble a piece of kitschy, avant-garde art.

At the first opportunity though, it was removed from its encasing and placed in the large cardboard box where I kept the rest of the collection of Celtic European aways and only to be glimpsed sporadically over the next few years on those days when rain keeps you indoors, there’s nothing much decent on the telly and no-one’s coming out to play.

The wee Rosenborg red was one of several rare away programmes from Celtic’s first 10 years in Europe and, over a 30-year period, I’ve managed to lay my hands on all of them. They only really satisfy a juvenile compulsion to collect Celtic memorabilia that tends to dissipate in the lives of normal people at around the time when they get served their first legal drink. But, in a way I can’t really explain, they bring to life perhaps the finest decade that the club ever experienced in their entire history. The last one eluded me until a few years ago: the Dynamo Kyiv v Celtic European Cup-Winners’ Cup quarter-final from 1966.

For some reason the great Ukrainian club had issued three different programmes for Celtic’s visit and, being an obsessive, I had to hunt down all of them. The last of these was identical to one of the others, save for a change in the spot colour of its cover. What I paid for these still keeps me awake at night and would have easily covered the cost of several holidays to those exotic locations that mature and fully-developed people visit.

You’re tempted to delude yourself that the entire collection of Celtic’s European programmes home and away represents an investment, but this fails on two crucial counts. One: you’re never likely to sell them; two: value is only really determined by the size of the market and I suspect that the market in rare Celtic European programmes is about 20 people. I don’t even want to linger on the thought that as soon as I’m dead and buried my children will wait until an appropriate time has elapsed before selling them for substantially less than I paid for them. Perhaps I’ll gift them to the club as a small token of my gratitude for the joy of following them all these years.

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I suppose, too, these programmes give you an encyclopaedic grasp of some of the finer details of Celtic’s record in Europe. This though is good for very little unless you’re one of those people who scours the land for pub quizzes that might specialise in the history of European football since 1962. Occasionally, I fantasise about appearing on a television quiz show such as Pointless or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and being faced with one of those dream questions that nobody but you can answer. “How many away games did Celtic win in their first decade of European football?” Seeing as you’re asking, it’s 11.

I have to admit here that during the Covid-19 pandemic I enjoyed quite a decent lockdown. Due to my working patterns and domestic circumstances this was much less onerous and distressing than what many others experienced. Until, that is, Celtic embarked on their European campaign in 2020. Like all other supporters I was deeply disappointed by the lacklustre performances last season as they succumbed at home to Ferencvaros in the Champions League qualifier and then suffered two home and away defeats to Sparta Prague and a very beatable AC Milan side in the Europa League groups.

The pain of these displays became sharper when it became known that Celtic had opted not to trouble themselves with publishing matchday programmes for the early European qualifiers. I even contacted the club pleading with them to rethink their decision and offered to write and design the bloody things for nothing, but to no avail. I suggested too that they reduce costs by printing a more stripped-down version of their usual big glossy, Hollywood European productions. “Just a simple 16-pager on old-fashioned newsprint would do fine,” I told them. Even Sparta Prague and Riga had produced programmes for their encounters with us. But they were having none of it.

There were even rumours in the Celtic matchday programme community (me and my pal Tam) that the club would use the Covid as an excuse to go the way of some others and cease entirely the production of printed programmes. This would be anathema to those of us who scan Celtic’s possible European opponents so that we can pick out those who are known to produce European programmes.

Often, the sting of an away defeat is assuaged somewhat by the knowledge that at least your conquerors produced a tidy wee keepsake of the occasion in the form of a matchday programme. And besides; these little literary mementoes of our Parkhead European nights have been a key part of the experience from our first forays in 1962.

As Celtic begin next season’s Champions League adventures it will be 60 years since the club published their first-ever European matchday programme, a gorgeous wee effort for the visit of Valencia in the old Fairs Cup. This came with a brilliant white cover which featured the elaborate and dashing badge of that wonderful old Spanish side.

I hope Celtic will mark the occasion with a matchday programme that’s both memorable and creative. Nor does it have to be a big-budget, cinematic production. Some of Celtic’s Champions League programmes have resembled what you might expect from a catalogue for luxury yachts. The cost-of-living crisis means that forking out £5 for one of these is out of the question.

Keep it small, beautiful and affordable, Celtic. And perhaps even consider something avant-garde in the cover art to mark this auspicious anniversary. I’m available for a free consultation on this.