Over here in TokyoLand we like a night of footie occasionally. And tonight is no exception. Tonight it doesn’t come much bigger, unless of course it was Scotland V France, at Hampden, in a World Cup final, Scotland win 3-1, … which happened in my dream a few nights ago….don’t laugh, it could happen.

Tonight, or tomorrow morning as it will be here in TokyoLand, we’ll down Photoshop tools and watch Manchester United take on Barcelona.

And there’s one reason many fellow Glaswegians the world over will be watching, to hopefully see Sir Alex Ferguson, who hails from sunny Glasgow, take another step in the ranks of All Time Football Greats. I read a good interview with Sir Alex Ferguson here in The Times a few days ago, reading about his life in Glasgow.

I’ve always wanted to photograph Sir Alex, but never got the chance at any Scottish papers where I freelanced. But in the dying days of 2008, down in Yokohama, as I stood outside the Pan Pacifico hotel shooting a maagzine story about Man Utd, a taxi drove up, stopped…and out stepped Sir Alex. I thought he’d be straight past me into the hotel, but no, over to the fans and ten minutes of signing autographs, security and minders all around him. And finally I had my photograph of Sir Alex Ferguson, not quite the one I wanted, but none the less a picture.

In the article linked to above, Sir Alex talks of his days working in the shipbuilding yards of Govan, Glasgow. I photographed in those yards as often as I could, first when the yard was Kvaerner, then also as BAE Systems, and also in Fergusons (no connection I think) in Greenock further down the Clyde, and also Yarrows yard. The heady days of Glasgow’s shipbuilding were well and truely over by the time I managed to shoot anything, but I am happy that I’ve seen some of it, and photographed some of it. Click here for photographs of Glasgow shipbuilding.