As the circulation battle continues to rage between The Scottish Sun and the Daily Record for the title of Scotland’s best-selling daily newspaper, it looks as if the Daily Record has pulled off a significant promotional coup on the eve of the Scottish Premier League’s new football season.
Armed with a voucher from the Daily Record, from today to Thursday, punters will be able to pop into their nearest Morrisons store and pick up, for free, books featuring soccer legends Jock Stein, Sir Alex Ferguson, Denis Law and Graeme Souness.
The promotion was kick-started yesterday by the Daily Record’s sister paper, the Sunday Mail, which carried a voucher enabling the newspaper-buying public to get – for free – the revised and updated paperback edition of ‘Silversmith – The Biography of Walter Smith’, the current manager of Rangers FC.
Both the Record and the Sunday Mail are published by Trinity Mirror.
allmediascotland tasked its man in Aberdeen to undertake the exercise yesterday and he reports: “It was a pretty simple task – I nipped into Morrisons along the road; handed over £1.30 for my Sunday Mail; tore out the voucher; handed it to the store assistant; and was presented with the book, which is published by Birlinn Limited, and has a recommended retail price of £5.99. In these austere times, not a bad deal at all, although I am faced with the quandary that I am a Ross County FC supporter.”
And there was an added bonus for our intrepid reporter in Aberdeen. He recounts: “Flicking open the paperback, I learned the author was none other than my old friend, Neil Drysdale, whom I discovered, to my surprise and delight, is now married and living in Aberdeen. The prospect of many lovely free lattes from a rich author cheers me up no end.
“The flyleaf notes brought me right up to date on Neil’s latest career path as they informed me: ‘He was an award-winning writer with Scotland on Sunday for 15 years, but now works freelance – mostly for The Herald and STV’.”
Drysdale is the author of three other books – ‘Dad’s Army’, on the BBC TV comedy show; the autobiography of former Scottish goalkeeper Alan Rough; and ‘Dario Speedwagon’, a biography of Dario Franchitti, the 37-year-old Edinburgh-born racing driver who is doing sensationally well on the US stock car racing circuit this year.
