Latest news with #Erskine
The Sun
18-05-2025
- The Sun
Sleazy Scots chippy boss lured teen victims to ‘juice cupboard' for sex attacks
A SLEAZY chip shop boss lured schoolgirls into his 'juice cupboard' to sexually abuse them. Perv Alessandro Santi, 34, now faces jail after being convicted of a string of vile assaults on seven youngsters — some as young as 15. 3 3 3 He was manager of Dani's Diner in Erskine, Renfrewshire, which was owned at the time by his parents. A trial at Paisley Sheriff Court heard that while working as the fish fryer, Santi would touch girls, make lewd comments and show some of them porn images on his phone. Victims gave harrowing accounts of how he'd tell them to go into the juice cupboard — where fizzy drinks were stocked — and would then molest them. One woman, now in her early 20s, told how Santi had targeted her when she was 15 and told he wanted to 'bend her over a table'. He had rubbed his private parts up against her and repeatedly made comments that her 'bum looked good'. Prosecutor Jason Stark asked the woman: 'How did that make you feel?' She replied: 'I felt disgusted and embarrassed.' The witness said Santi showed her images of nude women on his phone from Snapchat, adding that he had wanted her to send him 'sex pictures'. Other women said Santi would regularly brush past them, touching their bottoms and waists. One girl became so upset after Santi had touched her inappropriately she went home and told her parents who came to the chippy to confront the pervert. Dad of Brit Bella Culley, who's being held in Georgia after vanishing on Thai hols, shares his fears Santi denied all the claims between 2016 and 2022 against him but was found guilty of 14 of the 19 charges by a jury . Sheriff Hugh McGinty adjourned for reports but blasted Santi's 'predatory' behaviour, warning him that 'a prison sentence is almost inevitable'. Santi was criticised for a letter he had submitted to the court appealing for bail if found guilty — so he could care for his kids and grandfather. Sheriff McGinty said: 'I thought that would be a letter stating some remorse, but your concern is all about you and the effect this has had on you.' Despite the rebuke, Santi was still bailed and he will return to court next month for sentencing. The Dani's Diner takeaway has since been taken over by new owners.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Duncan Ferguson on his hell at Bar-L: People were telling me I was going to get slashed in the morning. I was only 23, on my own. It was frightening. You think: 'How has it come to this?'
The sun was setting over the Clyde, the end credits were just about to roll, when Duncan Ferguson was asked a question. 'Who would play you in the film of your life?' a fan chirped up from the third row. The big man could not give an answer. This was understandable. Who, after all, could give an authentic performance as the mad man of the forward line who later doles out pounds to waiting children? Who could carry off scenes of applying a match to a pot of paint and almost wiping out Tannadice? Who could make it reasonable to imagine a character who once imbibed Cristal champagne while racing his doos? Who can reconcile the polar opposites of a personality who can throw his team-mates around a physio room and then punt up £25,000 for a wee trip for them after he feels he has let them down by being sent off? This is all Big Dunc: Dundee United, Rangers, Newcastle and, crucially, Everton player. This is Big Dunc: the lad who went to prison but the player who visited the sick and the lonely in their homes. 'Duncan became the legend before he became the player,' Joe Royle, his one-time manager, once said. The legend has now been printed. At a plush hotel in Erskine on Friday, Ferguson, now 53, came to tell all. He did not disappoint. 'I wanted to tell my story,' he said. He later reflected: 'I wish I could go back. You can't. I have a ton of regrets. I abused myself. I thought football was easy, life was easy. You get older and you realise life is tough. I can't go back to being that young boy again. I should have been the best.' This too is Big Dunc: serious, even melancholy, but one eager to play the life story for laughs. There is much to amuse. Ferguson is the exemplar of football at a certain stage in its history. The big money was just coming in, the retain contracts were disappearing but the lads were still lads. There was Merrydown cider and cans of lager, there were high jinks. There were the brushes with authority that were absurd and then calamitous for Ferguson. The intimations of disaster appeared early. 'He was a tyrant,' said Ferguson of Jim McLean. 'He was justified in a lot of things he did, though. I was a bit nuts, I was crazy. 'He wasn't very nice to me. We didn't really get on. I didn't hate the man, I respected the man, but the things he was doing to me I didn't like. He tried to bully me. I got bullied at school and it took me a long time to stand up to that bully. But once you stand up to that bully they melt away.' McLean eventually slipped from Ferguson's life but not after strain endured by both sides during the player's spell at the club from 1990-93. There was the pyrotechnic with the paint pot that caused genuine alarm. There was the moment when McLean baited a trap for people he thought were stealing money from the canteen. 'He had taken all the serial numbers from the pound notes he put in the canteen,' explained Ferguson. 'He then took us up to the boardroom and we were strip searched. It was not the last time I was strip searched,' he added wryly. McLean, too, stripped to his underwear to show he was not the thief. The matter was somehow resolved but this was football in the early nineties. A regime that held the power of contract and players who had not yet embraced sports science or accessed the money that was swirling into the game. Ferguson would be swept away by this excess. It would take him into Barlinnie, into a pool of despair. The laughing stopped. Ferguson had moved on from the surreality of telling the audience that he had no pubic hair until he was late in teenage years. His next subject was the brutal reality of Bar-L. 'The first night was horrendous. It was the worst night of my life,' he said. Ferguson was jailed in 1995 after breaching probation conditions. He had clashed with John McStay at Ibrox in April 1994. He called it a 'collision', others insisted it was a butt. It was enough to ensure he spent 44 days in Barlinnie. He had been in a series of previous incidents, most notably a punch-up in Anstruther. 'No easy,' he said of his jail term. 'It's no easy for anyone going to prison. And I played for the Rangers. Half of the nick are Rangers fans, half of the nick are Celtic fans. When I went through that door for the first time, they were all on the landings. Everybody. All looking down on me. You could have heard a pin drop. I had to walk through everyone. It tests you, it tests you.' The repetition emphasises that the pain has not quite gone. 'When I went through the cell door I felt relief,' he said. There was a brief spell of peace and he sat on the edge of the bed. Then afternoon turned to night. 'It became darker, and darker. Then there were the threats.' He heard the shouts. 'What cell is he in. I am going to cut that big dirty Orange b******. He's gonnae get cut tae f***.' Ferguson added: 'Half a dozen to 10 people were telling me I was going to get slashed in the morning. I was only 23, on my own. It was frightening. You think: 'How has it come to this?'' This would take more than a book to answer. There are some clues, however. Ferguson admitted he was told by his father 'to get his retaliation in first'. He was taught by nature and nurture to meet threats forcibly. But his background was fairly typical for a boy from St Ninians, Stirling. 'I was brought up in the tenements. I had a great upbringing. One side was the tenement, the other side was the country. I had everything. We had nae money but I had the country. I had the fishing, I loved taking my ferrets to catch the rabbits, I always had my dog with me.' Football took him away from this. It led him to fame, then infamy. It introduced riches, then bankruptcy. The boy who walked the hills was fated to pace a cell. The honesty is unrestrained. There is humour in tales recounting how Craig Brown, then Scotland assistant coach, woke Ferguson in his room by hoovering a floor that was strewn with the detritus of excess. Ferguson admitted on the night before in 1992 he almost set fire to the Swiss hotel, too. It is an involved story with a wicker chair, a wardrobe of burning paper, and retribution against beer being poured on his bed. Again, this was the way of it in the early nineties. But another encounter with a manager was more painful. Ferguson had been sentenced to prison and was in the process of an appeal when he was summoned to Walter Smith's office. The Rangers manager had a message. 'He said to me: 'Look Duncy, we are thinking of moving you on'. I was crying my eyes out.' Ferguson admitted: 'The move to Rangers was too early for me. I was too young. I was immature. Maybe I wasn't good enough.' Ally McCoist, sitting in the audience, and Mark Hateley were the first-choice strikers. Rangers wanted to wait a season before buying Ferguson but the striker said: 'I was desperate to get out of Dundee. It turned out to be a very bad move.' He added: 'They paid over the odds.' The transfer fee was a then Scottish record of £4m. 'I let Walter down. I went to Rangers and I failed. I didn't give myself the best chance to succeed. That really hurt me.' He acknowledged the madness of his life. In 1993, before his move to Rangers, he played against Germany, then the world champions, at Ibrox. Scotland lost 1-0 but Ferguson was brutally belligerent and technically adroit. His overhead kick has become almost a signifier for his career. It was spectacular but it was saved. Indeed, Ferguson never scored for Scotland in any of his seven appearances. He walked away from international duty, bitter at the role he perceived the SFA to have played in his court travails. A phone call from McCoist when Smith had taken over as national coach failed to persuade him to return. He is frank about the genesis of his troubles. 'I thought I had made it before I had made it. I thought I was invincible. I played against Celtic at Tannadice and I was drunk. I ripped it apart. Football was easy for me until I went to Ibrox. I don't think there were many great moments there.' Indeed, his first goal came on the day he clashed with McStay. So it was off to Everton, initially on a loan, and then on a permanent transfer. He became a legend there. He produced a tableau of dramatic goals, sprinkled with red cards. It could have all played out at Bayern Munich. They were keen on signing him after his performance against Germany. But two days after the game he was fighting with four men in The Rock in Menzieshill, Dundee. He broke his toe. It was a harbinger of injuries to come. When he was fit he was unplayable, when he was unfit he did not play. The latter began to dominate the former. This is in the past. The present is a marquee at Mar Hall. The night is marked with two moments of genuine passion, perhaps joy. The first is the recollection of that lad striding out with his ferrets. The second is an anecdote about his life in Majorca where he lived for four years after his playing retirement. 'I was a really good pigeons man and I took them with me,' he said. One day they were racing from Ibiza to Majorca. 'I had a straw hat on, eating paella, drinking beer and smoking fags with guys who were about 90 years old. They didn't know I was a good pigeons man. Suddenly I shouted: 'Palomas a qui'. Five pigeons go boom into the loft. The lads nearly choked on their paella.' There is then that Ferguson laugh. It signifies much. He knows he did not make the most of the talent. He accepts much of that was dissipated in alcohol and he has not drunk since 2008. He remembers Bar L. He carries the wounds of bankruptcy when the taxman came looking for £4m. However, there is, perhaps, another realisation. He is fit, vibrant. He may not know who would play him in a movie but he knows he has survived. He has been through the storm and lived to tell the tales. Big Dunc is published by Century (£22) The wit and wisdom of Big Dunc On a disappointing Scotland debut in a friendly: 'I cannae get myself up for these f****** park games.' On playing Holland in 1992: 'Ruud Gullit was the best player I have ever seen. I was made up in that game. When I came on as sub the Dutch manager shouted to Frank Rijkaard: 'He's coming on now so mark him.' I was chuffed. I never touched the ball I was so busy looking at Rijkaard.' On his hero, Davie Cooper: 'I just wanted to be like him. I watched him put in a free-kick at Hampden against Aberdeen. Top corner. I was a Rangers man and all my family were Rangers men.' On Everton: 'I played my best football there. I had time on the pitch. We weren't very good at the time (when he first arrived in 1993) and I managed to be that talisman. I was aggressive, I took no prisoners. I loved it down there.' On being an idol: 'Everton fans loved me because I cared for them, I would visit them. I built that relationship. When we came out of the training ground, there would be young kids and I would give them a pound. A young Wayne Rooney was there. I have pics of him at nine when he was outside the training ground.' On ever going back to Everton or Rangers: 'My time has gone at Everton, unfortunately, I want to be a manager. I need to rebuild my career. I picked two incredibly tough jobs at Forest Green and Inverness Caledonian Thistle. But you get knocked down, you get back up.' Favourite memory: 'Scoring goals against top teams. Against Liverpool, against Man United. I always did well against both of them. I remember scoring the goal that beat Celtic at Parkhead (December 26, 1992). Dundee United have not won there in the league since then.' Life advice: 'Don't be swearing in interviews. Once I was asked to go for the Everton job, I lost my rag with the owners in the interview in London. I didn't get the job.' Best centre-half: 'Sami Hyypia at Liverpool. He was a good player, good in the air. He wasn't physically strong but he read the game well.' Biggest character he coached: 'James Rodriguez. He was just walking around and then stopped in training and I shouted at him: 'Vamos, venga, venga. Hey, you run, rapido'. He just looked at me and I knew he was thinking: 'Who is this guy?'' On doing his audio book: 'It wasn't easy. The last time I read out something was in school when I was doing my lines. 'I will not punch him in the face again.''
The Independent
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Veterans don Union flag hats and dance to 1940s tunes at VE Day street party
Military veterans and their families have celebrated the 80th anniversary of VE Day at a veterans' home near Glasgow by donning Union flag hats and dancing to wartime classics. The event at the Erskine home near Bishopton, Renfrewshire, saw some 400 people gather in a courtyard in the warm spring sunshine, where bunting, balloons and a large marquee had been set up, in a recreation of the street parties held to celebrate VE Day 80 years ago. Inside the tent the home's residents chatted over slices of cake and cold drinks at cabaret-style tables, while a trio of singers helped roll back the years with performances of a series of classic tunes. Many veterans clapped their hands and sang along to the likes of We'll Meet Again, In The Mood, and Rum And Coca-Cola, and some even took to the dancefloor in the company of members of the home's staff. For Erskine chief executive Ian Cumming, the event was an opportunity to celebrate 'the courage of those who changed the tide of history for the better'. He continued: 'If they hadn't won then the world would be a different place. 'The peace and stability they brought us as a result of that victory we've benefited from for decades.' Asked about what the event meant to the home's veterans he said: 'They love it. 'They'll know the significant of it, the defeat of Nazism and expansionism. 'They'll know the sacrifices made, the great toll taken on their forebears, and some of them served during the Second World War and they saw it first hand. 'So those people will have an opportunity to take the stage and tell their stories and be applauded. 'But everyone who served in the armed forces understands that they are effectively putting their lives on the line. 'So it's a celebration of the people came back, and also a chance to reflect on those that didn't.' The Erskine home is for veterans of all ages, and the event was attended by people of a wide range of ages and military experiences. Alex Bremner, an 89-year-old who did his national service in the RAF in the 1950s, recalled his experience of VE Day as a nine-year-old boy in Glasgow. 'All I can remember … is going round the houses looking for firewood to throw in your bonfire,' he said. 'We stayed in Townhead in Glasgow and we just went round the doors asking if there's any wood you want to get rid of, and used that for the bonfire.' He also recalled his parents' experience during the war, explaining that his father had served in the Merchant Navy and had not been at home when the war ended. He said of his mother: 'I remember her reading the papers. 'She was always in tears thinking about what the troops were going through.' For Erskine trustee and former army reservist Colonel Mike Edwards it was important to 'push the boat out' to celebrate veterans of the conflict. 'They're all of a certain age, and many of them will remember VE Day for real,' he explained. 'It's important that whilst we can we can, because won't be able to do it forever, we can really push the boat out and say thank you to these amazing veterans.' Contrasting their experience with his own military career he said: 'They didn't volunteer, they were conscripted to fight evil, tyranny, and fascism, and they were prepared to give their lives and many did. 'And the veterans here celebrating today lived through that experience. 'They remember VE Day. 'We're fortunate to share VE Day 80 with them. 'But they were there, they lived that day and it's really important to mark how these amazing people stood up and fought against evil, tyranny, fascism, to keep Europe free and the UK and Scotland free as well.' There were also a number of young cadets at the event, who were helping serve food and drinks to the participants. One, a 15-year-old lance corporal, said it made him 'happy' to be there helping to make the residents happy. He added that it was important to remember the conflict, both to help prevent a repetition, but also to celebrate the people who fought in it, 'because they helped our country in a very big way'.
Scotsman
08-05-2025
- General
- Scotsman
In Pictures: VE Day 80
The day started on Portobello Beach with a pipers lament from Louise Marshall, Scotland's National Piper. Other events include a service of thanksgiving at Glasgow Cathedral, with guests including representatives from the military, veterans' organisations, emergency services and religious groups. Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray was at the Lady Haig Poppy Factory in Edinburgh, where he met veterans. The Scotsman visited residents at Erskine Care Homes as the remembered VE Day. In Westminster Abbey, The King, the Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales were among those gathered for a service of remembrance. The great-great-grandson of wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill Alexander Churchill , aged 10, lit a candle while young members of the congregation poignantly handed out white roses to Second World War veterans. Kate joined Camilla and other royals in laying flowers at the Innocent Victims' Memorial outside the abbey's West Door in tribute to all victims of war and oppression at the close of the proceedings. Charles and William then layed wreaths of seasonal flowers which would have been in bloom in May 1945 at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Future of private Carolina colleges uncertain amid nationwide closures
DAVIDSON, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – In the last week, two Carolina private colleges closed their doors citing financial instability: Limestone University in Gaffney, S.C. and St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, N.C. On Wednesday, students at Limestone University started moving out – less than 24 hours after finding out the school was closing for good. Chris Marsicano is an associate professor and chair of the Educational Studies Department at Davidson College. He said the idea of colleges closing is something they've been watching for a decade. 'The COVID pandemic and changes in student tastes over the past couple of years have really, though, put pressure on small private schools, especially outside of urban areas to continue their operations,' Marsciano said. 'Colleges are pushed to demonstrate their value, and with colleges that can show they can get students great jobs, and they can expand their horizons, and they can give them the next opportunities, those are the places that are going to have no trouble surviving. Those that can't, it's going to be really hard.' Erskine College, located near Greenwood, S.C., is offering a $25,000 scholarship to anyone from Limestone University looking for a new home. Brianne Holmes is the Director of Marketing and Communications at Erskine College. She said last year was one of the best financially for the school. 'We want them to know that we're here for them and that we would like to be able to welcome them on campus if they think this would be a great school for them,' Holmes said. 'We can't replace their Limestone home, but we hope we can give them a second home that they can enjoy.' Holmes said the age of Erskine and class sizes should feel familiar for Limestone students. The scholarship would be for all the years that they attend Erskine. Marsicano said Limestone students should take advantage of opportunities like this. He said colleges have shown to be resilient – even in rural areas. 'This is probably not the end of small colleges across the country, especially those places that have strong alumni ties or some large endowments,' Marsicano said. 'There are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to go find them.' Marsicano said he is keeping his eye on St. Augustine's University in Raleigh. He said the school lost its accreditation and has been struggling. 'I think it could be any day now, but they've shown themselves to be resilient before – they've come back from the brink multiple times,' Marsicano said. 'I wouldn't count them out just yet.' According to Marsicano, Limestone and St. Andrews had turnaround strategies. St. Andrews sold itself to Webber International University, and Limestone invested heavily in its athletics programs. Both the men's and women's lacrosse teams could potentially continue after the college is closed because they are some of the best in the country. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
