On Saturday 28th April 2012 my favourite football team Ross County FC lifted the Scottish Football League First Division trophy and were crowned champions.

A hugely successful season, with only one solitary league defeat, means that for the first time ever County will join the top flight of Scottish football.

"Shoes off for the champions..."

It’s taken me a few days to collect my thoughts about what it all means to me as a County fan.

My allegiance to the club really started about the same time I switched on to the possibility of a career in the media.

I was lucky enough to have a visionary primary school teacher called Tom Pike, who encouraged us to start up a school newspaper.

The Marybank Junior Gazette was a pretty successful little operation, even attracting some advertising from local businesses, and Mr Pike gave us licence to write whatever stories we wanted.

Myself and another class mate, Gary Sinclair, took it upon ourselves to take care of the sports pages. We wanted to interview some real sports people so we decided to put in a few phone calls to try and arrange something.

Tom Pike suggested we try Ross County in nearby Dingwall, who at the time had just clinched successive Highland League titles, and were regularly giving bigger more illustrious teams major frights in the Scottish Cup.

Amazingly the club’s manager Bobby Wilson agreed to be interviewed by these two daft schoolboys and we trundled off to Victoria Park with our (very short) list of questions. For two primary kids from a wee Highland village getting to tour the stadium, see the changing rooms and manager’s office then stand on the pitch, was pretty much as exciting as it gets.

Bobby was an absolute gent and humoured us throughout the visit, even agreeing to come and give the school team a training session soon after.

Boom, right there and then I was bitten by the bug and wanted to support this team in dark blue and white with the Stag’s head on the crest.

When I hit high school and went to Dingwall Academy it made getting to County games a lot easier. I could crash at friends’ houses and we’d sneak into Victoria Park (the walls were lower then) on Friday nights to kick the ball into the Jail End goal, before watching the team do it for real on a Saturday.

It's farewell to the Jail End as we know it.

It was a really exciting time to be a County fan as the club, along with newly-formed rivals from over the Kessock bridge in Inverness, had just been accepted into the third division of Scottish Football League. Victoria Park was modernised and began turning into the really atmospheric stadium it is today, and we loved standing behind the goals in the Jail End roaring on County and slating the opposition goalkeepers from all of a few feet away.

When Bobby Wilson left the club my good friend Malcolm Anderson and I went for the manager’s job, with an application based pretty much completely on our Championship Manager exploits and low wage expectations, and to this day he still has the letter thanking us for our interest but advising that Neale Cooper had been appointed instead.

There were no hard feelings though, and we managed to bag an interview with him for the Dingwall Academy school newspaper into the bargain.

Since those days I’ve followed the club through thick and thin, promotion and relegation, Save Our Staggies appeals and Scottish Cup successes. I’ve had season tickets even though I’ve lived nearly 200 miles from the club for much of that time, and bought every (and I mean every!) piece of merchandise the club has had the temerity to slap a badge on.

Like any supporter I’ve not always agreed with the way the club is run, on or off the park sometimes, but I’ve always been immensely proud of it.

There’s been a flurry of recognition for County’s achievements in the national press recently, but a lot of it with a slightly patronising tone about how such a small team has done so well for itself.

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Michael Gardyne nets the fifth against Hamilton on the day County avenged their only defeat of the season and lifted the title

However, while getting to the SPL is of course a success it’s not actually that big a surprise to anyone close to the club.

Dingwall may be a small place, but County draw fans from a huge area and if you look at the 2011/12 stats it’s something like the 15th best supported club in Scotland out of the 42 senior sides.

The club is owned by a wealthy, but not profligate, chairman - so not a Gretna-style bubble waiting to burst.

Not only that, the club has actually under achieved in recent years to a certain extent (Cup glory runs aside). County’s benchmark has and always will be the team in Inverness, and to be fair they have progressed ahead of us over the past few years and we’re only now catching up.

What’s more County fans are a demanding bunch. That’s not always a positive thing for the atmosphere in Victoria Park or the players on the pitch, but most County fans want to see the game played in the right way with attacking football that is pleasing to watch – hence the (in)famous “style and panache” incident.

That's why some sneering pundits who see County as a diddy team enjoying 15 minutes of fame may well be in for a shock.

Yes it’s a big step up to the SPL, but the privilege of playing there has been earned on merit and in keeping with the club’s progressive tradition.

County’s chairman, manager, players and fans are realistic but all focussed on more success - and no one involved with the club will be expecting to take a step backwards any time soon.

I’m just looking forward to backing them every step of the way.

It's a big weekend of motorsport - with WRC in Portugal, BTCC kicking off at Brands Hatch and the European Le Mans Series opener at Paul Ricard.

For the first time in years I won't be working at any of those events this weekend.

The surprising thing is I'm actually looking forward to it.

Don't get me wrong I still love motorsport, over the years I've been lucky enough to work with amazing people and teams in all the championships above and will be rooting for them this weekend.

What I'm looking forward to though is being able to be a fan again.

See when you are there and working you can't do that. Or at least I can't anyway.

As much as it's the best job in the world and there's a massive buzz being involved in it, when the flag drops you don't really enjoy it as such.

When you're the media/PR manager for a driver or team you just want them to win, or at least be successful according to their targets for the event, because that will make a good story for you.

You get totally wrapped up in your own client's relative performance rather taking in the race or rally as a whole.

On top of that you're furiously scribbling notes, taking pics, checking times, talking to engineers about what's going well/badly and updating social media channels.

Ironically, despite the fact you've often travelled hundreds or even thousands of miles to be there, more often than not during the event you're watching the timing screens with same intensity as someone trying to decipher The Matrix or a live feed on a telly in the pit garage or media centre rather than the action itself.

Even when wheels are not turning in anger you're running around going to press conferences, trying to organise drivers and team bosses interviews, sending out news releases and looking after media guests like journalists or film crews.

When you're involved in motorsport events I tend to find there's a general gut-twisting tension throughout as things can go wrong at any minute, and when the worst happens and your boys DNF the disappointment weighs heavily on everyone.

On the plus side being part of a team's successes is a massive thrill, and like in any sport that's a high that's difficult to match. 

Either way it's non-stop long days, high pressure and hard graft, and I find it's usually only the day after an event once things have calmed down that you appreciate what a great experience it all was.

That's why this weekend I'm genuinely looking forward to dropping the professional demeanour, getting excited and shouting at the telly with a beverage in hand like a real fan.

I'll be back in a paddock armed with a notebook and smartphone soon enough... 

Last week I was too early arriving for a business meeting.

I’d set off well in advance as I wasn’t quite sure where I was going and had ended up too early to show face without looking over eager, but without enough time to sit down in a café and grab a coffee.

So a Waterstones shop right next to where the meeting was due to take place provided the perfect way to kill the time and I popped in for a quick browse with no intention of buying anything.

I flicked through some sports biographies and noticed a book amongst the ‘Recommended by Staff’ section next to them.

At first glance the cover of ‘The Grudge’ looked to me like it would be a clichéd rake over the coals of the already well-documented Scotland vs England rugby rivalry.

Instead it totally captured my attention.

Here were England legends Wade Dooley, Peter Winterbottom, Paul Rendall et al describing legendary drinking sessions during English rugby’s barren years in the mid-eighties.

I jumped to another section and read Jim Telfer’s thoughts as he ‘beasted’ his Scotland players in the build up to a Five Nations match.

This was good stuff.

I bought it, went to the meeting then was too busy to read it for a few days.

When I did get around to sitting down and getting stuck into it I finished it in two days flat.

It’s a cracking book that lets you peek inside the heads of some of rugby’s most legendary figures before, during and after one of the sport’s most talked about matches.

Written with all the pace and lightness of touch you’d expect from a good newspaper journalist, the story covers everything from the coaches and players’ formative years to the politics in the UK that formed the backdrop of a titanic sporting clash.

There’s a real mix of history, psychology, poignant tales and laugh-out-loud moments, with classic lines such as the following on Will Carling’s elevation to England captain ahead of many older and more established figures in the team:

The Artist may already have had phenomenal success in cinemas around the world since its release, but it only just made it to my local cinema this week.

Boy was it worth the wait.

In recent years too many films have tried to gloss over their failings with eye-popping special effects and booming soundtracks, practically bludgeoning your senses for two hours in the hope that you'll be impressed despite the lack of originality.

The Artist is the perfect antidote. A proper silent movie, in black and white with orchestral accompaniment, it harks back to an era where movie makers had a lot less tools at their disposal and actually had to engage the audience through storytelling.

In a sense it's both an homage to and a pastiche of Hollwood's black and white era put together by modern film makers. However, it's so beautifully shot and the performances of the cast so lively that it feels perfectly authentic, and perhaps even surpasses some of the great originals it is imitating.

The love affair intertwined with the fall-and-rise storyline is not unique, but Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (not to mention Uggie the dog) really sparkle in the leading roles and are ably supported by recognised Hollywood stars such as John Goodman and James Cromwell.

Director Michel Hazanavicius doesn't waste a scene or a shot, so it never feels slow and really sweeps you along with its emotional highs and lows.

If you've never seen a silent movie before, and even if you don't think you would enjoy one, you need to make the effort to see The Artist in the cinema.

It fully deserves all the praise it's received thus far and is perfectly entitled to collect all of the ten(!) Academy Awards it has been nominated for.

The fact that someone was brave enough to make a film like this today is inspiring enough, but to see how well they've done it will restore your faith in cinema.

Watch the official trailer for The Artist:

I've often been puzzled when pundits slate footballers for showboating.

Many of them, often ex-professionals, go as far as inferring that players who indulge in it 'deserve' to be stopped by fair means or foul for being so audacious as to try such antics.

Not me. I love it.

I pay to see sports to be entertained, and if a player can light up a match with a bit of showboating then I'll applaud them every time.

That's why I love the following clip fron a recent NFL match.

It's right up there with René Higuita's scorpion kick and Kerlon's seal dribble.

So to Jerome Simpson of the Cincinnati Begals I say, take a bow son:

Snapped this on iPhone leaving Dundee after another cracking weekend with friends there. Never tire of looking out across the Tay, lovely part of the world and reminds me of the Cromarty Firth back home in the Highlands.

If you take out a gym membership, whether it's your standard local sports centre version or an expensive private club, it doesn't automatically make you fit.

You have to invest the time and effort to actually make use of the facility in order to achieve results.

If you pay a monthly membership but don't go to the gym, no matter how big or small your fee is you'll feel like it was a waste of cash by the time you eventually decide to cancel the direct debit.

Hiring a public relations firm or PR consultant is almost exactly the same.

They vary in size and price, but none of them will be effective unless you actually take the time to make best use of the facility by discussing ideas and making your targets clear on a regular basis.

If you simply sit back and hope that by paying a monthly fee you'll suddenly get amazing PR results without putting in any effort yourself it's likely you will end up feeling much the same about the exercise (or lack of it) as your wasted gym membership - out of pocket and still no closer to your goal.

So whether its getting fit by going to the gym or promoting your company or project through PR the principle is the same - be prepared to put in a little effort and you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results that can be achieved.

Either way you'll end up looking good in more ways than one.