Cowan to return to the BBC’s Off the Ball

THE broadcaster and newspaper columnist, Tam Cowan, is to return to the BBC Radio Scotland football show, Off the Ball, following a two-week suspension resulting from comments made about women’s football.

The Off the Ball co-presenter was immediately pulled from the show a week last Saturday following a column published that morning in the Daily Record newspaper.

Cowan had come in for severe criticism after he wrote that the venue which hosted a Scotland international, Fir Park, should be “torched… in order to cleanse the stadium after it played host to women’s football”.

He responded by saying the comments were meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

But after two weeks, he is due to re-appear on the BBC.

Says a BBC Scotland spokesperson: “We’ve had several discussions with Tam following his newspaper column and he has made it clear to us that he made a serious error of judgement, for which he has apologised. He has also been reminded of his responsibilities as a broadcaster for BBC Scotland and on that basis, he will be back co-presenting Off the Ball this weekend.”