Aidan Smith's Saturday Interview: Auld Alliance veteran Bryan Redpath on how to out-French France and his pride at sons' Scotland journey

Basil Brush was a much-loved, rascally star of children’s telly, not intimidated in the slightest by everyone around him being that much bigger, and for 45 years the No 1 fox on the box.

Basil Brush on the other hand was a much-loved, rascally star of Scottish rugby, not intimidated in the slightest by everyone around him being that much bigger, and in 60 appearances for his country he was a fox with a box kick.

“Boom, boom!” as the original Basil used to say. The other one you may know as Bryan Redpath but the nickname has stuck. How, though, given he’s not even red-headed, did he come by it? “That was my brothers’ doing,” the Borderer laughs. “One day, when I was back from school and sat in front of the TV, Craig and Andrew said: ‘You’re not watching Basil Brush again, are you?’ I didn’t think I was particularly obsessed with the show but after that I was ‘Basil’ or ‘Brushy’ all the time, and right the way through my rugby career.”

The puppet and the scrum-half would meet each other as a portent to a fabulous Scotland victory over today’s opponents France. This was the 1996 game when we played like the Barbarians. Or the Harlem Globetrotters. Or indeed a team throwing the ball around with an innocence and exuberance which seemed to belong to Children’s Hour.

“In the build-up to the match Grandstand came to see me on the building site,” recalls Redpath, who worked as a joiner in the pre-professional era when players had proper jobs. “The wee report ended with a message from Basil Brush in a Scotland shirt, 9 on the back, with the hole in the middle cut out for his tail. It went something like: ‘Hello, my old namesake and good luck against France who’re big and rough and tough but I’m sure you’ll do well!’ Grandstand