Saturday Interview: Gordon Bulloch on how it was a "black mark" to be a rugby player from Glasgow and how he survived the "mediocre" years with Scotland

The 75-cap former Scotland rugby captain is miffed by my sniggering when he reveals how the porch he built from studying YouTube tutorials was nominated for an architectural award

“I’m sending you photos,” says Gordon Bulloch with a harrumph and yes, when they arrive during our Zoom chat, it’s a straight and solid-seeming structure, sitting over the door as porches tend to do, the wood, er, contrasting with the stone of the building and … you can probably tell I’ve no idea what I’m talking about but I reckon Kevin McCloud of TV’s Grand Designs would be impressed.

This is typical of how ex-hooker Bulloch gets his kicks, post-rugby, since finishing with the international game as a British Lion in New Zealand in 2005. With younger brother Alan, who won five caps, he’s built Highland holiday homes and back at the foot of Camspie Fells, where he lives with his wife Jenni and daughter Ellie, his big lockdown project was knocking up a gym for himself.

What a show-off, I’m thinking, but this is simply jealousy for my wife would love me to be this capable, this macho. Some previous work at his property, a supposedly professional job, he’d rated as abysmal. “So for the porch I decided: ‘How difficult can this be? I’m doing it.’”

This was his competitiveness showing, the thing he misses most about rugby when Bulloch was often a bullock, and which he now puts into hill-running. “If there’s a guy up ahead of me I have to shoot past him, even if he’s a 66-year-old retiree,” he laughs. Back to the porch: “An architect friend helped with the plans. At that point I had no experience of anything like this and I know my pal thought I was going to make a complete arse of it. But the porch hasn’t blown away yet and to make the shortlist for