by Robbie Dinwoodie

MICHAEL Stewart is not your average former footballer. He may have become an on-screen sporting pundit, but there the resemblance with most of his former fellow players ends as he has been prepared to wrestle not just with questions about the offside laws, lone strikers and wingbacks but the big political issues of the day.

He left Edinburgh at 16 to join Manchester United, a period of teenage exile which proved to be his political awakening, and when injury foreclosed his playing days and he had returned to his native city he plunged into the Yes campaign in 2014. He was then in contention for being selected as an SNP candidate during the landslide of the following year’s General Election, and his television and radio performances analysing matches recently earned him the accolade of Scottish Football Supporters’ Association pundit of the year.

Stewart recalls a wonderful childhood growing up in the Edinburgh suburb of East Craigs, kicking a ball about “morning, noon and night” with his big brother Rory. “It was a great place to be brought up, a very enjoyable childhood”, he recalls. His father was a civil servant working for the Accounts Commission, his mother was an office manager and it was not a political background. He has a vague memory of his father expressing the view that Scotland could not afford to become independent “but he’s a massive Yes supporter now, as are all my family.”

While at Craigmount High School in West Edinburgh Manchester United first began taking him down for training at the age of just 12 and he was offered a professional contract at just 16, moving down and staying in digs. He recalls: “I am someone who has always been inquisitive and intrigued by things, probably annoyingly so for a lot of people. My first thought and reaction was always why? If someone tells me something I like to get to the bottom of it, not in an aggressive fashion but just to understand, rather than just nod my head and agree.