IT is a career that has spiralled upwards with the occasional twist and the sparkling turn.

But Steven Naismith, Scotland's best footballer, knows where it all started.

On the streets of his home of town of Stewarton, Ayrshire.

And on his run as an Evening Times paper boy.

"The Evening Times job meant so much to me on lots of levels," said Naismith, now 28, of the delivery duty he started 17 years ago..

This week he took the Evening Times down memory lane, down the streets of old and found it nothing had changed.

"My dad still lives in the same block," he says, delivering him a paper with the compliments of the Evening Times. His parents have split up but his mother is down the road and his sisters are around the corner.

"It is the same wee cul-de-sac in so many ways," he says. "And it is where my round started."

The job came about after he was chatting to a mate after school and he told Naismith about his job delivering papers.

"I stood in for him when he went on holiday and then decided to have my own round," said the Everton striker.

"I immediately knew I fancied doing it because I knew I could get the customers and earn myself a few bob. It was quite a simple thing to set up. You had to get a certain number of people signed up so I went round the doors next to my home and everyone was great at deciding they wanted a paper," said the former Ranger who has now earned 34 caps for Scotland.

"My family all come from Stewarton and their friends, relatives and even my godmother are just down the road. A van would drop the papers off to me and I would start my round immediately after I came home from school. It was almost a social thing because some people would come to the doors where I walked up the path or the stairs and have a bit of banter with me," he said.

Naismith - who still has a house in Stewarton and travels back whenever he can - said the round also had a financial benefit.

The boy from Stewarton has become a major player in the English Premier League, the richest in the world. He has also just signed a four-year contract that will earn him millions.

But he says with a wide smile. "I got about a tenner a week and it was the best money I ever earned. It was the first time I could say that what was in my pocket was my own and that I had earned it. That's a great feeling."

He points out he inherited a strong work ethic form his dad, David, a social worker, and his mum, Rosie, who still works in the local Sainsbury's but adds: "The paper round helped make me as a footballer. I would take my ball with me. The cul-de sac part of the round was done in a minute but when I went to to other streets I would play wee games with just myself and the ball.

"These would involve bouncing the ball off the kerb so it came back at angles and I had to control it immediately or running fast with the ball but keeping it within touching distance. The round ended with a game with mates on a piece of wasteground. "

He became well known in the area as the footballing paper boy. "One man told me years later that he knew I would become a pro because he saw how I practised with the ball and he also saw how I was improving every week," says Naismith.

He looks around the streets and says: "All this is very important to me. I have never lost the feeling that this is home and I come back here as often as I can but it is good to be reminded of the paper round."

He adds: "I suppose it showed I was up for hard work and that has been the biggest element of any success I have had. It also allowed me to practise and I still never shrink from that, " he said.

"The round was fun but I delivered the papers properly, folding them up and putting through the letter boxes so they did not get messed up. My dad always says that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well and I have even taken that advice into training sessions with big clubs."

The journey that started on Ayrshire streets will continue tonight [Thursday} in a packed Goodison Park where Everton take on Dynamo Kiev in the Europa League. The times may have changed for Naismith but the lessons and memories of the Evening Times duty have stayed with him.