With Celtic playing Rangers for the first time this season at Ibrox on Sunday, actor, comedian, playwright and writer Tony Roper recalls the first time he attended an Old Firm game.

"When I was a wee boy growing up in Anderston in Glasgow I had a great friend called Billy Caden. We used to play football with a tennis ball in the back court of the tenement flat I lived in at a very early age and became good pals. His family were all Rangers fans and his dad took me to my first Old Firm game at Ibrox when I was very young, around four or five. It must have been in around 1945 or 1946.

"I had been brought up a Celtic fan. But I didn’t really know what was going on. I couldn’t tell you anything about the game or even who won. I was sitting in amongst all these Rangers supporters. But I can’t recall who I cheered for. All I can really remember is looking across the pitch and seeing the criss-cross balcony on the main stand.

"Rangers had a great team during that era. George Young and Willie Woodburn played for them. Their back line was known as the Iron Curtain and they all represented Scotland. I didn’t grow up in a good period for Celtic. It was pre-Jock Stein and wasn’t a triumphant time. They weren’t all that great. Fans these days don’t know they’re living.

"But what sticks in my mind from my first Old Firm game was my old man going aff his heid afterwards. My father got very, very angry when he learned I had been taken along. He was absolutely furious.

“Nothing bad happened. But in those days bottles would get thrown, fights would break out between supporters, fans would run on the park and police would come on to restore order on their horses. My parents wouldn’t let me go to the Old Firm game. I didn’t have any money and they wouldn’t give me any to go. I only started attending them after I had left school.

"There is an Old Firm game at Ibrox that I will never forget. It took place years later after I had started to appear on television. For some reason that escapes me now, I couldn’t get back to my car afterwards. So I jumped on a bus going in the opposite direction from the stadium. I thought: ‘That’ll be the best thing to do’. But soon after I had got on it changed direction and came straight back.

"At the bus stop, dozens of Rangers fans got on. They started battering the roof and windows and singing their songs. I was getting quite well known at the time. It was also well known that I was a big Celtic fan. I thought: ‘Oh no! I’m in big trouble here!’ I looked out of the window so none of them recognised me.

"Then one came and sat in the seat next to me. He said to me: ‘You at the game?’ I had my hand covering my face and I told him: ‘No, not today’. He looked at me and said: ‘You’re Tony Roper aren’t you? Oh, you’re in big trouble!’ I can’t tell you how frightened I was. But he gave me his scarf and said: ‘Put that on. I’ll talk to you and get you through this’. That was what he did.

"By the time we got to the city centre all the Rangers fans had got off. I told him: ‘You saved my life. Give me your address. I’ll send you a couple of quid so you can have a night out on me’. But he wouldn’t hear of it. If there were more supporters like him there would be a lot less trouble.

"It wasn’t the first Old Firm game I went to, but it is the one that I remember more than any other because of the sheer terror I felt afterwards."