Each week, the self-righteous and highly judgmental journalist Rab McNeil puts one of the country's weel-kent creations, names or faces under close scrutiny in his Scottish Icons series. This week, the pitch-perfect movie Gregory's Girl falls under his Sauron-like gaze...

With women’s football making strides, it seems opportune to have this week’s Icon concern the story of a young female taking up the game.

That said, the focus of Bill Forsyth’s 1981 film, Gregory’s Girl, is not footer but adolescent love, coming of age, that whole bewildering period in life, when the protection of childhood is taken away and the big, fat, smelly, ruthless world beckons.

I’m sure most of you will agree that adulthood is awful. Sure, having your own space and money is good. But the rest of it is meh, particularly “relationships” which, thankfully, seem to be dying out.

To turn the troublesome transition to adulthood into a warm, funny tale is some achievement. But Forsyth managed it. In addition, Scots loved the film’s authentic depiction of real life here, or at least in a new town.

Forsyth set the story in Cumbernauld (“a pleasant suburb of Glasgow”, as one American film critic put it) because it was also enjoying, if that’s the word, its own youth. It was a young town, full of hope and promise. As the writer and director said at the time: “Even the trees in Cumbernauld are teenagers, so everything fits.”

Far from the glens and bens of Brigadonia, the actors seemed like normal, Scottish people, many with that slightly wonky look and the facial expression of a lost dog in a shelter.

They spoke in normal, lowland Scottish accents. But, ah, language: the interface where Scotland bumps into an uncomprehending world. We speak English, but the........

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