In the second exclusive extract from Mark Walters’ new book Wingin’ It, the former Rangers player suffered awful abuse on his Old Firm debut – but worse was to come at Hearts.

Racism didn’t become black and white for me until I signed my first senior contract, and it was something which was more or less exclusive to away games, where opposition fans would taunt you with monkey chants and you’d get the odd earful whenever you ventured anywhere near them.

Most of the time it was isolated abuse by little pockets of tanked-up supporters, but in the 1980s there were a few grounds where you were almost guaranteed to get slaughtered. These were West Ham, Newcastle, Leeds United and Millwall, where everyone seemed to be a skinhead and decked out in Doc Martens.

I did suffer racial abuse from certain players now and again, but it was mostly fans that dished it out. I did get some abuse from a player against Spurs: I genuinely can’t remember his name, but I do remember Spurs defender Graham Roberts intervening and telling his team-mate in no uncertain terms to calm down and shut up.

But if I thought the abuse I had suffered in England was bad, it was about to fly off the scale when I joined Rangers. Somehow it was as though certain groups of supporters up there had never seen a black man before. I was just 23 years old and the first black guy to play in the Premier League, and boy how I would soon know it. I arrived in Scotland to sign for Rangers on New Year’s Eve 1987. A couple of days later I made my debut at Celtic Park, home to our greatest rivals.