Celtic supporters are building a community in Swindon and using that group to help other communities across the globe.

“There has been a Celtic Supporters’ Club in Swindon since the year 2000 in one guise or another,” said Head of Charity Joe McGarvie. “I moved to Swindon in 1998 and was attracted to the supporters’ club.

“It is a lot of like-minded people, it is difficult being a Celtic supporter in England sometimes, we don’t always get the best rap, with politics and things like that.

“I think we have 40 members at the minute, and we will organise trips back up to Scotland to Celtic Park to go and watch games.

“We are also supported by The Kop Bar in town, so that is our home base, and they will look after us, but we also do things like golf days.”

McGarvie moved down from Glasgow to Swindon when he was young and he said that meeting up with other Celtic fans helped him to feel settled in his new home.

He said: “I was quite young when I moved down here, and you can imagine that with that regional accent moving down to Swindon it was difficult to interact with people without changing how I spoke.

“I missed watching Celtic and I didn’t have the money to go back up, so I found out there was a supporter’s club, and I went along, and it was a little bit of home away from home.”

On top of reminiscing about deep-fried Mars bars and watching the endless slew of Auld Firm derbies with each other, the group also do a lot of charity work at home and abroad.

McGarvie said: “We do have a member who is over in Sierra Leone doing charity work there on behalf of the club.

“We did a collection for old Celtic tops, and he took them over to Sierra Leone and given them to local football clubs.

“There is an alliance of Celtic supporters’ clubs in England and coming up in the summer we have a five-a-side tournament between all the clubs in Ascot and that is for the Jimmy Johnstone, who is an ex-Celtic player who sadly passed away with motor neurone disease and all the proceeds from the tournament go to that charity.

“We won the tournament last year, so I hope we can follow that up this year.”